Software

What are the pro-cons of some of the brewing software out there. I downloaded the trial by "Promash" and even though I didn't expect to brew with it I found it to be a bit confusing.

B

I use beersmith so I can not comment on the usability of promash. I find the software valuable for recipe formulation and calculating things like sparge temps, boil off, efficiency, etc. If you are interested in stepping outside the kits and following others recipes, I think it is pretty much required.

I've been using ProMash, and I'll admit that it is rather intimidating at first. But, after a little bit of reading and help from here and from friends, I like it a lot. It is actually quite flexible.

However, being an application programmer myself, I can say that sometimes flexibility is a bad thing. It usually increases complexity, and there's something to be said about a simple program.

I'd just try a few and see what seems most intuitive for you. You may like it for awhile, then decide to switch to something else. No biggie.

skidkid267 said:

What are the pro-cons of some of the brewing software out there. I downloaded the trial by "Promash" and even though I didn't expect to brew with it I found it to be a bit confusing.

B

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I am not certain of pros & cons. Too often we want to set ourselves up to, "do battle". That is not always necessary in politics, (I served eight yeasrs as a state legislator.), and certainly not as home brewers.

But there is forum here dedicated to software where you will find much information.

You have identified two respected sw programs available to us.

It looks very helpful but I don't know if they have a Mac version.

Brew Target is generating some buzz in the software forum. Its freeware. I've played with it some and it looks pretty good.

Beavdowg said:

It looks very helpful but I don't know if they have a Mac version.

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I use BeerAlchemy. I haven't tried the others, but if you have an Intel Mac, you could install Windoze, either through an emulator like Parallels, or through Bootcamp.

homebeerbrewer said:

I use BeerAlchemy. I haven't tried the others, but if you have an Intel Mac, you could install Windoze, either through an emulator like Parallels, or through Bootcamp.

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I've been using BeerAlchemy as well and had no complaints.

I recently started using Beersmith. As another poster said, the software is very intimidating at first (especially for someone that doesn't know how to make a recipe from scratch).

During my first allgrain attempt, this software was essential. I used a kit from AHS and plugged the info into Beersmith. The software took into account the equipment I was using and formulated the volumes and temperatures necessary to hit my gravity and batch size targets. Beersmith will also produce complete brew day directions based upon the recipe and brew method you're using.

I highly recommend plugging in a recipe and then tweaking it in Beersmith to see how adding/removing items effect the beer. Just tinkering around in this manner has taught me a lot.

Beersmith also has calculators for EVERYTHING. There are calculators for everything from determining AA deterioration of stored hops to converting refractometer brix to SG.

Again, the software seemed intimidating and unnecessary, but after just one allgrain brew day I can say I wouldn't want to live without it.

from what i understand beersmith will soon be available for mac, version 2 is due out in the next few months and will run natively.

TexasSpartan said:

I've been using BeerAlchemy as well and had no complaints.

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I have no complaints either. Like I said though, I haven't used the others to compare it to. BeerAlchemy does everything I need, and then some.

Beersmith seems to work fine under Linux using Wine (on Debian Testing). This is mildly ironic, but oh well.