A Program for Home Brew Wine Makers

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

So I wanted a program that would help remind me of when I needed to rack my brews and keep track of inventory and after a google search I found they make them for beer but not for wine....so I decided to write one. It is just about finished now except for the help file... or at least it was until I though, "why not add a feature to use metric measurements instead of just Imperial to increase its usefulness.

So.... I like to ask the opinion of all you fellow wine makers.
Please tell me:
what country you are in (for holidays)
If you use Imperial or Metric measurements (and if you use metric how do you measure things like Yeast Nutrient? Grams? Metric conversion say 1 teaspoon is 5 milliliters but that's a liquid measurement. and for sugar would you prefer Grams or Kilograms?)
and if you would pay like $10 for a program for your computer that does the following:

- Displays basic holidays such as mother's day, father's day, new year's, ect.
- Displays up to 12 user defined holidays such as birthdays and anniversaries
- keeps track of up to 9 brews and displays a reminder on its home page when a batch needs racking
- creates and lets you edit brew logs and evaluations with fill-in-the-blank forms
- keep track of inventory of up to 25 wine racks (with a 99 bottle capacity) in both text list and graphical grid form
- has easy printing ability to let you print out Logs, Evaluations, and Inventory

I was going to include the current "About" help file to give you a better idea of what I am referring to, but it was too large for me to attach.

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

Here's some screenshots if anyone is interested

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

No interest at all?

 

[Chuck E]

I try to "go metric," but I'm old and I don't think in metric. Consequently, I am forever going back and forth doing the conversions. That said, I do my chemistry in grams and liters, it makes the math easier. I keep notes on each batch I make in Word. I think the app should gently remind me to rack, as wine making is "the procrastinator's hobby." I don't mind paying for helpful apps.

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

Well I did the conversion part just in case. in the upper left of log screen I put a checkbox and if you check it the labels change to metric.
And yeah I know the feeling, that's why I added the holidays and custom reminders to give me a reason to check it every day thinking that would make it more useful and more likely to be opened daily.
plus being able to pull up a log with just typing in a number and clicking a button is really nice.
plus you can view logs in the program's form if saved as an INI or as an image, so if you scanned all your paper logs and named them using the batch number as the name and put them in the program's Brewlog folder it would pull them up in Paint easy.

thanks for the feedback. If I can get enough interest I'm thinking about trying to sell it. I think it'd be worth $10 for all it does

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

there's the metric version

 

[John Arild Olsen]

This is definitely interesting. I am also writing a web application for my wine making, but do not intend to share / support it to/for others
Best of luck !

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

lol, I've poured a lot of hours into this, it would be a shame to keep it to myself, especially if can help make ends meet in these crazy times lol

 

[John Arild Olsen]

I can see we have the same ideas. As I am living in Norway, I am doing everything metric. For chemicals I do both teaspoons and grams, it depends on the recipe.

I have a dashboard with upcoming planned events from my brews (I also brew beer). I do not include any holidays, perhaps a good idea.

I also have an inventory for the fermentation vessels, I do not have too many, and my planning process is influenced by availability of fermentation vessels.

I do not limit brews being tracked nor amount of bottles or racks in inventory.

I also keep an inventory of empty bottles and carboys for the same reason listed above.

I have a Tilt monitoring temperature and SG in an ongoing fermentation using a Raspberry Pi. Future plan is to include this information in the dashboard.

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

I figured 99 bottles per rack might even be overkill, plus any more buttons for the grid view would make the window huge. I figured 99 bottles and 25 racks was 2,475 bottles. I thought that was plenty, lol

I added the holidays to encourage both myself and other uses to check the thing daily.

Sounds like yours is more advanced then mine, good luck!

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

This is my holiday list - which is why I wanted input on holidays from people

Pre-Programmed Holidays

Static Holidays

New Year's Day
Groundhog Day
Valentine's Day
St. Patrick's Day
April Fool's Day
Earth Day
Cinco De Mayo
Independence Day
Halloween
Veterans Day
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year's Eve

Floating Holidays

Chinese New Year - up to 2022 (would program more if this was of interest)
Daylight Saving Time starts - up to 2030
Memorial Day - up to 2022 (again can program more if needed)
Father's Day - up to 2030
Mother's Day - up to 2030
Daylight Saving Time ends - up to 2030
Thanksgiving Day - up to 2032

 

[Darrell Hawley]

This is my holiday list - which is why I wanted input on holidays from people

Pre-Programmed Holidays

Static Holidays

New Year's Day
Groundhog Day
Valentine's Day
St. Patrick's Day
April Fool's Day
Earth Day
Cinco De Mayo
Independence Day
Halloween
Veterans Day
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year's Eve

Floating Holidays

Chinese New Year - up to 2022 (would program more if this was of interest)
Daylight Saving Time starts - up to 2030
Memorial Day - up to 2022 (again can program more if needed)
Father's Day - up to 2030
Mother's Day - up to 2030
Daylight Saving Time ends - up to 2030
Thanksgiving Day - up to 2032

I think the app would be great.

 

[sour_grapes]

This is my holiday list - which is why I wanted input on holidays from people

Pre-Programmed Holidays

Static Holidays

New Year's Day
Groundhog Day
Valentine's Day
St. Patrick's Day
April Fool's Day
Earth Day
Cinco De Mayo
Independence Day
Halloween
Veterans Day
Christmas Eve
Christmas Day
New Year's Eve

Floating Holidays

Chinese New Year - up to 2022 (would program more if this was of interest)
Daylight Saving Time starts - up to 2030
Memorial Day - up to 2022 (again can program more if needed)
Father's Day - up to 2030
Mother's Day - up to 2030
Daylight Saving Time ends - up to 2030
Thanksgiving Day - up to 2032

I would think that you would want to include Easter. Perhaps also: Ash Wednesday, Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha. I might also include Diwali, because who doesn't like Diwali?

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

I was trying to to avoid religious holidays since they wouldn't be appealing to everyone. The only reason I included Christmas is because many non religious people celebrate the secular "hallmark holiday" Santa Claus/Gift giving aspect of it.
but If there was enough interest in it, I would be wiling to add a way for a user to select if they want to show those holidays
I don't know enough about those holidays so let me ask, are they static or floating holidays?
static holidays are easy, they only need to be put in once, floating holidays have to be looked up and programmed for each year.

 

[sour_grapes]

I was trying to to avoid religious holidays since they wouldn't be appealing to everyone. The only reason I included Christmas is because many non religious people celebrate the secular "hallmark holiday" Santa Claus/Gift giving aspect of it.
but If there was enough interest in it, I would be wiling to add a way for a user to select if they want to show those holidays
I don't know enough about those holidays so let me ask, are they static or floating holidays?
static holidays are easy, they only need to be put in once, floating holidays have to be looked up and programmed for each year.

I understand your reasoning. I only suggested them because you put in Christmas (and St. Valentine's Day and St. Patrick's Day, for that matter). I suggested Easter because it is widely observed in this country. I don't blame you at all if you don't want to go there.

All of the ones I suggested are floating, and most are based on the lunar calendar and/or the interaction of the lunar calendar with the Gregorian calendar. (Which is perhaps another reason not to code them.)

I would say that including holidays or not would not make me any more or less likely to use your program.

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

well again, I included those because even non religious people observe them, not for any religious reason but for the "hallmark holiday" aspect. I mean, no one really cares who St. Valentine was but the candy company makes a killing every year off chocolate. unless you are Irish you don't care about St. Patrick driving snakes from Ireland, but who doesn't love an excuse to drink green beer? I Put Cinco De Mayo in because even non Mexicans love a good excuse to drink? am I right? lol (Personally I'm a Buddhist but I buy people gifts on christmas. not for any religious reason but to enjoy the occasion to spend time with family and give gifts to show I care. plus I like the decorations. So basically I like the pagan winter holiday aspect.)

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

The holiday programming is all I have left, otherwise the program is done. I am toying with the idea of adding icons to the home screen to chose what holidays are shown mainly for international appeal (since only americans observe thanksgiving or independence day and daylight saving time changes would probably be different.)
static holidays are easy but I don't know if I would program floating holidays past 2030 unless there was a high demand, otherwise the only floating holidays I was planning to go further with are mother's day and father's day.

that's why I want to get an idea of what the demand is as far as what holidays people would want

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

hell, I even put in chinese new year for a few years. So basically I added a bunch of "excuse to party and drink" holidays

 

[Kentuckyhomebrewer]

Having just discovered that mother's day and father's day are different in other countries makes me want to find out the international appeal of this program more, as this would require even more programming.

floating holidays aren't hard to program, just tedious. I have to look up the holiday on that year, then program it in. rinse and repeat for each year.

making the displayed holidays country or religion specific isn't hard either, it's basically just adding a way for the user to select the category and isolating the code for those holidays and encapsulating them in an "If Then" statement

If there is a demand I don't mind doing the work, but without feedback I have no idea what the demand is.

 

[sour_grapes]

Well, again, I said I now understood your reasoning, and was merely explaining why I suggested the holidays that I did. I withdrew the suggestion in my second post.