Better support for extract and kit brews

[lukebond]

Malt.io is heavily geared towards mash brewing. As a relative newb starting out I'm doing kit and extract brews for now, but it would be nice to be able to use Malt.io to store my recipes and log my brew days.

I'm a developer so I can contribute if you think it's a worthwhile feature.

[danielgtaylor]

@lukebond, extract ingredients are supported, and the brew timeline supports extract and partial mash recipes. How do you envision your changes working exactly? What exactly are you missing?

I just brewed this extract kit myself: http://www.malt.io/users/danielgtaylor/recipes/nelson-ipa

[lukebond]

Thanks for getting back to me.

It's not so much that you can't enter extract ingredients, I've done that myself for example (http://www.malt.io/users/luke.n.bond/recipes/american-style-pale-ale). I guess it's the "Brew Timeline" that shows a mashing section even when you're not doing any mashing.

[danielgtaylor]

@lukebond whoops, Malt.io doesn't recognize that ingredient as an extract because it doesn't match any of the known regular expressions. Just rename it like this:

Muntons Gold Continental Pilsner Kit (extract)

That forces the ingredient to be considered an extract. For items that aren't extracts but you want them in the boil, you can use boil instead, and it also works with mash if you wanted to force something into the mash / partial mash.

http://www.malt.io/users/danielgtaylor/recipes/american-style-pale-ale

Unfortunately these tricks aren't obvious... not sure how to make them so.

[lukebond]

@danielgtaylor thanks very much. That works.

Perhaps a "type" column for fermentable sugars could be a solution, with a drop-down instead of free-form text allowing you to choose whether it's grain or extract.

Similarly, a drop-down would be useful for the "Use" and "Form" columns in the hops section, as well as the "Type" and "Form" columns in the yeast section, especially if particular values are looked for in other parts of the system.

Anyway, thanks again for getting back to me and keep up the good work.