What is the best brew app?

Not looking to create recipes from scratch. Using existing recipes, looking for something to help calculate mash / sparge volumes / temps, boil times etc.? I use to have something like this on my iPhone but can't seem to find it now.

I like this one

http://www.brewersfriend.com/

Are you talking about strictly a phone app? Beersmith, for your computer, is the best 27 bucks I ever spent when it comes to homebrewing. There's a 30 day free trial so be sure to check it out!

I tried Beer Smith, it seemed fairly logical to just buy it and I ended up getting it for something like $19.50 from Risen Dead Brewing which happened to be the cheapest I could find.

Brewers Friend is my go to site for calculators and I use their iPhone app for the same. I don't know if I would have used that over Beer Smith for recipes because it seemed like a lot of people use Beer Smith and I tend to stick to what seems to be more common. The only reason for this is so I can get help where needed and also share/exchange recipes.

I think you will get some varied answers here though, which isn't a bad thing. You can try most of these for free and use the one that best suits you.

Beersmith has mobile apps as well. check it out here; http://beersmith.com/mobile/ I have the Comp version of BS2 & it's pretty good. Their site also has a ton of member recipes under AG,AE,PM etc.

+1 for BeerSmith. It can be a bit complicated to get everything setup for your specific brewing environment, but it's also very powerful. Make your best guess the first time through, measure your outcome, then tweak your model in BeerSmith for next time. There's plenty of help and documentation out there.

Another great way to use it is to tweak existing recipes to get a more IBUs, lower gravity, and so on. For example, you can see what effect an extra .5 lb of a particular malt will have on the numbers.

That's why I like BS2. you can tweak a beer before even buying the ingredients.

I use ibrewmaster2 on my iphone and really enjoy it. I've never tried beersmith though so I can't say how they compare.

I have found the BS2 app to be a bit buggy. Maybe that has improved recently.

Ibrewmaster 2 is great if you use northern brewer recipes. It comes loaded with hundreds of recipes even aside from NB, so lots to choose from. I use it on my iPad and haven't had any bug problems. I found I was able to get started with it right away while beersmith wasn't a program which I found made much sense unless I wanted to spend a couple of hours trying to figure it out. Others may disagree but I didn't find it particularly user friendly.

I have iBrewMaster 2 and like it but the calculations for OG and IBUs seem goofy.

bknifefight said:

I have iBrewMaster 2 and like it but the calculations for OG and IBUs seem goofy.

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The only goofy thing to me is when you're looking at/making a recipe it uses SRM for color, but when you look at the style guidelines in the recipe it uses EBC.

EBC is the old way,SRM is the new version.

unionrdr said:

EBC is the old way,SRM is the new version.

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Yes but I find it odd that EBC is only used in that one instance. Everywhere else it's SRM. If you look at the BJCP guidelines while not in a recipe it shows SRM, but try and compare a recipe to those guidelines and it uses EBC. I've spent idle time during mash/boils trying to figure out how to change it and it just won't.

But again, that's my only gripe with the app, and ill admit its a pretty tiny gripe.

Might be old software,&/or old recipes still using EBC. I'm not sure how to convert them from one to the other. but it seems to me it has been discussed on here.

My calculation issues with iBrewMaster came with efficiency. I punched in a recipe and it was over 5 points low. I even took their potential grain yields and multiplied it out by hand and it came in where I expected. My IBUs were about 30 higher than expected as well. I know there are different calculations for that but the OG based on an inputted efficiency shouldnt change.

A buddy of mine uses "Sparge Pal" on his iPhone and loves it.

Gary

I just use a Ouija Board and Magic 8 Ball for the more critical calculations.

krackin said:

I just use a Ouija Board and Magic 8 Ball for the more critical calculations.

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Good ole 8 ball and Ouija have never let me down!

I've been using BrewPal on my iphone for a while. It's pretty good, however I haven't tried anything else.

I have only used BeerSmith and I will agree that it takes some tweaking. I would argue it does not take a lot if work other than a "practice run" with your equipment.
Fill the mash tun halfway or so on a level surface and gravity drain until it stops. Measure tun dead space.
Measure boil off
Measure trub loss in BK and fermenter and that is all you really need to do to get BS accurate.

The only tweaks that I make now are based on different trub loss on varying brews with different hop amounts.