Apr242012
By pocketbrewer on April 24, 2012
Hi everyone. Just posting an update to let everyone know I’m still working on the application. Lately I’ve been busy actually using the application and brewing beer! However I have been working on adding mash and fermentation schedules to the application since I like to rely on my BeerXML files as a “journal” of sorts showing what I did last time on a particular brew.
If anyone is new to brewing and would like to get some great books on beer brewing I’ve put together my recommended beer brewing books list on my personal website. Take a look and happy brewing!
Posted in Pocket Brewer
Mar212012
By pocketbrewer on March 21, 2012
I had to submit an update due to a bug on the Gmail / Email import function. If all you’re importing is Pilsdaddy it’s because a tiny piece of test code got shipped. An unfortunate side effect of being a one man programmer, tester, blogger, updater. The Skydrive importer works fine so please use that until 4.1 goes live!
Posted in Pocket Brewer
Mar152012
By pocketbrewer on March 15, 2012
I know we’re going from 3.9 to 4.0 and typically upping the first number means big feature release but unfortunately that’s not the case here. Microsoft won’t let me update it to 3.9.5 for example so we had to go up to 4.0.
I added a refractometer final gravity correction tool to the tools. For those of us who use refractometers in brewing when you take a final gravity reading it’s skewed due to the presence of alcohol. Well fortunately there are formulas out there to perform corrections and get the actual final gravity of your beer. I’ve been brewing a lot lately and the only thing Pocket Brewer hasn’t done that I need is that calculation which results in me rummaging about my computer for that spreadsheet to do the correction. I got tired of it Sunday and wrote the addition to Pocket Brewer. I also got a little fancy with it so once you enter your original gravity and final gravity as taken with your hydrometer you’ll get the corrected final gravity, estimated alcohol and attenuation all right there. I love it.
I have been working on the mash schedules and timers for the application but have to confess I suffered a little burnout after implementing the BeerXML import/export which was a beast. I’ll be getting back to those in the near future after this little success.
Happy Brewing!
Posted in Pocket Brewer Tagged beer, BeerXML, brewing, correction, final gravity, pocket brewer, refractometer, windows phone 7
Jan102012
By pocketbrewer on January 10, 2012
Pocket Brewer Version 3.9 is out in the Marketplace and everything seems to be running smoothly. I hope everyone enjoys the improvements to the mail imports and enjoys the new SkyDrive integration. I have updated the documentation on Import/Export so please read it especially if you want to use SkyDrive.
Posted in Pocket Brewer Tagged beer brewing tools, cloud, SkyDrive, windows 8, windows phone 7, wp7
Jan052012
By pocketbrewer on January 5, 2012
After submitting 3.8 to the marketplace I went through a number of BeerXML flies from other programs and found a number of issues with them I needed to “clean up” in order to help users have to hassle less with XML that didn’t conform to what it should look like. So this evening I submitted version 3.9 which should be out in the next week or so. If you have any problems with a particular BeerXML file feel free to send it my way and I’ll help you with it!
Happy New Year
Posted in Pocket Brewer Tagged beer brewing software, BeerXML, SkyDrive, windows 8, windows phone 7, wp7
Dec232011
By pocketbrewer on December 23, 2011
I’ve had some good users point out a couple of unforeseen issues with importing from Gmail. I have programmed a fix but given that it’s Christmas it won’t be released until probably First week of January. So if you have any problems with importing from Gmail just know that solutions are coming. I am also looking at implementing a Skydrive download capability so we don’t have to rely on 3rd party email type imports anymore. Thanks to all of you who’ve used Pocket Brewer and especially those who are contributing to making it better! Merry Christmas
Posted in Pocket Brewer
Dec192011
By pocketbrewer on December 19, 2011
The next update will likely not be until February 2012. I have to implement mash schedules as are used in BeerXML and I’ll implement the mash timers with that.
Thinking past that I personally am most interested in adding some sort of fermentation tracking functionality since if I forget to add what sort of fermentation schedule I used to the recipe description it’ll get lost in time. I also plan on adding some interfaces to add/remove custom ingredients as well as interfaces for finings/miscellaneous additions to the brewing process.
As of now it’s been almost one year since I started coding Pocket Brewer. I think it’s become a great application and I enjoy using it and working on it. Thanks so much to all the users who wrote in with requests and comments which have helped it become far better than I ever anticipated.
Cheers, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Posted in Pocket Brewer
Dec102011
By pocketbrewer on December 10, 2011
A couple of bugs were reported by some users. I have fixed them and republished. When the update is approved by Microsoft it’ll be available.
- IBU’s Go Crazy Bug – The IBU calculations had a bug that would occasionally make the number go extremely high and not calculate correctly.
- Import From Google & Yahoo Bug – When Pocket Brewer imports from these sources it has to clean the data based on what they do to it for their mail purposes. I had to improve my cleaner for some uncommon circumstances.
- Brix Added to Units Conversion – In addition to specific gravity and degrees plato you’ll now see Brix on this menu.
Posted in Pocket Brewer Tagged beer brewing, beer software, beer tools, windows phone 7, wp7
Dec082011
By pocketbrewer on December 8, 2011
Today Version 3.6 went live in the marketplace. This is the release of a version allowing a trial which I wrote over the weekend. Essentially the trial version is this:
- It has ads.
- Every 10 days it’ll ask you if you want to buy my super sweet app.
- It only allows one recipe in the recipe section at a time.
I feel pretty comfortable with it. Originally I had not implemented a trial but was shamed at how easy one is to implement by fellow developers. Additionally I was a little shocked that far inferior competitor apps really cut in to the downloads. I hope folks who hadn’t previously wanted to press the buy button will get a reason to see why my app is worth that $1.29 investment.
Posted in Pocket Brewer
Dec052011
By pocketbrewer on December 5, 2011
After what’s taken longer than expected I’ve submitted version 3.5 to the marketplace. If you check out the recipes section you’ll notice many of the recipes added and older recipes have both BeerXML and Pocket Brewer XML versions available. Many of the older were converted during testing and I’ll probably continue and convert the rest.
The update will allow you to import and export recipes as BeerXML. You’ll notice on the export emails produced by Pocket Brewer it’ll have a Pocket Brewer XML version first and a BeerXML version second. The reason for this is BeerXML versions of recipes are far larger than the smaller XML I crafted for this application. On the import screen I have had some issues copying/pasting the large BeerXML files or getting them out of Gmail/Yahoo accounts because they mail program tries to page the emails which breaks the import on a BeerXML file. By putting my smaller XML first I can be sure that people can re-import Pocket Brewer produced files in the way they see fit.
Additionally there are a few things about the current Pocket Brewer which should be small to inconsequential to 95% of users.
- No mash schedule yet supported although it’s planned. BeerXML has MASH and I am working on developing the functionality to build mashes in Pocket Brewer. This is next as far as development is concerned and that’ll be available in the version which will roll out in the first part of 2012. As is any mash in a BeerXML file is pretty much ignored.
- Yeast is not currently in milliliters so it gets converted to packs. I always used the concept of packs since I buy yeast in packs and create starters. I will at some point in the future use milliliters but expect that to get changed when you import/export BeerXML in Pocket Brewer.
I am excited and find it extremely easy using pocketbrewer.com to get BeerXML recipes I find in to Pocket Brewer and turned in to permanent parts of my recipe library which is quickly growing. Look for more recipes to be added and feel free to email me any recipes you’d like published to Pocket Brewer’s recipe section. It makes it much easier to find them when you need them!
As always feel free to email me with questions, comments and requests. Next update will be in a few months and primarily focus on the timers/alarms implementation.
Posted in Pocket Brewer, Pocket Brewer Tools
