kelly7552

Recipes 

As I get into all grain brewing, what is the advantage of getting a software package that I can't do with a recipe and a calculator?

JoeMama

Recipes 

Its a matter of convenience. A prepackaged software suite will have lots of bells and whistles that you would otherwise have to use several solutions for.

Thats pretty much it in a nutshell.
-Me

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Nurmey

Recipes 

That's a silly question. It's so you can spend many hours of your free time designing recipes.

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ajf

Recipes 

How do you know that the recipe is any good?
The software lets you verify that the recipe meets the style guide lines.
What if there is no recipe?
The software lets you design one from scratch.
Brewing softwware is much cheaper than a calculator that can calculate IBU's according to Tinseth (unless you use online calculators).
Download the Promash trial. It limits the number of recipes you can save without paying, but doesn't expire. This should give you a good idea about what brewing software can do for you. Then you can try the trial versions of Beersmith and Beer Tools. This should let you make a good decision about which (if any) you should buy before you spend any money.

-a.

homebrewer_99

Recipes 

It's a way to organize your notes and save your recipes...

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mattmcl

Recipes 

Yeah, and it lets you figure out how much extract to add when you accidentally knock over your mash tun halfway through sparge...

beerthirty

Recipes 

Ease and simplicity. Both of which usually don't go with brewing. If they did Budweiser never would have had more than one horse.

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serving- amber ale hop experiment #6, Roggenbier, apfelwine
planning- Cru?
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kelly7552

Recipes 

Thanks, that's very helpful!

cmgray

Recipes 

There are online webapps that can do recipe formulation as well. You don't necessarily need a software package.

Just throwing that out there (see sig).

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david_42

Recipes 

One plus is built-in reference tables, you don't have to look up the points for each grain and adjunct, just click on one and type in the amount.

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