Being a father with two little kids and a pretty busy job, I don’t have a lot of time to brew and have ended up doing mostly extract brewing up until recently, when I decided to try what basically amounts to mini-mashes (or as I’ve been calling them pico brews — one step smaller than nano). Brewing on this level (usually half- to one-gallon batches) allows me to be creative and test recipes out and experiment without the dread of having to discard five gallons of “UGH!”
So to aid me, I created a calculator that basically converts your basic five gallon recipes down to a more pico scale, like half- and one-gallon recipes. Would you take a moment out of your day to take a look and lend me some useful feedback on the calculator? I’m looking to further build out more features, including print/send this recipe, but for now it only does what I need at a core level, converting a recipe down to small batches.
If your time is limited, wouldn’t it make sense to brew the largest batches you can?
Anyway, the tool looks pretty good. It would be nice for the tab headings to be visible even when they aren’t active. And I’m sure an option for SI units would be popular.
I always like to see relatively simple apps implemented in JavaScript. Kudos on avoiding Flash.
The time limitation is moreso surrounding the issue of time and ease of dealing with kid issues. You can’t just walk away from a five/ten gallon mash or boil when you have a one- and two-year-old that can’t be left unsupervised (for long). If you don’t have kids, there’s no way you’ll understand.
Brewing these mini (pico) batches allows me to experiment, try different things, and sample recipes I might like to try on a larger scale when time permits. And in the meantime for my regular five-gallon batches I just do extract because it’s easy, relatively quick, and can still do in the kitchen while keeping an eye on the munchkins.
I’ve thought about making it available in SI as well, and will probably make an additional field for that, too. Additionally, I plan on putting a “shopping list view” together, where you can see all the ingredients together in a printable list.
A bug with IE’s failure to support gradients. You’re probably using an older version of IE or running IE9 in compatibility mode. I’ve fixed it to adjust the CSS to accommodate IE.
Oh right, I forgot about IE not fully supporting CSS. I ran into that on my site too. Please don’t dumb it down; you’ll only encourage people to use IE.
