Last month the Beer Judges Certification Program (BJCP) released a minor update to their 2004 Style Guidelines. The new “2008 update to the 2004 style guidelines” (as it is officially called) includes some updated style parameters, changes to style descriptions, revised commericial examples for most beer styles and some significant rework to many Belgian ale styles.

In BrewSession we’re using the XML format of the BJCP style guidelines. So as soon as I saw that the 2008 updates had been released, I wanted to make sure we got those into BrewSession as soon as possible. I contacted the BJCP and found that no one was working on updating the BJCP XML. I attempted to contact the original author of the BJCP XML without success (Chris, if you’re out there, give us a hollar, I have some questions). So, I volunteered to update the BJCP XML to the 2008 version.

The BJCP describes it as a minor update, and while there aren’t any new beer styles in the 2008 update, or high level category changes, the number of revisions made to the “fine print” are fairly numerous. While tedious, comparing the 2008 styles with the 2004 XML and making the needed changes is quite interesting, as I’m getting to know the styles like I never did before. In fact, I started going through the styles on my own, buying 2-3 representatives of each style, taking some sips, and reflecting on the style guidelines. My own BJCP course! Dean’s already a certified BJCP judge, but I’m not. However, I think at the end of this I’ll be prepared to take the exam.

In addition to updating the text of the styles, I’m recommending that some elements of the XML be changed, enhanced and updated to make the BJCP Styles XML document more useful to a wider range of people and applications. I’ll be posting my proposals here shortly…

So you’re weighing out your ingredients. Perhaps you’re not in the US … or maybe you are in the US and have a degree in science … whichever, you may be weighing out your grains using the metric system. While the root unit of mass is the gram, the metric system of mass is calibrated to a known weight of 1 kilogram. More specifically to the weight of “a cylinder of platinum-iridium kept in a vault near Paris since 1889.”

The problem is, the kilogram is getting lighter… Discover magazine online published a recent article on this that I thought I’d share here. No, it doesn’t mean much for BrewSession. As long as we stick with the conversion of 1kg = 2.204622622 US pounds, I think we’ll be okay. If you read the article, you’ll find that the kg has only lessened in mass by about the weight of a grain of salt since 1889. Interesting nonetheless.

On another note, I’ve got 8 or so calculators ready to go…apart from the toggles having a slight issue that I’m working out. As soon as I’m finished there, we’ll be releasing them to beta testers. (I know, I know…we keep saying that…but honestly, they’re actually working!!!, I just need to get a few minor bugs ironed out before the beta release (we’re not getting paid for this, you know ;-)….and Dean’s been hounding me to get the design of the recipe formulation screen closer to final draft form as he has a generic Ruby on Rails + Ajax version almost ready to be styled up and and used. And I’m holding him back. Hmpf.)

I’ve also been looking into solutions for making BrewSession a desktop application as well as a web application. Most recently I’ve been really getting into Adobe’s AIR technology — going so far as to getting a calculator or two running as desktop apps using AIR technology. It’s really quite nice. The only catch is, you have to have the AIR runtime on your system in order for them to work (similar to having the Java runtime installed to run Java applications). But, AIR is a fairly small, painless download and install. Once you have it, each AIR application installs and runs with ease (though I think it’ll require some custom CSS to make BrewSession look really spiffy on the desktop). I wonder though….what does the general public, the home brewer, think of having to download the AIR runtime in order to run BrewSession?  I suppose we need to get a poll going… Feel free to post some opinions…