Watch: Handy new, free tool for managing your hop contracts

Managing hop contracts is one of those things that makes you think “Why in god’s name did I make brewing beer my life? This is like work now!”

Whoa, hey, calm down. Breathe. It’s going to be OK. Running a brewery is great, you just need to make some things a little bit simpler. For example: this simple, free Google Docs spreadsheet to manage all of your hop contracts and orders against those contracts.

Our pals at BREWD launched this idea and we thought it was pretty handy. Plus, it’s free, so you may as well give it a whirl.

• Whenever you enter into a new hop contract, enter the Contract ID, the vendor, the type of hops, and the quantity of the contract.
• With filtering and sorting built in, only view the contracts you need, when you need them.
• As you order hops, easily select the contract and our spreadsheet will fill in the vendor name for you. Indicate the purchase date, the order number, and the quantity. Now you have record of everything you purchase against the contracts you have entered into.
• From there, you can always view what you used and what’s remaining — the amount and the number of orders created off each contract.

For a better tutorial than those bullets, watch the video above, or head to the BREWD site to get started.