Thoughts on Ideal Brewing Software

I want to reach out to the community to ask for your thoughts and comments on your ideal brewing software. From reading the threads, it appears that this doesn't exist as most brewers' setups are a mix of software, spreadsheets, paper notes and other tools.

Here are some questions to ponder that could help drive a thriving discussion:

• What are features you need/want to have?
• Is installed desktop software still preferred?
• Is a cloud solution
• How do you encourage the community to thrive?
• What is taboo in your opinion?

I could tell you what sucks. Spending $27 on software and not even be able to set it up. Being ignored on requests for help. Having the coder of the software forget how it even works because he is busier publishing a book on common knowledge. Spending time focused on going mobile and charging people money to keep their recipies in the cloud.

It's going to be pretty hard to break into this market with the market penetration of Beersmith. I personally use BeerToolsPro and that's what I know, but there is something to be said for all the community support you can get by using software that 60% of the online brewing community seems to use.

In my opinion, the silver bullet is working the software around the local ingredients inventory. I don't think a single software package has addressed the problem intuitively. Maybe the folks who keep stocks of ingredients are a small minority.

Beersmith can be killed. I'm working on it

At this point, beer software is a UI game. There are 8,000 tools to "do" everything, and likewise the way to stand out is to have a better, more comprehensive, and more intuitive interface than everyone else. The programming on this stuff is simple, relatively speaking. Think of your project as design problem rather than a programming problem and you'll find space int he market.

Sorry. Portable inventory and recipe management.
Calendar managed text alerts.
Maybe some type of social GPS thing to locate local brewers

Desktop is probably necessary because if you could code a phone app without a clunky interface you probably wouldn't be coding brewing software. IMHO

Shopping lists that can handle prices from several suppliers.

Inventory management that tracks age of ingredients as well as recipe subtracting.

I think the real issue regarding comprehensive brewing software is income. When you go cloud-based you'll have some horrible recurring expenses and your user-base is generally frugal. You can't do a one-time purchase since your server will continue to accrue while your income from the user will not. You can go 'Netflix' and charge $5/month but then again, other offerings are one-time cost of under $30 so you better have the features to back-up the asking price. You could go all-out with ads but then the users will end up hating you anyways.

Are there any thoughts on software that has a community process to make changes and add features? An example would be if there's a clearly defined bug in a formula calculation, it could be voted upon the correct fix so that everybody's recipes aren't doomed. Maybe the average user doesn't care about this, but I'm sure some people would care.

The most prolific example is the Java Community Process (JCP), which is used to make changes to the Java programming language. It seems like brewing software could potentially benefit from an open source model. But it could also be the death of a good idea if the community kills the inertia. There's definitely a fine balance to harnessing the community that I don't think has been achieved.

itshanney said:

Are there any thoughts on software that has a community process to make changes and add features? An example would be if there's a clearly defined bug in a formula calculation, it could be voted upon the correct fix so that everybody's recipes aren't doomed. Maybe the average user doesn't care about this, but I'm sure some people would care.

Click to expand...

Why, though? If there's a bug in the code, it should just be fixed. We're not talking about something with the level of complexity of Java. What is the benefit of adding a complex process to an obvious decision?

Although the new Beersmith software is a GUI fail, it's comprehensive. No, there's nothing more that I want from Beersmith. Frankly, adding more is likely to be more fail.

A good mobile app might be a notes app tailored for brewing. Dates, OG measurements, dryhop additions, tasting notes. Beersmith pushes this off into a couple of large editable text boxes. Allow importing a bsm or bxml file to the notes so the recipe could be included.

What do users of brewing software need, and want?
For me only 2 or 3 things.

1. Brewing water. Here is my profile, this is what I want, what do I add. I use BrunWater and other sheets, online apps. I don't need this integrated into a master program like BeerSmith. In addition, the creators of these tend to be specialists who "know their field" well and are more likely to get it right than a generalist. (this is free)

2. The only other useful feature to me is I have X pounds of grain and Y gallons of water, what temperature do I heat the water to to get my mash temperature? (this is free)

3. Maybe also Hops /bittering utilization. (this is free I think)


Software that predicts color, ok, cute, not so important.

Inventory management, ok, could be good, if you are disciplined. You can just as well use Excel.

Timers? No use for them, my PC is not outdoors.

Sharing recipes? I use Google or come here. No need. Always have access? No need, use Google.

Detailed Brewing notes? Ok, thats good. Can be done in Excel also.

"BJCP Style Guideline enforcement" feature (I think in BrewMate among others has something like this) that tells you if your beer is outside BJCP (or whatever your local beer judging group is) style guide lines.

I agree with the open source comment. That would make the most awesome brewing software ever. Have it so people can download other people's custom modules that fit into the program. Like I could code my own ideal Inventory module just the way I like it and have it still work with the original program and offer it to anyone else to use.

The ability to search and sort recipies.

Like show all recipies that contain the word "pumpkin" (not just title, but actual words in recipe file as well). Or perhaps list all of my recipies by the date they were entered.

The ability to list what recipes you can make (or almost make) with the ingredients you have in inventory. Also the ability to designate certain ingredients in inventory as reserved for a peticular recipe.

grathan said:

The ability to list what recipes you can make (or almost make) with the ingredients you have in inventory.

Click to expand...

+1000

I believe this feature fits perfectly with the existing "inventory" and "cloud recipe database" features.

I've been using qBrew for years now and it's software that I haven't outgrown yet even when going from Mr. Beer kit to my own all grain recipes. It's open source and I've been providing free updates to the ingredients database to keep it current for three years now.

qBrew Recipe Software

grathan said:

The ability to list what recipes you can make (or almost make) with the ingredients you have in inventory. Also the ability to designate certain ingredients in inventory as reserved for a peticular recipe.

Click to expand...

+1

BeerSmith had this prior to 2.0.

Obviously a brewing software needs to correctly calculate and formulate recipes with correlated expected results, so if that's a universal baseline what you're really asking are what additional features are required and what additional features might distinguish one solution from another.

Mobile ready. Personally, I am not interested in desktop solutions at all. I have a smartphone as almost everyone else does, or some other form of mobile computing device. When I have an idea or if I'm out in the garage brewing, I don't want to worry about a desktop/laptop holding any portion of my process.

Calendar integration as others have suggested, so that your sessions are logged and you can receive reminders of when to sample, rack and condition.

Version control is something that is often confusing, but is necessary for any serious brewer. BeerAlchemy has a recipe/"batch 1 of recipe" hierarchy that works pretty well.

Inventory management is a great feature. Personally, beer alchemy's inventory function is nicer then BeerSmith for example, but it lacks the pricing feature built into beersmith. I don't think either one of them have implemented inventory management very well, but BeerAlchemy is ahead in my eyes.

Of everything that could be built into software, I think the ultimate "killer feature" is pretty obvious. Just take a look at the software forum here and see how many times the same questions are repeated over and over - it's quite obvious that none of these software solutions are intuitive at all at the outset.

I think the killer feature would be a system of "wizards" that would offer a common sense, step-by-step method to establish basic calibration. When you boot up your software for the first time, it should ask you "Do you want to setup your equipment?". What follows should be a very specific series of questions in order. Are you brewing Extract, All Grain or Partial? Do you have a mash tun? Is your mash tun a cooler? What size cooler? Does it have a manifold? A false bottom? A braid? Do you have a HLT? Is it a cooler, pot or bucket? Do you plan to batch sparge or fly sparge? Would you like to know the difference between them? etc.

If this was well done, it would even request you to perform physical tests to verify specific results. ie - now we're going to calculate the boil off rate of your kettle. Set up your burner in your brewing location, pour X gallons of tap water and begin to boil for X minutes. After x minutes, measure the remaining volume of water with a measuring cup and enter the number here...

I personally think that the whole point of brewing software should be to help you with your brewing. If you find yourself going to a brewing forum to help you with some software then something is very backwards.

No software is invincible. BeerSmith blows. People in this market have no vision at all, which is why I support iBrewmaster. It has its share of warts but at least the producer has a point of view.

I think the calibration part would be neat. I think it's sad all of the input beersmith gets, but it's really never gonna happen. The best coding innovation and motivation comes from the youth IMHO. I post ideas on the forum at beersmith, but after watching a video of Brad for the first time tonight I realize none will ever come to fruition. He seems more like Mr. Rogers. The progress with Beertools seems stalled as well. Lots of little coders making simple phone apps that don't really do all that much. I'm sure the market isn't great enough to financially support the amount of time needed to make a well-balanced program and someone with the skills needed could easily code something more profitable.

In the end I think I am just expecting too much from the software. I need to rethink my processes to not rely so much on software to make good repeatable brews, with manageable inventory. Who needs to store a bunch of old ingredients anyways? Who needs to be reminded of when to rack off the dry hops? It's love that makes good beer, and not some calculated spreadsheet.

Timers for hop additions would be good as well.

A method for comparing expected results with actual results, and for determining what errors are present in your equipment profile and efficiency settings that could explain these differences.

-a.

Oh, great selection ajp! I keep track of this info in a spreadsheet now. It would be awesome to use that as a way of directly adjusting brew house settings.

Free cloud storage plus all the other functions you'd commonly expect. I agree with MalFet that it's really a UI challenge at this point, at least for the desktop. Of the bigger ones that I can think of like Beersmith, BeerTools Pro, Promash, the interaction design is dreadful. I would focus on ease of use and learning curve.

I was just evaluating these three, and found Promash's "dungeons and dragons circa 1983" interface to be a real turn off. However at least using it makes sense to me. That's the task flow, how quickly you can answer your own question about "how do I do X?". I don't get that with Beersmith.

Another one: make all the calculations that are happening transparent. Nothing more irritating than trying to create a 5 gallon mash schedule only to have the software tell you to sparge with 7 gallons. Huh? Oh, uncheck a box somewhere, now it's telling you to sparge three times with 3 gallons each time. Get out the manual. Adjust mash tun empty space percentage? Really??

What about online alternatives? Hopville.com is very clean, and it's free, but doesn't have as many features. I just checked out brewersfriend.com, and it was pretty darned detailed. There are limitations to the free version, but the paid version is only $9.99 a year. I know homebrewers are cheap, but that sure doesn't seem like much compared with what I spend on equipment and supplies and gizmos. Anyway, worth checking out.

if brewers friend had inventory management, style recommendations by on-hand ingredients, and a calendar to help schedule brew events, it would be perfect! I am going to be signing up for the premium service. I've tried alot of the current crop of software offered, and BrewersFriend is one of the best out there...

I'm looking at it right now, it does have an inventory section. Not sure that it ties into recipes or not, since I haven't used it.

I just saw that - I forgot it was there, - Even better!

- B916

I'd like something somewhere between Beer Tools Pro and Beersmith in the equipment calibration department. BTP is too detailed and hard to set up and Beersmith has no Mash Tun calibration at all. The results are I almost never hit my initial mash temp when I preheat my plastic drink cooler. I usually go in too hot and have to stir to cool before putting the lid on the mash.

I'll (third, fourth, fifth) the calendar. I use a google calendar at the moment, and the "tasks" list to record brew date, dryhop/bottle/keg date, OG, FG, and ABV so I can have some basic stats on me at a homebrew club meeting. Anything more complex, and I'll have to get back to someone. I understand being able to access it off your phone (whole recipe) would be outside a program that is built for a pc/tablet, etc, but perhaps integration with a google drive, or dropbox element would get around that? At the least, give the user the option to set that up, but then the mobile/cloud thing is on the user to figure out. just a thought.

I'll (third, fourth, fifth) the "I have x grain/hops/yeast on hand, what can I make" feature.

And would it be terribly difficult to take the android "Shop Savvy" app (bar code scanner that checks all online/local retailers for price of said product) and incorporate that into a "shopping list"? Would let you know far enough in advanced whether to get it "online" or buy local (and where to buy it local to boot).

I've only ever used Beersmith 2.0. The help leaves alot to be desired. Granted I'm a sw tech writer by trade, but I still can't tell you how to use the "version" feature correctly.

How about the ability to have all volumes displayed as the same unit of measurement? It is annoying to have to have a calculator to figure out how much strike water I need (displayed in qts), when everything on my system is in gallons. But my sparge water is displayed in gallons...