Microbrewery Software

Hi all, hope not introducing myself and jumping here is not a big issue. Apart from being a great drinker, I am also a programmer.

I am writing here because I was wondering if there is a market for a microbrewery management software, and if microbreweries could benefit from having a specialized software.
I was thinking to a specific software that can manage recipes, orders, calendars, taxes calculations and I don't know what else.

I'm not trying to sell anything (yet), what I'd like to hear is the opinion of potential users. What are the biggest problems you are having in everyday management? Are you using complicated excel files / paper?

Would a software sold at a reasonable price help you to solve some of these problems?

Thanks for any help you could provide me, and sorry if I bugged anybody.

Many of us have a series of software we already use, but like anyone else I'm always open minded. I have been eyeing up this for my brewery software, as my current software does not offer everything I need.

http://www.orchestrateam.com/sites/files/media/OrchestratedBEER-Brochure.pdf

The biggest downfall for me is the same with this one as it is with many.....no Linux support. If you want to be taken seriously what you design HAS to be across all three major platforms.

What if it was a web based software with a reasonable monthly fee subscription? Would that be ok? That would mean no installation issues and native multi platform support.

And more: what are the features that the products you are already using lack more?

Thanks a lot for the feedbacks..

Well I think beersmith does an excellent job with my brewing calculations and plan to continue to use it when I get around to opening the brewpub (big dreams )

Theres a long list of things I wish we're done automatically for me in the brewery (when parameters are set of course)
if it ran my control panel
had all my recipe calculations on it
has all the business aspects - total profit/revenue,
ingredient cost,
predicted labor costs(in hours) for batches to go from grain to glass,
what % of the brewery gear would be paid for the individual batch,
When I need to move a batch to maintain profit
integrated into the pubs serving software so it knows how many pints I'm serving a day (damn that'd be cool) and calculates what beer needs to be brewed to keep every beer in stock,
easy, visually appealing calendar,

I'm sure I could think of lots of other unrealistic things I'd like done for me at the pub

I would not use any web-based software. There's no assurance of privacy and confidentiality in any web-based system. Software loaded on your own system, especially on a standalone system not connected to the internet, will enjoy relatively greater security.

billtzk said:

I would not use any web-based software. There's no assurance of privacy and confidentiality in any web-based system. Software loaded on your own system, especially on a standalone system not connected to the internet, will enjoy relatively greater security.

Click to expand...

Yes... down with the cloud! I see no need for it.

I think the biggest hang up is multi-terminal usage. If you have a brew pub with many computers (for retail, production, distribution, etc) the software needs to be easily synced between all of them in real time while 2 or more computers are in use. I realize you could do this running it through a server, but the easier you make it the more likely somebody wanting to just focus on making beer will be to use it.

On a personal note, if I were to be running a brewery I would most likely have a tablet on hand in a waterproof case (probably iOS) so that I could input values immediately by simply tapping on the screen with a very easy input interface. Beer alchemy is what I use for my brewing and really like the syncing between mobile device and computer, but there would need to be many of the things along the lines of what nukinfuts link does that need integrated, and there is no between computer syncing (have to manually sync the files with third party software and it gets sloppy sometimes as it isn't ment for that). In the cloud daily back ups however would be really nice (I realize you are just wanting to do the software side of things, but maybe you could strike a deal with a bigger sync service to keep things backed up and make it real easy in your program, like allowing it access to the sync service and uploading every night or something like that? Just so it would be in the background and hands off).

Anyways that seems to be what I struggle with in just a big homebrew operation.

billtzk said:

I would not use any web-based software. There's no assurance of privacy and confidentiality in any web-based system. Software loaded on your own system, especially on a standalone system not connected to the internet, will enjoy relatively greater security.

Click to expand...

100000% agree. Not to mention I'm then relying on an outside system, and if it goes down than my business suffers. I'm more than capable of keeping my in house system, backups, etc spot on.

It has to run locally, cross platform.

nukinfuts29 said:

Many of us have a series of software we already use, but like anyone else I'm always open minded. I have been eyeing up this for my brewery software, as my current software does not offer everything I need.

http://www.orchestrateam.com/sites/files/media/OrchestratedBEER-Brochure.pdf

The biggest downfall for me is the same with this one as it is with many.....no Linux support. If you want to be taken seriously what you design HAS to be across all three major platforms.

Click to expand...

I thought that poster in the PDF looked familiar. I was just looking at a Photoshop tutorial earlier this week that used that exact same poster:

Creating an Old-Collage Effect Poster | Psdtuts+