What are people takes on brewing software out there?
Do you recommend them?
If so what one do you use? What do you like/dislike about it?
I use BeerSmith, and highly recommend it. Great for calculating water useage and temperatures. Great for keeping track of all my batches, I keep pretty detailed notes and enter them in, I like being able to look back and see what I did, what happened, etc. I don’t really dislike anything about it. I will say it’s pretty detailed so there is a bit of a learning curve, what inputs get entered where, etc. I think it works great and they offer a free trial so I say give it a go. Very reasonably priced as well.
You can try out EZ Brew 1.1
It is a free spreadsheet available on this forum.
Here is the link
http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=107231
The only catch is that it currently only works in excel, sorry Open Office users.
We just started AG Brewing a bit ago and with it took the dive into writing and altering recipes a bit with Beersmith and so far I have loved it and use it often. There is a bit of a learning curve, one that I am still experiencing, but it’s a great tool overall. I picked mine up at Northern Brewer where I think it was $20 which is cheaper than actually getting it online from the website.
I use Promash. I have used it for years. It’s great for everything I need it for.
I use free Q-brew.
There have been a lot of threads about this, some quite recent. A search should turn up no shortage of opinions.
http://www.google.com/search?q=software ... brewer.comI have a Mac so my choice has been somewhat limited. I used to use Homebrew Forumlator which I loved. I switched to Beer Alchemy because Homebrew Forumlator is no loger being updated or supported…not that I ever had any trouble with it. I found Beer Alchemy a bit less easy to use than Homebrew Forumlator but I’ve gotten used to it and now have no difficulties at all. It does exactly what I need it to do except for one thing: calcualtion water quantities and temps for batch sparging. I go to an online resource for that.
I like the inventory tracking feature, although it’s only as good as the info you put into it (naturally) and depending on your inventory, the intitial inventory set up can take a while.
Another thing I like about Beer Alchemy is that i can run it on my laptop and ther are versions for my iPad and iPod touch. You can sync up all of your data on you multiple platforms so that’s convenient.
Probably not as detailed as some would like, but hopville.com works just fine for me. Online and free.
Same here. People talk about Promash being “old” (hell, so am I!) but it does everything I need quickly, easily and efficiently.
download the trial version and pick one you like, they all work some have little things others do not, other just have a different way of doing things. I have used just about everyone out there mac and pc and I prefers beersmith2.0
Beersmith is where it’s at!
you can down load brewmate its free and like all the calculators will get the job done.
I am a mac user and have been using Homebrew Formulator for a few years now. I like how it’s laid out and its functionality. Although its no longer under support I find it suits my needs pretty well, I can add additional malts, hops, yeast etc with relative ease. Overall its a pretty good beginners software.
BeerSmith for me.
Qbrew does what I need. I also have BrewTarget installed but haven’t used it a whole lot. Hopville.com is nice too, so there are many free options that work well. I’ve used the trial versions of Promash and Beersmith, and I’m thinking about actually buying one of the two. They’re priced low enough to where it’s not a huge deal. It just hasn’t been a priority for me since the free programs are doing all that I need. YMMV
Another endorsement for Beersmith
+1 for Beersmith
Promash. Simple and efficient. No need to change to another program.
