One of my Brew Year Resolutions is to improve my note taking, and preferably use paper for taking those notes. Up until now I’ve been using BeerAlchemy for all my note taking and while it’s been working out fine, it’s had a few issues. From a users perspective, I have had the software completely wipe some fairly thorough notes on me by entering cmd+Z. It’s also difficult to quickly go over recipe notes because of how the software organizes things.
Another issue I have is that I’m leaving my laptop lying around in my kitchen while working with hot and often sticky liquids, which computers aren’t a huge fan of. A few brew days ago we had a near accident when some wort from our vorlauf splashed out of the mash tun onto various surfaces, include a laptop.
Another issue I’ve had is remembering what things need to happen during the brew day. To help I put together a checklist somewhat catered to my workflow during the brew day. It’s not exactly ordered, but it is roughly procedural in regards to what I do during the day.
I decided to take an hour or two to put together two sheets, a reusable (via clear plastic page protector) brew day checklist and a batch details sheet. The batch and brew day checklists don’t stand on their own though; I still use BeerAlchemy to do all my calculations (SRM, Mash, Sparge, etc.) and simply copy the information into the requisite locations.
These were put together using the Pages app for Mac OSX, so if you are a Mac user you can grab the pages files and modify them to suit your brewing needs. If you are on another platform, or don’t need to make changes you can download the PDF files instead.
Brew Day Checklist and Batch Details by Christopher Saunders are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Famous Last Worts 
Thanks for this Chris! I too use software (Beersmith) and to avoid laptop catastrophes, I usually print out a summary of my brew steps for handy reference. The reusable plastic page protectors are a great idea that I think I use for my next brew day.
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The brew sheets from beer smith are pretty rad, but I’ve had a near impossible time understanding the software and making it useful. Beer Alchemy provides sheets too, and I think I could print them. Writing things down by hand makes it a more active thing for myself.
Thanks for sharing!
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250 mL is too much for rehydrating yeast IMO. 100 mL @ 100*F is recommended by Yeast book IIRC.
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Also 1 tablespoon of yeast nutrient seems excessive. Though I suppose I usually measure in grams. I do 2 g of DAP per 5 gallons.
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I never really looked it up and have these two mason jars of yeast nutrient so I figured to add that amount. Thanks for the suggestion.
As for the rehydration, another good thing to know. There’s a bunch of reasons why people hydrate their yeast, but mine is pretty simple: to make it easier to pour into the carboy. Aside from dilution, what’s the issue with adding 250ml of water?
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As I recall it’s 10 mL water per 1 g yeast.
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For comparison sake, here is mine: https://ericbrews.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/erics-brew-day-notebook-template-3-0.pdf
I preferred to have it all fit on one page, so I condensed it down.
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I guess I sort of wanted mine to look like a D&D character sheet, with all the stats easy to find and it fairly straightforward to fill out. Yours is definitely condensed and I can see the appeal 🙂
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Cool sheet. I’ll have to keep it in mind when I add import/export of brew days to my mash calculator.
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