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Southern_Junior · 09-05-2012, 11:26 PM

Let me start by saying I am an avid apple person. Probably a fanboy... Actually no doubt a raging FANBOY. There, I said it.

I have multiple laptops and and other devices. So i am more inclined to lean towards iBrewmaster, but I won't if Beersmith2 is that much better. Please make the case for me. Thanks yall.

**thorongil** · 09-05-2012, 11:34 PM

Beersmith2 is a Windows app, plain and simple. It's directly ported to Mac but looks and runs like Windows. This alone made me shy away from it, despite it's power. I have not used iBrewmaster, and I've found that BeerAlchemy is the most "macish" of them all and does most of what I want it to...

**NervousDad** · 09-05-2012, 11:36 PM

I have both and I prefer beersmith. Beersmith has a cloud option to access your recipes on multiple devices. The only down side is no iPad support. I brewmaster is very cluttered IMO.

Southern_Junior · 09-05-2012, 11:53 PM

Can you tell me why you prefer it? My LHBS claims by beer smith, but they will tell you it's because they don't have macs. Is it worth the ****ty interface.

**LBA4ME** · 09-06-2012, 12:48 AM

I have both and prefer the convenience of having iBrewmaster on my iPad over the somewhat richer feature set of beer smith. iBrewmaster is less expensive too.

**SteveMillerTime** · 09-06-2012, 02:31 PM

I use beersmith on my macbook pro...I've looked into BeerAlchemy and iBrewmaster but it just looks so cluttered - there's practically no UI there, just lists.

Personally, I don't have a real need for using these programs on my mobile device (except for a shopping list - which i throw in my dropbox and open with BrewAide on my droid), in fact, i prefer not to. I'd rather just print out the recipe and take notes by hand. Beersmith does everything i need and actually looks nice.

blacksquid · 09-10-2012, 03:09 AM

Same here. I mostly only run Macs in the house (Hackintosh tower is my main work tool) and went with Beersmith, despite the very ugly and very unintuitive UI. That said, it becomes second nature after a few recipes, really. Tried most of the software available for a few weeks before purchasing and Beersmith did everything I wanted it to do and more. I'm almost starting to like the GUI...

kh54s10 · 09-10-2012, 03:19 AM

I don't know about the programs. I have used Windows forever. It is not the greatest but my experience with Apple has not been that great either. IMO Apple is way to pricey.

In the mid 90's a place I worked for bought all Macs and for what I had to do I needed Windows. Every day I heard from the other rooms "What the F@@# is happening now?". My cheapo PC kept on going.

Maybe it is because I am used to Windows but I always found Apple programs difficult to operate.

Still IMO very much not worth the extra $$$

To the original question. I find Beersmith a very capable tool once you get your info dialed in. I have not used any other software except Beer Calculus online so I can offer no comparison.

omayhemo · 09-15-2012, 05:17 AM

Beersmith 2 is great!

Apple is an overpriced, hippie, hype.
Disclaimer, Software Engineer

bighorn_brew · 09-15-2012, 10:20 AM

I have both,, and prefer Beersmith by a wide margin. BS is more powerful, easier to use, and less cluttered. Ibrewmaster has more of a "toy" feel to it, way cluttered, unintuitive and hard to navigate. That being said, I sometimes "sketch out" a quick recipe on it before getting serious and going to BS on my pc. BS has a bigger tool box, and has my mash set up (keggle) as an option, whereas (as far as I can tell) iBM has a generic mash. Plus BS has many more mash choices, sparges, and fermentations, all the yeasts, more hops, and beer styles, and accurate and detailed descriptions of them. When designing a recipe the real time sliding bars are nice to see if your "getting there" whereas I have to do some tapping to bring up the style sheet in iBM, irks me every time.