Schedule Managing Wines

[Dridas]

I started (back) in this hobby or obsession back in April, and have found myself with several different wines in different stages of fermentation, stabilizing, aging, and everything in between. To that end, I started looking for ways to improve my time management. I currently have 7 different wines in various processes. I was using an excel spreadsheet for tracking SG, Brix, temp, etc.

Has anybody used any Project Management software for their Winery Management? I started tinkering with ClickUp today - free for life plan, and it seems very promising. I've added the Lists, Tasks, and customized dates - Start, Est Completion, and various statuses like Planning/Started/Done/Delayed/Complete/Etc. I really like it, but wanted to see if their were any other suggestions. I like ClickUp, and the Gannt Charts, but think it might be a little overpowered albeit scalable.

I was originally looking for an open-source, self-hosted option, but the one I found was still too young in development. The thing I dislike about ClickUp is that I can't attach a custom subdomain to the provided url.

 

[winemaker81]

I'm an IT project manager and am all-too-familiar with a variety of scheduling programs. The ones I've used are overkill and over-priced for a winemaking project, so I can't make a recommendation.

Have you considered PM templates for Excel or for MS Access? It's self-hosted and there are a lot of free choices. I'd go with MS Access as a DB allows greater flexibility, but among my professional hats is DB designer, so it's not surprising I'd lean towards Access.

 

[Dridas]

I'm an IT project manager and am all-too-familiar with a variety of scheduling programs. The ones I've used are overkill and over-priced for a winemaking project, so I can't make a recommendation.

Have you considered PM templates for Excel or for MS Access? It's self-hosted and there are a lot of free choices. I'd go with MS Access as a DB allows greater flexibility, but among my professional hats is DB designer, so it's not surprising I'd lean towards Access.

Have to agree that even ClickUp is overkill, however the free for life version, and it's scalability make it worthwhile for me. I have mostly Apple products, and I've done DB design in the past with Access, just not sure I want to go that route. With ClickUp, I'm able to hide or add columns in the list view, and quickly add "Estimated Date" to the various wine tasks. So, when I open up my calendar app, it shows the status of the various wines, and also the date for any 'rackings' or 'est date'. Moreover, with the kit wines, I've scanned in the directions, and attached them to that Wine's "Space".

Overall, and after tinkering a bit more, I'm quite pleased with ClickUp. I even added a template, so when I need to add a new wine, I just add the Template, rename the wine, fill in the OG, Est. ABV, FG, even wine description, etc. It's actually quite the useful tool, and allowed me to get move from an Excel document to an online location. I'm going to play a little more today, and see if I can get it to calculate the ABV from the OG/FG. There's a lot of cool features that ClickUp brings to the management of my wines.

 

[winemaker81]

I maintain my notes on a ClassicPress site (see my sig) and haven't had a need for scheduling software. During fermentation, I'm in the cellar at least once a day, and after fermentation? Clearing is roughly 2 weeks, after that I top barrels monthly and add K-meta to carboys quarterly, and all dates are approximate. When I feel the need, I put a task on my calendar.

Keep in mind that I've been making wine a rather long time, so most activities occur without me thinking much about them. It's useful for me to see how a new winemaker gets himself organized.

I have an Access DB I'm playing with, adding to it as things occur to me. One thing I have yet to figure out is calculating ABV. In most situations there is an OG and FG, so the calculation is more a matter of figuring out which formula to use (there are at least 6 that I know of). The problem is when a situation is not typical, e.g., step feeding.

Let's say a wine starts at 1.100 and ferments down to 1.000, then is step fed back to 1.010. Repeat this twice, and the wine eventually ferments dry at 0.995. I can figure it out, adding up the steps and coming up with a final adjusted OG, and plug that into the equation. Getting a computer to do it is a bit tougher, as a data structure needs to be figured out. [I just got an idea for solving the problem, I'll have to see if it works as expected.]