Homebrewer/Winemaker/Developer

I haven’t been working on the beer recipe catalog lately. For that I apologize. But I have not been sitting idly by, that I can promise!

I have been working on functionality to allow you guys to add your own Home Brew Supply Shop or the one you use! If you know of a brewery we missed, let us know! I’m also working on expanding the site to include home brewing clubs and wine making clubs! What better way to enjoy a hobby than with those who enjoy it too!

I am nearly complete with the revisions and they should be launched within the next week or so! This is great because it should act as a nice launching pad into the home brew beer recipe database!

It’s coming!!! I promise!!

I love brewing beer and I love tools to help me brew better beer. What I HATE is paying money for some of these tools! If you’re like me, you spend enough of your hard earned money on the tools for the trade… burner, boil pot, parts for a cheap and easy mash tun, and other homebrewing equipment, that you just don’t want to spend $20 more on a tool to store your recipes.

If you are still reading, I am sure you feel the same, so FREE IT SHALL BE!

As stated in another blog post, you can read about the current specifications here for the online beer recipe management system. The plan is to get some sort of beta version available on the site.

Possible Development Stalls:

Real Job – I’m Owner/Partner/Lead developer at Foremost Media – so work may get in the way.

Work On Other Sites – what stemmed this idea was the current work my business partner and I do for hunting – his passion

• Foremost Hunting – a directory for the hunting sportsman. (Much of the same technology and community that is aimed for this site)
• GameBirdHunts.com – the site that started it all. A portal aimed at the upland bird hunters out there.

Real Life – my wife is pregnant with our first, and real life issues should always take a precedence

Currently I am in “alpha” stage, where a user can create a recipe and calculate SRM, ABV, ABW, Potential OG and FG, IBU and other good stuff. Be sure to check out the homebrewing glossary page to know what these terms mean.

It’s in alpha because I have not converted that to be able to work with this website. I plan to take on that challenge within the next week or two.

ForemostBrewing.com was started around July of 2008. And while it is now October 17, 2008 and the site is slowly starting to take shape, I would say that we are about half way through our “rest” for mashing. I’ve got the grain bill (the ideas) all calculated, heated up my mash water and have set the ideas to mashing.

While working on the site tonight – I began to take note that the only way for you, the visitor of Foremost Brewing, to understand progress is taking place is to see some kind of progress. Like watching the wort in your carboy ferment like crazy.

I’ve got many aspirations for this site, greatest in my opinion is the free online recipe repository I’ve outlined here. While I am building this from scratch – it’s easy for me to state that the project is “in active development” – but without seeing anything new, the users of this site will fail to see progress. So I am starting this blog and will post regularly my progress on this site.

For those of you simply interested in the progress of the beer recipe repository, I’ve created a child blog that you can subscribe to in order to track my progress. My plan is to have a farily stable beta version ready for release on the website for the registered users to use. And I want to know your feedback. Let’s brew this community together!

I have also got some great motivation to really get moving on this site in the next few months. My lovely wife of 3 years is pregnant with our first child. While not due until mid April, it gives me a great (and hopefully realistic) goal to get this site well on it’s way.

A little background on me:

I have been home brewing for a little over 2 years now. It wasn’t until I went to a buddy’s bachelor party and he served us some of his home brew. I had a swig and asked “And you made this yourself?” I was amazed, I never thought about making your own beer.

Well that was it, I was bound and determinded to brew my own. My first was an extract kit called “Badger Amber Ale.” Well, the finished product was “pretty flat… but pretty good.” I was determined to do better!

Besides wearing my homebrew cape on occasional weekends, I am an ASP.Net developer. My business partner and I have done a couple hunting websites for ourselves on the side. He’s a hunting nut, and I’m a programmer. If you’re a hunter you should check them out: http://www.foremosthunting.com and http://www.gamebirdhunts.com.

Over the last 2 years, I have really began to thirst for more brewing knowledge. And in my search for various brewing information (shops, clubs, etc) I found some of the information quite hard to find. And finding a decent recipe calculator for free was impossible. Everyone seems to want your money!

So it seems this was my calling. What better way for me to increase my brewing knowledge and get a sense of giving than by bringing that knowledge onto my fellow homebrewers… and give it to them for free (As in beer!).

There you have it in a nutshell, where we are, why we’re here, and kinda where we’re heading. As with brewing good beer, it takes time and attention to detail. So we have begun our “brewing” session together. But as with making your own beer, you like to see progress… just like watching that wort ferment so crazy in your carboy you think the bung is going to shoot out! Exciting!

Articls are posted here – by Imar Spaanjaars

For Sorting:

1. Create an overload of GetList that accepts the SortExpression as a String.

2. Change the ODS declaration so it contains a parameter for this new sortExpression:

[SelectParameters]
[asp:Parameter Name=”sortExpression” Type=”String” /]
[/SelectParameters]

3. Set the SortParameterName attribute of the ODS:

SortParameterName=”sortExpression”

4. Enable sorting on the GridView.

Life just isn’t complete without a dog! This statement is more true than most of you will probably believe. In Early March, Krista and I set out to find ourselves a new dog.

Our original intentions were of grabbing up a Lab of some sort. We went to the Rock County Humane Society to interact with a few. Well, labs are known for their energy and willingness to run, and it showed. We took two different dogs out to play in the fenced in yard and both were more interested in running around and had no interest in us what so ever. Not what you want, a dog to take outside in the country and watch him run away like in Funny Farm with Chevy Chase. (I recommend this film!)

At anyrate, Krista wanted to take out this little female Pit Bull mix. With original hesitation I said OK. She was adorable, and I couldn’t help but only say “We’ll take her!” So Racha (as in “La cuca racha”) has become a member of our family.

I know a lot of you are saying “A PIT BULL!?!?! DON’T YOU WANT TO HAVE KIDS SOME DAY??” And my only reply is, bad dogs are bad dogs. Every dog is that, a DOG first. Bad Pit Bulls come from bad owners!

We had Easter with our entire family at our new house. We had 11 children there all under the age of 10. There were 3 babies uner 8 months of age!! Racha was the most calm, gentle, and loving dog. No jumping on the guest and VERY gentle around the babies. Not bad for a puppy around 6 months!!!

Well, Krista won our “bowling bet” of getting 6 strikes in a game – so I owed her a dog! (We made the bet about 2 months before we got Racha, and kept the bet alive. I didn’t think she’d get 6 strikes).

That being said, we check out many dogs between the Dane County Humane society and the Green County Humane Society. While all have wonderful dogs, we ended up going with a handsome 4 – 5 month old Border Collie!. He is also very gently, and unlike most of the dogs, wasn’t overly pushy when it came time to meet another dog. We picked him up yesterday (April 22, 2007).

We call him Remo (ree-mo) but I’m not sure how we spell it… Guess it really doesn’t matter, he’ll never spell his name! But his name was Primo at the humane society, so we dropped the “P”, so it could be “Rimo”, you’ll have to ask the boss, Krista.

So that’s life currently in the new Walker household. 2 puppies under 7 months! But it’s great!

As a side note: If you’re looking at adopting a pet, please check out the humane society’s first. They do have wonderful dogs that need loving homes. And if you feel you’d like to donate, my suggestion would be Green County. The appear to have the least amount of funds available to them, and it shows in their building. It’s small and downright old. THEY NEED IMPROVEMENT!! So if anyone with some money to donate, or knows anyone with extra money (7 people from Kevin Bacon!) please donate that way or to other shelters like that. Dane County has a wonderful building thanks to a $10 MILLION annonymous donation. The nice facility helps reflect on the personnel and animals!

There are many habits that contribute both positively and negatively to your weight and overall well being. Here’s a few I’ve adapted that have really helped me.

1. I generally walk between 3-5 miles,approximately 5 times a week. This one is easy. Get a dog. Ceasar Milan – AKA the Dog Whisperer – says the key to good dogs is exercise! A dog that is pooped out is ready to be obedient! We also generally walk after dinner, a little longer than the morning because we’re not on a time crunch.

The wife and I are up at 6 A.M. and walking the dog for about an hour almost every day. Even weekends. Before we got a dog, we’d be lucky to be up by 7:15 to leave for work at 8 A.M. It’s a lifestyle change that we both enjoy.

2. I don’t eat out for lunch at work anymore. Well not never, but definitely not everyday like I used to! I take a salad to work everyday and eat at work. Yeah, sometimes you need a break, then take your salad to the park! Just don’t eat that 2 cheeseburger meal, even if it is a good deal. It adds up – in pant sizes and weight scale gasps! Plus, I actually look forward to having tuna fish on my salad… just my quirk.

3. Drink Water – Well, sometimes I don’t always do this, but it sure helps, especially during the diet. I tend to chug a whole liter bottle of water (filled from home) with lunch. It won’t fill me up right away, but within 10 minutes, I forget I’m hungry…. which is also why I eat at work… easier to forget I’m hungry!

4. No TV!!! – That’s right. I don’t have cable. To cheap to want to pay $100 a month to sit and be lazy. Find a hobby! Looking forward to yard work this summer/spring at my new house… beginning backyard astronomy… soccer with the dog… shoot hoops, going for a walk with my wife and dog. Granted they’re not the most flashy things, but I enjoy them.

5. Eat a breakfast. Just to get something in my stomach so I’m not so ravenous at lunch time. Whether it’s a piece of toast and a hard boiled egg, or scrambled eggs with cheese…. just eat SOMETHING.

What I am learning is it’s finding something enjoyable to bide your time in, and if it makes you think or you can share it with someone it makes it even more worthwhile. It helps change your perspective on things… not trying to sound high and mighty… just what I’m learning that works for me.

Here’s the regular expression for US & Canada Postal Codes:
^(\d{5}(( |-)\d{4})?)|([A-Za-z]\d[A-Za-z]( |-)\d[A-Za-z]\d)$

First, it’s called “stripping!” Second, to strip these characters from a string, you must use the Regex.Replace method. — as denoted by microsoft here.

using System.Text.RegularExpressions

Regex.Replace(strInput, @”[^\w\.@-]”, “”);

This will strinp all invalid characters EXCEPT the period, @, and hyphen.

Articls are posted here: http://imar.spaanjaars.com/QuickDocId.aspx?quickdoc=416

For Sorting:

1. Create an overload of GetList that accepts the SortExpression as a String.

2. Change the ODS declaration so it contains a parameter for this new sortExpression:

[SelectParameters]
[asp:Parameter Name=”sortExpression” Type=”String” /]
[/SelectParameters]

3. Set the SortParameterName attribute of the ODS:

SortParameterName=”sortExpression”

4. Enable sorting on the GridView.