why beersmith?

i've done 5 all grain batches so far. all of them have been kits from austin homebrew. i follow the instructions and beer turned out good so far(not great). i read about alot of people on here using beersmith. is this something that will help someone like me, just following a kit recipe? or is it for the guy that creates his own recipe? i downloaded the free trail and i didn't really understand why i would need it.

If you're following someone else's recipe, and making extract batches (from kits) without making any changes (at all) then it might not be for you. Then again, pretty much any software would be unnecessary. But, once you start to wish to alter a recipe, or create your own, software becomes much more important.

Since I started making my own recipes at batch #3, it made a lot of sense to get good software to help to figure out what I would get. It was easy enough to pick up how to use BeerSmith, at least for me. I like being able to tweak a recipe on the fly, before brewing it, seeing how the changes I make impact the batch. Without software, it would be much more involved. I did try using the formula's to figure out the batches, but I never did like math. Plus, as your OG changes, in a recipe, your IBU's will also change. With software, I can change the hop about my tiny amounts and see what the impact is much faster than if I did it the old way.

IMHO, it's more for all grain brewers. You can use it for extract brews, but to take full advantage, you'd need to be doing ag. It's only 20 bucks so if you want tools like attenuation calcs and boil off amounts, metric conversions, other things, then you'll get use out of it.if money is tight and you're doing extract, you can skip it. If you have Android, go with Brewzor calcs and brewer and you'll have everything you need

I use brewpal 99 cent app on my iPhone. It has some annoying issues but it works and the recipe is there with me at all times. I use my phone while brewing too. Plus I don't have to write anything down when I go to the store. Just pull up the app. Eventually you will need something unless you stick with kits forever. You don't really have to pay for it tho. There are some free ones even.

I love my brewsmith now. took some getting used to, being able to upsize, or down size a recipe is awesome. going from all grain to extract is easy. you can tweak recipes like said earlier.

I think its money well spent if you are even interested in going all grain.

-=Jason=-

I'd say it's invaluable for any brewer who wants to move on from kits to their own recipes--not just all grain. There is a whole world out there beyond kits, and beersmith helps you make sense of it all. I brewed on kits for a year before ag and there is absolutely nothing wrong with them, but I got to a point where I wanted to experiment with different hops, yeast, and grains. Beersmith makes it easy to design them and know you're within the style guidelines for that type of beer.

You'll know exactly how much grain to mash or dme to add to hit the gravity your looking for, how many oz of hops for the desired ibus, and the types of grain to steep or mash to get the color you want. It all super easy after some practice.

My two best investments to date are a 15g boilermaker and beersmith, hands down.

-TK

I love beersmith! I spend hours tweaking my recipe before heading to the LHBS to pick up whatever I may need.

You don't need it for kits but it won't be long before you want to invent recipes.

However I had beersmith long before I had an android phone, so I can't comment on the app options.

You can scale on brewpal too. Just adjust your batch size and it will do the math. I just did it as I just bought a bigger fermenter so wanted to go 5.5 instead of 5. I can use it with a desktop program too. Just export the beer xml.

it's so cheap i could not see how i could go wrong. keeping all of the notes on a beer in one (legible) place is worth it for me. seeing a beersmith recipe develop exactly like the program predicted is nice too.

It is a fair price tbh and worth it. I plan on getting it at some point. I don't do much work at my desktop anymore though.

I used to dabble with qbrew which was free but once I wanted to get into all grain, I realized I wanted better software that would figure out water volumes and temperatures for me. I knew there was other software out there but many used beersmith so thats what I stuck with and bought. Figured if I end up using something else, I have not lost much money on it. My time to evaluate programs was worth much more than the cost of beersmith and it seemed to do what I want.

People mentioned converting recipes or scaling with software; keep in mind software can also attempt to turn all grain recipes into extract although in some cases the result would only be an approximation. There are many many all grain recipes out there and people don't need to ask for them to be converted, just do it

Brewing software is one of the best investments you can make. I love making my own recipes. That to me is one of the best things about brewing.

I have Beer Alchemy because I am on a Mac. I have it for my iPad too and can synch the two.

Whatever you do pick up some software. They all offer free trials so try them out.

I use beersmith to design recipes. Definitely very helpful. I'm too lazy to do math on my own so without the software I would never design my own recipes.

Great tool to have on hand. At this point I can nail SG on any brew I do. Worth every penny.

BW

I'm doing partial mashes now and I can pretty much do any recipe out there with Beersmith as my assistant. For example, it is very easy to enter an all grain beer recipe, then either convert to partial mash or extract, either using their convert feature or doing it manually. I also tinker with recipes, adjusting bitterness or malt content to target IBUs or ABVs. Since I've gotten the software, I've used it on every recipe I've brewed. A must for anyone who has more than a passing interest in brewing.

mikeysab said:

IMHO, it's more for all grain brewers. You can use it for extract brews, but to take full advantage, you'd need to be doing ag. It's only 20 bucks so if you want tools like attenuation calcs and boil off amounts, metric conversions, other things, then you'll get use out of it.if money is tight and you're doing extract, you can skip it. If you have Android, go with Brewzor calcs and brewer and you'll have everything you need

Click to expand...

just got the brewzor app and it looks like there is a lot of good stuff on there

I use Beersmith. I don't have an Android or know what it is. I know they have an app for about anything. I'm still using my 5 year old home built desktop. I print out my recipes on paper and print my shopping list and stick it in my wallet. What I like about Beersmith is how it makes my recipe adjustments simple. It has some quirks to it that can be frustrating, But it includes a bunch of tools that I used to have to visit other sites to use. The more familiar you get with it the easier it becomes to use... but there is room for improvement.

If your on the fence about beersmith, I suggest trying brewmate, its free, and I've been using it for months and love it.

I can't quite remember, but I'm pretty sure I bought Beersmith back when I was still starting on 1gal batches. There's no way I could have easily created the recipes I have over the years without it, it's cheap for what it gives you. For a well researched new brewer the learning curve is surprisingly easy.
As a note, I'm doing infusion mashes with a cooler and when I preheat my mash tun the strike temp #'s Beersmith gives me are bang on (within 0.5-1F).
I also own BrewPal for the iPhone, which is great as well. I tend to use it more for it's calculators now though.

Well, if you're happy with kits and happy with following the instructions they provide then I don't think you need Beersmith.

I was anxious to start buying in bulk and making my own recipes, so Beersmith has been invaluable to me.

I usually make one tweak when I remake a recipe and it's easy to look at a recipe on Beersmith and see the style guidelines and how your current recipe falls into it and add a lb of this or add hops 5 min earlier and see how far that moves your abv, ibus, O.G., etc. It makes adjusting recipes easy and the end result a lot more predictable for a new brewer.

beergolf said:

I have Beer Alchemy because I am on a Mac. I have it for my iPad too and can synch the two.

Click to expand...

They have a Macintosh version of Beersmith 2 now if you're interested. Not sure how well integrated it is with the OS though.

WHether you're doing extract, partial mashes or allgrain, brewing software is invaluable, if you have any desire to create your own recipes.

And even if you just are making kits, use software helps you to understand how ingredients, and the time you add the (for instance hop schedules) and the amount of things affect the overall product.

If you start typing in those kit recipes and start playing around with the features, you start to get a grasp of gravity and color and bitterness ratios. THere's numbers for every aspect of things, and you can see for example how moving that hop addition from 60 minutes to 45 minutes affects how bitter that beer will be. Or how changing from for example crystal 20 to crystal 40 in that same extract with grain recipe is going to make that beer darker. Or using more or less extract.

The more you do that, the more you understand, to me what brewing is all about. How all this works. And then when you start to experiment, you're not just tossing a bunch of things at the ceiling and seeing if anything sticks, you're actually going in to the batch having an understanding what the overall impact on the finished product.

A lot folks for example want to just add more extract or a bunch of sugar into a beer (or honey) to raise the abv....but they fail to realize that that throws the beer out of balance from the recipe....You need to also then balance that by shifting the hop amount as well to keep the same sweetness to bitterness ratio in harmony.

You can also use it to keep track of the progress of your beers, EVEN your kit brews. There's spaces to put in the actual gravites of the beer both the og and the finished gravity, you can see how the particular yeast attenuated that batch, and spaces for notes about the recipe. It helps you keep track of your brewing history.

I believe software is invaluable for ANY brewer no matter what he's brewing or at what level he's at.

When I started playing with brewing software my brewing understanding and my process increased a hundred fold....