Recipator and Brews And Views

Greetings, Beerlings! Take me to your lager…

Getting a lot of questions and concerns related to the Recipator and the Brews And Views Bulletin Board.

Rest assured: BOTH will return.

The Recipator, written by Mark Riley circa 1998 or so is a suite of compiled c programs. Mark is incommunicado, but I did locate a cache of his source files from various instantiations of his great program. My c experience was about 30 years ago, but I think I can muddle my way through modifying the source code and compiling the suite for its new home without having to go back to school. It should be back with all of its data and in all its former glory shortly. I would like to give you a better ETA than “shortly”, but see that stuff about how long it’s been since I even looked at c…

Brews And Views is another story. The old Discus platform is WAY out of date – so much so that I have been unable to port the old system to the new vBulletin system without really screwing up the vBulletin. Therefore, the new Brews And Views will require its user to join as new users when it comes on line. As for the discus Brews And Views system, I am working out just how to bring its archives online on the new server. I hope to do this without having to port the discus mess onto the new box, but that may be an option. The new vBulletin Brews And Views system should be up shortly – though there will likely be bazillions of tweaks and enhancements made after it goes online.

So fret not, Beerlings! Everything but the mailing list will be back here before too much longer.

Oh: and if you had a club, a “preserve” site, or a mailing list on the old box, be sure to contact me to have them reinstated or to get access to those already back online.

Cheers!

The Home Brew Digest Janitorial Staff
janitor at hbd dot org

24 thoughts on “Recipator and Brews And Views”

  1. Thank you for doing this. I have been away from homebrewing for about 6 years but plan on returning. When I started over 20 years ago, B & V was my go-to site for information. Looking forward to the “new” site.

  3. P.S.

    I hope my “spent grains in a pillow case” suggestion has generated a good income source from the local health food store! There are folks who will believe in anything.

  6. Thanks Pat. Good news. And good luck with the conversion. The archives are a real gold mine!

  8. Thank you Pat for doing this great work. No matter how many brewing programs I try, I always find myself going back to the Recipator, it is simply the best combination of simplicity, intuitiveness and accuracy out there. I miss it!

  9. Thanks Pat. Almost every recipe I’ve done in 18 years of brewing is archived in the Recipator. Every time it’d go down, I’d fret for fear of loss but it seemed to always return. And while I did take the time and print most of my stuff off, I look forward to using the Recipator again.

    Cheers and thanks for your labor of love.

  10. I’ve been brewing for 16 years now, 15 of them all-grain, and the Recipator has been integral to all but those first few kit and extract brews. I’ve tried various programs, and the Recipator always brings me back with sheer ease of use, compatibility with even the most humble of old laptops, and accuracy of results.

    If you need a hand with any of that old C code, drop me an email.

  11. I will say I have used Mark’s program for years and it worked well. Thanks so much looking forward to the new site. Thank You

    1. Unfortunately, my lovely bride took ill and was in hospital for a week, the main something went awry with the main HBD site, income tax time, etc. In short, I’ve had precious little time to work on it. It does appear that the issue is more one of direct linking within the html pages than the c programs, though. I think I’ve got the c part behind me – now just a tedious matter of going through all the calling pages to ensure the links are corrected… (Sorry!)

      1. Pat, hope your wife is on the mend. Home life always comes first. Cheers to you and thanks again for taking this on. I’ve been using BeerSmith in the interim, but I REALLY miss the recipator. I’ve got 15+ years of recipes archived there in and can’t wait to regain access to them! If there’s anything we users can do (donations?), just ask.

        Thanks and cheers!
        Chris

        1. Kim is pretty much back in fighting trim, thank you! Though donations are always appreciated (and tax deductible), the biggest impediment is simply time. I PROMISE to sequester myself with the Recipator site one evening this week.

          1. Good to hear Pat. Donation sent (be it a small one).

          2. Hi Pat. I don’t want to pester you, and I do hope all’s well on the home front, that’s always the first priority for all. It’s just that it’s been a couple of months now since I saw a posted update and was wondering if there’s any news.

  13. Brews and Views is back online; however, you need to create a new UID and the old posts are lost until I create an archive of sorts from the old software.

    Recipator progress has been the subject of several site posts since this one. All updates and info requests are under those posts 🙂

  14. What is going on with bringing beer recipator back? It has been a year now , I would love to be able to create or edit recipes again. Luckily I can still see all my old ones that I had saved. Please don’t keep us waiting much longer.

    1. Yup. It’s been a year. Working my butt off trying not to go personally bankrupt, while supporting this 501(c)3 effort without any donations coming in. It’s been a year. I would love to have this behind me, too, but it is a one man show, and I have more important things to focus on, unfortunately or otherwise.

      Sorry if this seems harsh, but it is the reality of the situation.

    1. The Recipator has been restored only to the point of letting folks gather their old recipes. The formulation engine is still fubar.

      Nick is working to port the system away from C to something a bit more manageable for mere mortals – like Python, for instance – but we all have jobs outside of this that take precedence over it.

  17. I would dearly love to see the Recipator in operation again. Thank you.

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