{"id":923,"date":"2014-11-10T04:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T04:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thebottlefarm.com\/ProjetsThoughts2\/?p=923"},"modified":"2014-11-09T21:34:09","modified_gmt":"2014-11-09T21:34:09","slug":"using-beersmith-to-make-labels-and-custom-brewing-sheets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/using-beersmith-to-make-labels-and-custom-brewing-sheets\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Beersmith to Make labels and custom brewing sheets"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a tech geek this is not a surprise to any of you, recently I decided I wanted to take advantage of BeerSmith<\/a>*\u00a0to automate some repetitive tasks. Not that it hasn\u2019t been helpful for designing recipes, logging my brewing, etc. However, I\u2019ve been hand writing out brew day todo lists since I started brewing. At first just it was a list of things to get and high level instructions. But it\u2019s evolved into a\u00a0detailed process for ever step, with timings and measurements. I\u2019d also take notes on the sheets and plug it back into beersmith. Eventually I\u2019d use those notes to write up brewing logs<\/a>. Before the next brew day, I\u2019d recycle the last plan for the next next batch. It\u2019s has been effective at evolving my process, but it\u2019s also time consuming manual process. I decided I wanted to automate it.<\/p>\n

\"IMG<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known that beersmith<\/a>* supports creating custom reports, but have been a little intimidated to take the leap. I\u2019m a little ashamed how long it has taken me to make my own brewing process, knowing now how easy it is. It\u2019s much less daunting than it appears. I think it\u2019s worth while to write up some tips and steps I used to make things simpler. Armed with the right info, and tactical approach it\u2019s easy.<\/p>\n

The starting point beersmiths\u2019 documentation of custom reports<\/a>\u00a0(It\u2019s a little light on details or examples):<\/p>\n

Here are the high level steps to creating a custom report.
\n1. Create .txt or .html report files using the Beermsmith tags or Beerxml tags.**
\n2. Save the file in Documents\/BeerSmith2\/Reports
\n3. Open Preferences -> Custom Reports -> add your new report<\/p>\n

**The trick is knowing what tags to use, and values represent. The best way to do that is to see them in action. Thankfully user\u00a0tom_hampton on the beersmith user forum created a custom report with all the available tags, you can find that here<\/a>.
\n\"Screen<\/p>\n

Here are some limitations I found:
\nThe formatting of ingredients (grains, hops, and yeasts), mash and sparge steps, which cannot be controlled. You can however create a css that formats the table they are in.
\nThere are also some values that aren\u2019t available individually, like Yeast, strike water temp, or mash step temp.<\/p>\n

Printing the bottle labels is also tricky, in the mac version, you need to save the report, and print it from your browser in landscape, as there is no option for that within Beersmith.<\/p>\n

In creating reports I found it easiest to use an existing report as a starting point, and modify it to your liking.<\/p>\n

One other tip is that after you add your custom report to beermsith, you can edit it on the fly. Beersmith will pick up the changes when reloading the report with new data (change recipe \/ report).<\/p>\n

After I got started on this project I found all sorts of different custom reports on the beersmith forum<\/a>. I started with my brewing process, and creating recipe html for my blog, and continued on to making\u00a0a label and a tap handle template. Last but not least I created a keg and carboy tag. I just couldn\u2019t help but make them once I got started.I\u2019m sure there are other uses, \u00a0Here are the few that I\u2019ve come up with, and where appropriate I have linked to the original post. The directly linked reports are my own, but anyone is free to use them.<\/p>\n

Brewing process –\u00a0Report<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Example<\/a><\/p>\n

Exporting recipes for your blog –\u00a0Report<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Example<\/a><\/p>\n

Carboy or Keg tags –\u00a0Report<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Example<\/a><\/p>\n

Bottle labels – Source Post<\/a>\u00a0– Example
\n<\/a>To print these you need to save the report, and open your browser and print them landscape.<\/p>\n

Tap Handle labels –\u00a0Source Post<\/a>\u00a0–\u00a0Example<\/a><\/p>\n

*-\u00a0\u00a0(affiliate beersmith link I wouldn\u2019t be linking or writing about it if I wasn\u2019t happy with the product)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a tech geek this is not a surprise to any of you, recently I decided I wanted to take advantage of BeerSmith* to automate some repetitive tasks. Not that it hasn\u2019t been helpful for designing recipes, logging my brewing, etc. However, I\u2019ve been hand writing out brew day todo lists since I started brewing. At first just it was a list of things to get and high level instructions. But it\u2019s evolved into a detailed process for ever step, with timings and measurements. I\u2019d also take notes on the sheets and plug it back into beersmith. Eventually I\u2019d use those notes to write up brewing logs. Before the next brew day, I\u2019d recycle the last plan for the next next batch. It\u2019s has been effective at evolving my process, but it\u2019s also time consuming manual process. I decided I wanted to automate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[130,151,150,132,152,149],"class_list":["post-923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-projects-and-thoughts","tag-beersmith","tag-beerxml","tag-custom-reports","tag-how-to","tag-labels","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebottlefarm.com\/wpbottle\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}