# Delete or obsolete a recipe

In Breww, you can remove recipes you no longer need in two ways: by **deleting** them or by marking them as **obsolete**. Which option is available depends on whether the recipe has already been used on a batch.

## Deleting a recipe

A recipe can only be **deleted** if it has never been used on a batch (planned, in-progress, or complete). This is to protect the audit trail - once a batch has been brewed against a recipe version, that history needs to remain in your account.

To delete a recipe:

1. Head to **Production** -> **View** -> **Recipes** and click the recipe you want to remove.
2. On the recipe page, open the **Actions** menu in the page header.
3. Click **Delete recipe**.

   If the **Delete recipe** option is not visible, the recipe has already been used on at least one batch. In this case, mark it as obsolete instead (see below).

## Marking a recipe as obsolete

If a recipe has been used on a batch and can no longer be deleted, you can mark it as **obsolete**. Obsoleting a recipe keeps the historical record intact for any batches that used it, but hides the recipe from the recipes dashboard by default and indicates that it shouldn't be used for new batches.

To obsolete a recipe:

1. Head to **Production** -> **View** -> **Recipes** and click the recipe.
2. Open the **Edit** menu in the page header and click **Edit basic details**.
3. Enable the **Obsolete** checkbox and save.

   The recipe will then show an **Obsolete** badge on its detail page (in place of the **Active** badge) and will be filtered out of the main recipes dashboard.

## Viewing or restoring obsolete recipes

By default, the recipes dashboard hides obsolete recipes. To see them again:

1. Head to **Production** -> **View** -> **Recipes**.
2. Toggle **Show obsolete** in the top-right of the recipes table to **Yes**.

   To restore an obsolete recipe so it can be used again, click into it from the dashboard, open **Edit** -> **Edit basic details**, and disable the **Obsolete** checkbox.

> **Note:**
> If you only want to retire a specific **version** of a recipe rather than the whole recipe, you don't need to obsolete the recipe itself - newer versions automatically become the current version. See [Recipes & brew sheets](https://breww.com/docs/recipes-and-brew-sheets/) for more on recipe versions.