Beersmith Enhancements?

**rcrabb22** · 11-09-2010, 12:26 PM

According to my copy of Beersmith, it appears there have been no significant enchancments to BS in 3 years. I can find no roadmap or enhancment plans on their website. It is a little disappointing that author(s) are not trying to improve or enhance the software, at least to my knowledge.

Enhancements I would like:

be able to have both the inventory view and the recipe build view open at the same time. Sometimes a recipe is built from what I have rather than from other formula. Drag and drop of an inventory item would be nice here too

have an inventory list filtered by ingredient type similar to when building a recipe, but at the inventory view. I realize it can be sorted but sometimes I just want to look at hops inventory

ability to have real time shopping list window open as the recipe is built rather than build a shopping list in multiple steps as needed today.

I'm sure I could think of more if I put more time into it. Anybody else have ideas?

stevo155 · 11-09-2010, 12:58 PM

Brad Smith has seemed pretty busy these days ( new Podcast and Book just released ). He has posted on the Beersmith forums that version 2.0 is in the works http://www.beersmith.com/forum/index.php?topic=2341.0

You should post these suggestions over on the Beersmith page.

**GilaMinumBeer** · 11-09-2010, 01:03 PM

v1.4 saw several very signifigant enhancments at realease date.

**3 Dog Brew** · 11-09-2010, 01:28 PM

Compared to ProMash, BeerSmith is at least on some sort of update cycle with Version 2.0 in the works. While I agree that a Roadmap would be helpful, I'm not willing to pay the big corporate expense that a software architect would charge to put together a market driven strategy.

As a software developer, that's just my 2 pence.

**rcrabb22** · 11-09-2010, 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GilaMinumBeer

v1.4 saw several very signifigant enhancments at realease date.

on August 5, 2007.......

I'm not trying to start a flame war. After using Beersmith for 2 years I have found some things that could be improved. No harm in asking for them.

adam01 · 11-09-2010, 03:48 PM

Brad moved to entrepreneur and quit his day job.
He's working on BS to finish it.

**rcrabb22** · 11-09-2010, 03:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by adam01

Brad moved to entrepreneur and quit his day job.
He's working on BS to finish it.

Cool! I am trying to help with suggestions.

**GilaMinumBeer** · 11-09-2010, 04:24 PM

I guess it a perspective thing. I came from an antiquated ProMash (no revisions since 2003) to Beersmith and very soon after v1.4 was released, which was a major improvement and and has worked flawlessly ever since.

I get where you are coming from and am in no way condemning you for it but....

knightbeer39 · 11-09-2010, 04:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rcrabb22

on August 5, 2007.......

I'm not trying to start a flame war. After using Beersmith for 2 years I have found some things that could be improved. No harm in asking for them.

Yup, quite frankly, I have been disappointed in the lack of updates myself. I still love the software and use it religiously, but there are definite improvements that could be made to make it better.

-Add "carastan" for example in the grain section.

-Improve how it calculates what temp strike water needs to be for different mash tuns. I added all the info for my keggle mt, and it's not even close. Usually stables out a good 4-7 degrees MORE than the target temp.

-IMO the shopping list thing is a waste of time. The prices vary so much I don't have time to go correcting them every couple of months. If there was some way to just batch update them, that would be great. I like that it keeps an inventory, but who has time to add all the prices of umpteen million ingredients?

I have other requests, but I just can't remember them all right now....

-

**GilaMinumBeer** · 11-09-2010, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by knightbeer39

-Add "carastan" for example in the grain section.

You can do this yourself in the current version.

Quote:

Originally Posted by knightbeer39

-Improve how it calculates what temp strike water needs to be for different mash tuns. I added all the info for my keggle mt, and it's not even close. Usually stables out a good 4-7 degrees MORE than the target temp.

This sounds more like you need to re-adjust the thermal mass in the equipment setup.

Quote:

Originally Posted by knightbeer39

-IMO the shopping list thing is a waste of time. The prices vary so much I don't have time to go correcting them every couple of months. If there was some way to just batch update them, that would be great. I like that it keeps an inventory, but who has time to add all the prices of umpteen million ingredients?

Agreed. But, if you are updating the inventory as you add ingredients, then why change the price from what you paid at the time?