Brew sessions

A brew session is one attempt at a recipe. It holds the checklist you work through on the day and the readings you take afterwards, and it keeps a record of what really happened as opposed to what you planned.

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Starting one

Press Brew on any recipe. Brewgravity immediately: One recipe can have as many sessions as you like. Brewing the same beer four times gives you four sessions to compare, and editing the recipe afterwards does not rewrite any of them — each holds its own snapshot of what it brewed. The session header shows which version it was brewed from. To brew an earlier version again exactly as it was, open the recipe’s History tab and press the flask icon on that version. The live recipe is left alone.

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The Brew Day tab

The checklist is generated from the recipe the session is pinned to: Steps that the recipe does not call for never appear. A recipe with no dry hops gets no dry hop step; an extract recipe gets no mash at all; and a full-volume mash gets Drain the mash instead of Sparge, because there is no sparge to do. Every step opens with the numbers for that step, computed live from the pinned recipe — the strike temperature and volume, the hops in that addition, the pre-boil target. Rename a step and it keeps them. Steps are still a starting point, not a contract: add, edit, and delete them to match how you brew. Rebuild from recipe, in the checklist’s ⋯ menu, throws the list away and generates it again — useful if you corrected the recipe’s mash type after starting the session. It replaces every step, including ones you added or ticked off. What it rebuilds from depends on how far along the session is. While the session is still planning it has brewed nothing, so the rebuild re-reads the recipe as it stands now and re-pins the session to it. Once you have pressed Start Brew Day, the pinned version is the record of what you are brewing and does not move: the rebuild follows that pinned recipe, not later edits. To brew a corrected recipe, start a fresh session from it.

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Mash type

The Mash type on the recipe decides what the mash steps say and what the strike temperature comes out at: Set it, along with the mash thickness and your grain temperature, in the recipe editor’s Mash section. Every water number in the app — the recipe panel, the brew day steps, the reference panel, what the assistant tells you — comes from that one setting.

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Step timers

Every step can carry its own countdown, started and stopped on the step itself. The generated checklist puts one wherever the recipe implies a duration — each mash rest gets its rest time, flame out gets the boil length, a whirlpool gets its steep — and Add timer puts one on any other step. Click the readout to change the duration or remove it. A step timer is separate from the brew day clock. The clock at the top of a session measures the whole day, from the first step you ticked off; a step timer measures one rest. Starting, pausing or resetting a step timer does not touch the clock, and ticking a step off does not touch its timer. Timers are stored on the step, not held in the page, so one keeps running through a reload, a switch to the Fermentation tab, a walk to another screen, and the phone locking in your pocket. A sixty-minute mash does not care whether the app is open, so neither does its timer: come back after an hour and it says Done, not fifty-nine minutes remaining. When one finishes it chimes, turns green and pulses, and the countdown is mirrored next to the brew day clock so you can read it without scrolling to the step that owns it. If you granted notification permission, a finished timer also raises a system notification when the tab is in the background.

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Tracking progress

Tick steps off as you complete them; Brewgravity records when each one was done, and shows how long it was since the previous step — so how long did it take me to reach a boil is answered by the ticks you were making anyway. The recorded time is editable. A step gets ticked off when you get back to your phone, not when it actually finished, so correct it to what really happened.

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Notes

Two places to write things down, both saved as you type:

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The reference panel

Brew day is mostly reading the recipe you are brewing. Recipe & notes opens a panel beside the checklist holding the pinned recipe — targets, the water plan, the grain bill, the hop schedule, the mash schedule — and the brew day scratchpad, on its second tab. It shares its space with the assistant, so the two take turns: opening BrewAgent puts the panel away, and opening the panel closes BrewAgent. On a phone it is a sheet rather than a column.

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Working through the day

Until you press Start Brew Day, the checklist is dimmed and inert — a session in planning is for editing, not ticking. Pressing it moves the session to brewing and wakes the checklist up. When you are ready to pitch, the Ready to ferment? panel at the bottom of the tab takes your measured OG in SG, Plato, or Brix. Entering it and pressing Start Fermentation:

• moves the session to fermenting,
• stamps the moment fermentation started,
• and drops your OG onto the fermentation chart as a labelled point.

Later, on the Fermentation tab, entering your final gravity and pressing Complete does the mirror image: status complete, a completion timestamp, and the FG pinned to the end of the curve.

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What the session records

Once both gravities are in, the session summary shows measured ABV, apparent attenuation, and how many days fermentation actually took.

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Status at a glance

Status sorts your session list and tells you at a glance which beers are currently working.

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Next

Once the yeast is in, the Fermentation tab is where the session spends the next two weeks.