Brewing Calendar to plan brew sessions/bulk buying

I think it would be a wonderful feature to have a Brewing Calendar feature where I could say I'm brewing this recipe on that date, and then it would add those ingredients to my "inventory needed" section, or something like that. It wouldn't necessarily need to be added to the shopping list automatically because I might not want to buy the entire year's worth of ingredients just yet, but I would want to be able to see all of the ingredients I need to buy for "planned" brew sessions so I could buy/plan accordingly. This would not only help for planning out brew sessions (causing me to brew more often because it's on the calendar), but also allow for bulk buying of product.

For example: If I planned to brew 2x month, that would be 24 brew sessions in the year (maybe a bit ambitious, but go with me here). I could then look at various brewing competitions, plan which beers to brew when (for example, timing a dry-hopped IPA to be available right before a competition for maximum freshness), and then look at how many pounds of what grain I need to buy, etc. I could then buy in bulk and save money and time not going to the LHBS before every single brew day just to pick up 0.40 lbs of Crystal 60 or whatever. I could go buy for the entire month, quarter, or year. If the calendar could integrate with Google Calendar or publish an ical feed, it would be a dream come true.

This calendar planning/bulk buying feature would be an invaluable feature and would save homebrewers a ton of money, time, and headache. Anyone else want this?

I totally agree with the Google Calendar integration as I have to rekey my key dates from Brewsmith to Google.  Hopefully they will add that to their list.

Here is how I have addressed your Brewing Calendar Feature suggestion:
1 - copy desired recipe to my brewlog folder
2 - change the date of that recipe to my anticipated brew date.  This places the key milestone dates on your calendar
3 - go in to my next couple of future recipes and use the Add to Cart feature to add all ingredients to my shopping cart
4 - go in to the shopping cart and adjust based on what I already have in inventory or any extras I may want to get
5 - print the shopping cart list
6 - purchase items on list
7 - once I have items, go back in to shopping cart and use the Add to Inventory feature to bulk add those items

Cheers

garybrownnc said:

I totally agree with the Google Calendar integration as I have to rekey my key dates from Brewsmith to Google.  Hopefully they will add that to their list.

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Gary, thank you for sharing your process. Your solution sounds like a workable solution for the time being. I do hope that Beersmith gives us these features in the software. I would be interested to see who else replies to this post as being interested in these features.

Sorry to be late to this thread but I must say Google Calendar integration would be an awesome feature...

It's good to hear that others agree. Hopefully we can get a response from Brad on this to see if there are any plans to integrate Google Calendar.

I like the idea of syncing with Google calendar as well. Text alerts could be useful if not the calendar.