Beersmith Reviews
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MrBungle
Active Member
I've been messing around with BeerTools Pro and it's very thorough.
Well, the big thing that Beersmith does is helps to formulate recipes by calculating things like expected gravities (figuring in your own efficiency) and IBUs and color. It also has calculators for things like the amount of strike water you need, temperatures, batch sparging information - basically, any calculation you might need done, it can do. It's a calculator that also works as a note pad.
It's a great tool, it's stuff that you could theoretically calculate yourself but it's a lot easier to use a tool like BeerSmith to handle the math.
It's a great tool, it's stuff that you could theoretically calculate yourself but it's a lot easier to use a tool like BeerSmith to handle the math.
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It's a glorified spreadsheet with a simplified means of organizing recipe files. What else do you need?
HoppyMaltPoet
Well-Known Member
I love beersmith. I use it for every brew day. Not only can I keep good notes I can estimate my color, IBUs, etc. Make adjustments to target what I want. I can also get a target gravity to see what my efficiency is. And while some people may claim no benefit in keeping track of efficiency, I do so to see how I can improve my process from batch to batch. I also can calculate ABV and calories, equipment, target mash temps, and strike water calculated pretty accurately. Sparge amounts etc.
Beersmith is great. I don't know what you're looking for in a software. But it allows you to create recipes quickly and easily. Once you set it up to match your brew system it helps fit everything into prarameters for your system. It allows you quickly to know if your recipe is in whatever style you are aiming for. It allows you to easily shift one paramter (like IBUs, or batch size, or gravity) and automatically shifts the recipe to reflect that. For example I'm putting together a recipe that I want to have 35 ibus. And I change the grainbill a bit tweaking the recipe, rather than having to re-calculate the ibus, you can click a button, then tell it what your target ibus you are aiming for, and it will calculate it for you)
Basically it has a ton of great built in features, has a great library of ingredients already in it, and is not difficult to use.
Basically it has a ton of great built in features, has a great library of ingredients already in it, and is not difficult to use.
How accurate do you think it is for tweaking recipes?
I win awards for my beers.....so I guess it's accurate enough for my purposes and the judges..... *shrug*
I really don't have a better answer. My beers turn out. That's really all that matters.
I suck at math....it give me numbers, when I mash/boil/wahtever and take a grav reading it matches...that's good enough for me.
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It's only as accurate as what you put into it.
If you don;t perform some due diligence to research the numbers on a grain and hop or haven't recorded average brew system parameters it will result in calculated junk.
But, if you take a reasonable amount of time to quantify some system parameters and check the numbers on your ingredients it become very accurate. At least as accurate as doing it long hand on a napkin.
I tried it for a few weeks....and then ended up up buying it. My brew day is long enough, Beersmith helps keep the time down for me. I usually have my laptop right with me when I'm brewing.
It really made the jump to AG very easy....along with all the great advice I got here on HBT.
It really made the jump to AG very easy....along with all the great advice I got here on HBT.
sportscrazed2
Well-Known Member
Thinking about buying as well. Is it still in active development? Using trial right now and it says copyright up till 2007
There is a v2.0 in development, from what I have read. Personally, I hope that it addresses my main concern about the application - the user interface. From a functional standpoint, it does what it advertises and does it well. The interface itself, though, feels dated and could really take advantage of some of the more modern interface design principles.
My other, more minor, annoyance with it is how it uses the apparently dead BeerML file format (although obufscated in the BSM files). Things such as brewing sessions would be nice instead of having the calendaring done directly against the recipe.
