When entering a beer batch into Breww, you can choose which vessels (fermenters, brite tanks, etc) the batch should use.

At any time, you can see an overview of all your batches and their vessel usage at Production -> Batch schedule. As you can plan your batches in advance, this is really useful for capacity planning.

Vessels can either be planned manually or automatically by telling Breww how to plan them (and then tweaked manually if required)

When you add a batch to Breww (that's brewed on-site), you'll see a calendar in the form on which you can "draw" events to indicate the vessels used in the batch. If you need to adjust a planned event, you can move the events by dragging and dropping them or resizing them by dragging from the start or end. To remove an event completely, simply click on it and confirm. Breww will keep an eye on your schedule as you work on it and show you, beneath the calendar, when the batch will be started (based on the schedule) and if there are any gaps in the planned vessels.

Please see the short video below to guide you through this process:

(Hint: If the above video is too small, click on the "maximise" button at the bottom-right of it to view it in full-screen.)

This works by defining a "Vessel plan", telling Breww that your recipe uses this vessel plan, and then applying this to each batch you create.

To get started, go to Production -> View -> Recipes -> Vessel plans. From here, you can create and manage your vessel plans.

Click on New vessel plan to make a fresh vessel plan. You'll see a page that looks a bit like the screenshot below. At the top, you can add vessel requirements to the plan and further down, you can see a preview of how this looks on a "calendar".

In the example below, Breww would be looking for a 900+ Litre Fermenter which will be filled for 5 days, followed by an 850+ Litre Holding Tank that can be filled for the next 5 days, and finally, an 850+ Litre Brite Tank that will be filled for the next 3 days.

Using the "Can be split over X vessels" option, you can tell Breww to split the volume over multiple vessels if you don't have a single vessel big enough for the required volume. If you enter 1 for this option, the full volume must be in a single vessel, but if you enter 2, for example, a 900 Litre requirement could be split over two vessels that were not big enough on their own but were big enough when combined.

Once the plan has been designed, you need to update each of your recipes to use this plan. This structure means that you can have a number of different plans (e.g. one for ales and one for lagers) and re-use them across your recipes.

Now, simply create a brand new batch, and if you choose a recipe that has an associated vessel plan, you'll see a new option above the calendar view for planning vessel usage:

When you click this button, you'll be prompted for a batch start date. Upon confirming the date, Breww will automatically apply the vessel schedule for you, a bit like in this animated screenshot:

At this point, you are free to adjust the schedule manually if you need to and save the planned batch when you're ready.

If Breww cannot schedule some or all of the required vessels, you'll be shown a message explaining this and may need to adjust your start date. There may also be times when you know that you can get away with a vessel plan that doesn't strictly follow the rules you told Breww in the "Vessel plan", in which case you can manually plan a schedule that doesn't strictly follow the rules (e.g. using a fermenter instead of a holding tank, or reducing the time in a vessel by one day).

You can schedule as many vessels as you need to - just keep "drawing lines" on the calendar.

If you need to schedule a vessel that overlaps with an existing "event", make sure to start drawing the usage on the calendar by clicking in the white space underneath the existing event, as otherwise, Breww will think you're trying to interact with the existing event. Here's a short clip to demonstrate this:

If you plan any vessels to use in your batch, then Breww will automatically determine the batch start date from the date that the first vessel is used. If you don't plan any vessels, then you can choose a planned start date from an input that shows below the vessel planning calendar (this is hidden if you have any vessels planned).