Stock and shopping list

The Stock tab keeps track of what you have on hand. It’s optional: if you never add stock, nothing in the app depends on it.

Adding stock

Tap Add stock (on the Stock tab or Home), search for the ingredient, and enter how much you have. Add more of the same thing later and the amount goes up.

Where it’s kept

Any stock line can say where it’s kept, such as “Bucket 2” or “Freezer”. When you add or edit a line, pick a location from the list or choose New location…. A location with nothing left in it disappears by itself. Locations on the Stock tab shows what’s kept where, and the location also shows wherever the app lists that ingredient for a brew, so you know where to look on the day. Locations stay on this phone: they aren’t sent to the website.

Substitutes

Some ingredients are close enough to swap without changing the beer: another maltster’s Vienna malt, say, or the same yeast strain from a different lab. The club keeps a list of these groups, and the app counts any of them as stock for a recipe. Gladfield Vienna in stock covers a recipe’s Weyermann Vienna.

Hops never count as each other. A different hop makes a different beer, so a swap there is a new recipe.

When a brew starts and stock is short of something a substitute could cover, the app asks, one ingredient at a time: tap Use on the substitute you want (the one marked Suggested covers the most), or Skip to brew without one. It uses just enough to cover what’s short.

Until you Start Mash, the Substitutes card in Preparation shows each swap and how much. Tap one to choose a different substitute, change how much you’ll use, or skip it. Start Mash then takes exactly that out of stock, and the brew records what really went in (for example “Gladfield Vienna Malt 1 kg for Weyermann Vienna Malt”), in its notes and its numbers, so Compare brews shows the swap too. The recipe itself stays as it is.

Other close ingredients are only suggested (“You have …”); they’re never counted for you.

Can I brew it from stock?

On My Recipes, each recipe shows a grain, a hop and a yeast icon:

• Coloured: you have all of that in stock. Substitutes count.
• Grey: something’s short. Press and hold the icon to see what.
• No icon: the recipe doesn’t use that ingredient.

The ⓘ at the top of My Recipes explains the icons too. They only show once you keep stock.

Brewing takes it out

When you Start Mash on brew day, or record a brew with Brewed, the app first shows Take these out of stock?: each ingredient, how much comes out and what’s left. Take out takes them all in one step; Not now leaves stock alone. Yeast is counted in packs. If you’d rather not be asked, turn off Ask before taking ingredients out in Settings → Stock and shopping list.

Putting it back

Right after brewing, the message has Undo. Later, open the brew (from the fermentation log or the recipe’s brew history) and use ⋮ → Put ingredients back. Deleting or discarding a brew offers it too.

Running low

Each type of ingredient has a running-low level (Settings → Stock and shopping list); any item can have its own. When something drops to its level it shows on Home under Needs you and in Stock, and can go on your shopping list automatically (Add low stock to shopping list, same place). The alert itself is Inventory alerts in Settings → Notifications.

Shopping list

The list is on the Stock tab. Add to it by hand, from running-low items, or from a recipe’s stock card (Add shortfall to shopping list). Saving a recipe doesn’t change the list: if the recipe is short of something, the message offers Add to shopping list. Once a recipe’s items are on the list, they follow the recipe’s amounts when you save it.

When you buy something, tick it and it goes into stock.

Equipment and anything else that isn’t an ingredient (a new hydrometer, sanitiser) can go on the list too: Add item → Equipment & other, no amount needed. Ticking it off just clears it; it never goes into stock. ⋮ → Remove a recipe’s items takes one recipe’s lines off, and ⋮ → Share shopping list sends the list to someone else.

On the website too

While you’re signed in, your stock and shopping list stay in step with your account on valleybrewer.nz, so you can check them on a computer. Changes made with no signal wait on the phone and are sent when you’re back online.