Homebrewer/Winemaker/Developer

Archive for October, 2008

I love brewing beer and I love tools to help me brew better beer. What I HATE is paying money for some of these tools! If you’re like me, you spend enough of your hard earned money on the tools for the trade… burner, boil pot, parts for a cheap and easy mash tun, and other homebrewing equipment, that you just don’t want to spend $20 more on a tool to store your recipes.

If you are still reading, I am sure you feel the same, so FREE IT SHALL BE!

As stated in another blog post, you can read about the current specifications here for the online beer recipe management system. The plan is to get some sort of beta version available on the site.

Possible Development Stalls:

Real Job – I’m Owner/Partner/Lead developer at Foremost Media – so work may get in the way.

Work On Other Sites – what stemmed this idea was the current work my business partner and I do for hunting – his passion

• Foremost Hunting – a directory for the hunting sportsman. (Much of the same technology and community that is aimed for this site)
• GameBirdHunts.com – the site that started it all. A portal aimed at the upland bird hunters out there.

Real Life – my wife is pregnant with our first, and real life issues should always take a precedence

Currently I am in “alpha” stage, where a user can create a recipe and calculate SRM, ABV, ABW, Potential OG and FG, IBU and other good stuff. Be sure to check out the homebrewing glossary page to know what these terms mean.

It’s in alpha because I have not converted that to be able to work with this website. I plan to take on that challenge within the next week or two.

ForemostBrewing.com was started around July of 2008. And while it is now October 17, 2008 and the site is slowly starting to take shape, I would say that we are about half way through our “rest” for mashing. I’ve got the grain bill (the ideas) all calculated, heated up my mash water and have set the ideas to mashing.

While working on the site tonight – I began to take note that the only way for you, the visitor of Foremost Brewing, to understand progress is taking place is to see some kind of progress. Like watching the wort in your carboy ferment like crazy.

I’ve got many aspirations for this site, greatest in my opinion is the free online recipe repository I’ve outlined here. While I am building this from scratch – it’s easy for me to state that the project is “in active development” – but without seeing anything new, the users of this site will fail to see progress. So I am starting this blog and will post regularly my progress on this site.

For those of you simply interested in the progress of the beer recipe repository, I’ve created a child blog that you can subscribe to in order to track my progress. My plan is to have a farily stable beta version ready for release on the website for the registered users to use. And I want to know your feedback. Let’s brew this community together!

I have also got some great motivation to really get moving on this site in the next few months. My lovely wife of 3 years is pregnant with our first child. While not due until mid April, it gives me a great (and hopefully realistic) goal to get this site well on it’s way.

A little background on me:

I have been home brewing for a little over 2 years now. It wasn’t until I went to a buddy’s bachelor party and he served us some of his home brew. I had a swig and asked “And you made this yourself?” I was amazed, I never thought about making your own beer.

Well that was it, I was bound and determinded to brew my own. My first was an extract kit called “Badger Amber Ale.” Well, the finished product was “pretty flat… but pretty good.” I was determined to do better!

Besides wearing my homebrew cape on occasional weekends, I am an ASP.Net developer. My business partner and I have done a couple hunting websites for ourselves on the side. He’s a hunting nut, and I’m a programmer. If you’re a hunter you should check them out: http://www.foremosthunting.com and http://www.gamebirdhunts.com.

Over the last 2 years, I have really began to thirst for more brewing knowledge. And in my search for various brewing information (shops, clubs, etc) I found some of the information quite hard to find. And finding a decent recipe calculator for free was impossible. Everyone seems to want your money!

So it seems this was my calling. What better way for me to increase my brewing knowledge and get a sense of giving than by bringing that knowledge onto my fellow homebrewers… and give it to them for free (As in beer!).

There you have it in a nutshell, where we are, why we’re here, and kinda where we’re heading. As with brewing good beer, it takes time and attention to detail. So we have begun our “brewing” session together. But as with making your own beer, you like to see progress… just like watching that wort ferment so crazy in your carboy you think the bung is going to shoot out! Exciting!