It can be nice to know everything is all together and you don’t have to search separate spreadsheets, but you can also run in to problems having too much data and have a hard time knowing what to look at. I tried keeping it all together and it didn’t work for me – maybe it will for you. I’m testing different things at different points in fermentation so I would then need to search for a batch every time I entered results, instead of just entering like results all in a row. It can be helpful to have all your data together for when you’re trying to troubleshoot and look for relationships, but you also need your data to be easy to enter or it won’t get done.
One tab is for HLP results, another for sterile wort results and a few more for when I test out other types of media or do any swab testing or special projects. The third main file I use is one to track micro results. The final absorbance needs to be multiplied by 50 so I have that calculation built into a separate IBU googlesheet. When I run IBUs, I write my results in a notebook since the instrument isn’t near my computer. This file then has separate tabs to track each beer by attribute so I can quickly notice any trends or out of spec beers. Information I collect from the alcolyzer, such as ABV, starting and final and starting gravity, real degree of fermentation, all go into one googlesheet. Usually this has to do with how I collect and enter various forms of data.
I’ve played around with trying to keep everything together, separate, online, paper copies and have settled on a mix of a few different data sets. It can be a challenge trying to decide how to set up your data. I try to experiment with different ways to set up my data and make it work for me – both for entering data, and for analyzing it. This is personally one of my biggest challenges so I try to automate as much as I can with pivot tables and charts that automatically update from my main list of results. There’s no point in taking measurements if you don’t do anything with the data. In this series of articles, Amy Todd, owner and operator of Zymology Labs, a third-party beer testing lab, who also works part-time in the lab at Zero Gravity Craft Brewery, gives us a detailed ground-floor view of the day-to-day lab routines that separate quality craft breweries from the pack.
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