I think I know why you had all Elixirs!
Did you have the "View Elixir's I haven't learned" button checked? If not then it would APPEAR you had learned all of the Elixirs because it wouldn't show you that there were other Elixirs to be learned... make sense?
So in a sense you had all of them learned except the ones from books but those were not showing up in the Alchemy Station because the box was checked to view the elixirs you haven't learned...
Or I could be way off, but it's just a suggestion.
I was checking the top of the skill journal. The one that has the number of recipes and the percentage of how many you've learned. The one that says things like 22 out of 44, 50% learned.
Also both times, for the first Sim who learned everything from the station book and the second one, after the patch who had to read four books, I heard that little bit of triumphant music that plays when a Sim has accomplished something.
It's all a moot point now though because it seems after the patch they are going to have to read some books. I'm more concerned with if the game will ever get back to being playable. You can't have a witch/alchemist if they can't harvest any plants for their elixirs.
When I get up the ambition later today I'll make some new Sims and test some more to see what works and what doesn't.
What really irritates me is that on release day when I installed SN I started a town and I was still playing it. That's almost a record for me. I usually get bored with a game after about a week and start a new one. I had customized community lots and created and skilled up three households. I was well on my way to have a town that I could play into the release of Seasons.