Easter Beer and Brewgr Updates

Good morning. Happy Easter! If you celebrate, hope everyone has a day filled with family and friends, and hopefully some great beer.

P.S. If you have not been receiving our weekly emails, check out this link to catchup on the past few weeks. We had an issue with our domain that we have now fixed, so you should be seeing us every Sunday again. Cheers to problem solving.

-Brandon Copeland

Updates Coming To Brewgr In 2024

Back in January, we hired a developer to start the long and arduous process of upgrading Brewgr from the outdated software it was built on that is no longer supported, to the most recent up to date version (.NET 8). This is the first step in a long list of improvements we have in store for the site - we need a solid foundation to build on.

We are hoping to launch the updated version of the site in the next couple months. This will maintain the same functionality that we currently have, it will just likely come with improvements in site speed and performance.

Once we have upgraded the site, we will work on rolling out the first paid tier that currently has the working title “Incognito”. This tier will include everything that is currently available for free and also the following two features:

1. Private Recipes

The ability to create private recipes that will only be viewable by the owner of the recipe is most popular feature that has been requested by members of the site. Whether you are angling to win a homebrew competition, or are trying to hone in on the brews that will be the flagships of your future brewery, there are plenty of reasons homebrewers want their recipes to be private.

The value of Brewgr currently is twofold: the user-friendly homebrew recipe builder and the 94,000 recipes that exist in our library that are available for inspiration or to be cloned and used as the starting point for a new recipe. We understand this completely; giving everyone the option to set their recipes to private would lessen the value that is gained by the rest of the community.

However, we understand how valuable it is in some cases to keep your recipes private, so we are excited to be able to offer this functionality as a feature in our first paid membership tier.

2. Water Chemistry

The Homebrew Recipe Builder is the best tool that Brewgr has to offer. It’s simple to use and you can create/customize amazing all grain or extract recipes in minutes. However, it does have it’s pitfalls, and one of them is the lack of water chemistry information.

There is a section called “Other Stuff” that gives you the ability to add other ingredients, including brewing salts for water chemistry, but it’s not straightforward. You can show how much you will add to the recipe, but there is nowhere to add the target water profile that you are aiming for.

As a part of the Incognito membership tier, we will add a section to the recipe builder where you can set the target water profile you want to achieve for your brew, as well as the brewing salts you need to add to achieve this. You will also be able to add your source water chemistry profile to your account, which will be referenced in every recipe.

This will give more advanced brewers a much better way to keep track of their water chemistry to have more reliable results every brew day.

How Much Will This Cost?

The Incognito membership will be available on a monthly or yearly basis, with a 33% discount if you sign up yearly. The initial pricing will be $1.50 per month for the monthly plan and $12 a year for the yearly plan. We will likely roll this tier out sometime mid summer.

Maintaining and adding features to the site is expensive, so paid tiers are the best way that we can continue adding great features to the site to make it more valuable to our members. However, we will always maintain a free version of the site that has everything you need to make great beer.

Thank you for all of the continued support - our mission is to make homebrewing accessible to everyone and for homebrewers to have user friendly tools that allow them to make great beer. Let us know any feedback you have in the poll below, or share any future updates you’d like to see!

Beer Trivia Question

🍺 What was the origin of Easter Beer?

Read to the end to find out if you're right!

Brewgr Recipe of the Week

Our Daily Bread

This one felt oddly fitting for Easter - “give us this day our daily bread”. This recipe is heavily dependent on Pilsner grain and Saaz hops, followed by Belgian Ale yeast to round out this Trappist Single. Could potentially fall under the category of an Easter beer?

Credit: Brewer 138022

Homebrew Equipment Highlight

KegLand pH Meter

Speaking of water chemistry, this KegLand pH Meter is the perfect tool to have in your home brewery to ensure that your strike water and mash have the correct water chemistry. This digital pH tester takes the guesswork out of trying to determine what color is actually showing on your pH strips - it will give you a digital indication in seconds from 0 - 14.

Using this information, you can make informed brewing salt additions to bring your pH back to spec to make sure you brew great beer every time.

And the Answer Is...

🍺 Easter beer was created in the Middle Ages for the fast during Lent. Pope Pius V declared that “liquids do not violate the fast”, so monks would be prepare strong, full bodied beers that were thicker and more nourishing that regular beer to ease their struggle during fasting.