Promash or Recipe Book

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JayMckeever

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I'm currently debating between the two. I'd love to get ahold of some more clone recipes, but I'd also like to start creating my own. If you guys had to choose between the two, what's your first purchase?
 
Unless money is REALLY tight, you really need both.

Get a copy of "Designing Great Beers" - it'll give you a lot of invaluable guidance about putting together recipes for various styles, as well as background and a lot of good technical information.

To apply it, though, having software really helps; I like Beersmith more than ProMash (and it's $5 cheaper). Download it and use the free trial for three weeks, see what you think. You CAN do a lot of the math by hand, and there are free online programs that some people like - but Beersmith makes it so easy to figure out exactly how much pale malt to get to my desired OG, for example.
 
Try the promash trial before you buy it. I hated it. I ended up buying beer tools even though they don't have a trial yet. The programmers are very involved with the effort and are updating often.

I find it more intuative than promash or beersmith so far.

BYO did a magazine with 150 clone recipies. That should get you going for $5. Designing great beers is nice, but it's not a clone book and is a bit of a tough read.
 
I agree, get the free trial of ProMash and see if you like it. That's what I did. I ended up liking and bought it. It's a must for AG, IMO.

If it comes down to one or the other and you find you like ProMash or another brewing software, pick that. As Blender said, recipes are all over the Net.
 
ok, so i just downloaded the trial version of promash. I am trying to enter in the 6 gallon recipe that was just posted today on the forum, but the warrior and simcoe hops are not in the database. How would I go about adding them to the database? are they there in the purchased version?
 
JayMckeever said:
ok, so i just downloaded the trial version of promash. I am trying to enter in the 6 gallon recipe that was just posted today on the forum, but the warrior and simcoe hops are not in the database. How would I go about adding them to the database? are they there in the purchased version?

I believe they are in the purchased version. I'm not at home where I can get to it right now, but I know you can add any hop variety in the 'Inventory' tool. Just open it and add the new hop. I had to do this when I got my Sorachi Ace hops, b/c they are a new variety and not in ProMash.

This is especially nice when you need to adjust the alpha acid content of hops, since they change from harvest to harvest and supplier to supplier.

For example, I added the Cascade and Nugget that I grew in the backyard and labelled them as such. So, I can pick either them, or the Cascade and Nugget I bought from Freshops.

PM me if you have problems and I'll try and look at the steps when I get home.
 
I'm gonna go against the grain a little and say that if you can only afford one, get a good recipe book, such as Beer Captured or Clone Brews (both by Mark and Tess Smeoiruwfyehiuryweuiryfcbnwiuerygncfiwueyrgxnfioqwryugzxmfiwqeyufghzmgf).

You can use free software like the Beer Recipator

http://hbd.org/cgi-bin/recipator/recipator

...to do a lot (certainly not all) of what a program like ProMash does. Both are valuable resources, but you'll never be very good at designing your own recipes unless you understand the basic differences bewteen what ingrediants go in what styles.
 
When you open Promash click on the Hops tab that is on the bottom of the screen. You should see a selection box to add a new hop to the database. I think the demo is fully functionable except you cannot print and can only save 3 recipes.
 
Since you have downloaded the trial version of Promash, you might want to look through this. http://www.brewrats.org/Recipe_Exchange/ This is a collection of almost 200 recipes in Promash .rec format. You can download them individually or download the entire archive as a .zip file. You just unzip the file into the recipe subdirectory of the Promash directory on your drive.

Wayne
Bugeater Brewing Company
 
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