Disappointed in iOS brewing apps

I’ve been doing some pretty extensive reading regarding brewing software, and I finally took the plunge and bought BeerSmith on iOS. After playing around with it for a short while, I wanted to rip my hair out. What atrocious design! Granted, I’m very, very new to this, but I could barely navigate my war around the app without wanting to cry (not really).

So, I took yet another expensive plunge and downloaded what appears to be BeerSmith’s biggest competitor, iBrewmaster 2. My hope was that, despite the tacky background and beer foam at the top, it would be a more elegant app with a more intuitive design. Literally within 15 seconds I wanted to delete it.

I’m seriously considering the brewing app approach altogether and just using Evernote (I love Evernote) to keep track of my recipes, Google Calendar to keep track of my schedule, and one of the several $1 brewing timer apps to keep track of my additions on brew day.

Why can’t these developers get their act together regarding UI? I appreciate that they’re trying to cram in all the features and info an advanced brewer might want in an app, but it feels just like that, crammed, and cluttered, and terrible.

Sorry for ranting, but I just wanted to share my thoughts with the community and see if anybody else has had a similar experience.

I figured out you can change the color scheme on iBrewmaster 2. That helps a bit. I'll keep exploring and see if my hate subsides

iBrewmaster is the best that I've found, although it does have some really annoying stupid bugs. I've given feedback and emailed them about these things, but they just can't seem to get their act together. When editing a recipe, sometimes it will jump to a different recipe after saving an item. Keep your eyes open for this, because you could end up editing the wrong recipe before you realize it. Also, after you save a mash profile into a recipe, it jumps out of that recipe, to the first recipe in your list. Neither of these have been bad enough to cause me to look elsewhere, as their calculations seem to be more accurate than most, and it's really easy to use.

I emailed them after the last update to tell them how horrible the colors were, and they responded by saying they've gotten more positive feedback than negative, which I highly doubt. In the very next sentence, they said they were going to add the ability to customize the colors, which tells me they've received plenty of negative feedback.

It's sad, because the original iBrewmaster worked flawlessly, but didn't have as many options as the second edition, but now, with more options, there are a lot more bugs.

If you haven't found the color options yet, they're under Setup > Custom Colors. I changed mine to the iOS7 option and it got rid of the horrible beer foam at the top of the screen and applied a general greyscale color theme. Supposedly you can choose custom colors, but...surprise! That feature doesn't seem to be working as intended.

Have you guys tried Brewer's friend? I rather like their iOS app.

Psycotte, I'll check out the free version. Thanks!

After playing around with iBrewmaster 2 for an hour or so, I'm totally shocked that they're selling this thing for the amount they are. IF it worked like it's supposed to, and IF it wasn't a steaming pile of design vomit, it might be worth it, but it's one of the buggiest and ugliest apps I've ever tried to use. Basic things like searching are completely broken.

On the other hand, I really like the UI of Brewer's Friend, but it doesn't currently have an option of exporting your data. You also need a premium membership

The biggest issue I'm having with these apps is that they're trying to be everything for everybody, but providing way to much information for someone like me who's just starting out. I don't even know what half of the acronyms are on some of the screens, so it's just visual clutter that I'd love the option to hide.

I think for now I'm going to write things out like an old school recipe and use a calendar to keep track of my schedule, and an app (or maybe just my iPhone's stopwatch) to keep track of timing on brew day. We shall see. I'll keep exploring.

I've tried them all. Trust me on this one, BeerAlchemy is the creme de la creme when it comes to iOS brewing applications. The UI is friendly and logical in it's design. Very Mac like if you will. The only short coming to the app is no integrated brewing timers.

Beersmith and IB2 on iOS are awful in my opinion. The UI is fragmented and just overly hard to use and implement.

Jim

Thanks Jim. I'll check it out once I'm willing to drop another $20

Ragtop232 said:

I've tried them all. Trust me on this one, BeerAlchemy is the creme de la creme when it comes to iOS brewing applications. The UI is friendly and logical in it's design. Very Mac like if you will. The only short coming to the app is no integrated brewing timers.

Beersmith and IB2 on iOS are awful in my opinion. The UI is fragmented and just overly hard to use and implement.

Jim

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Wow, I wasn't aware of this app. I'm definitely buying it. Funny thing is, I'm using an iTunes gift card I got from iBrewmaster. After the release of iBM2, I found that deleting an entry for a certain field (can't remember which one) caused the entire program to crash continually. They had to do a complete database repair. Just because I left an entry field blank!!!

Ragtop232 said:

I've tried them all. Trust me on this one, BeerAlchemy is the creme de la creme when it comes to iOS brewing applications. The UI is friendly and logical in it's design. Very Mac like if you will. The only short coming to the app is no integrated brewing timers.

Beersmith and IB2 on iOS are awful in my opinion. The UI is fragmented and just overly hard to use and implement.

Jim

Click to expand...

Just requested a refund on BeerAlchemy. Personally, I found it pretty difficult to use, unintuitive, not nearly as logical as iBM2. iBM2 has far more ingredients pre-loaded, and has a much more friendly user interface. I played around with BA for a number of hours, adding recipes, adding equipment profiles, simulating batches and brew days, and at the end, I was very frustrated.

iBM2 is buggy, and it pisses me off. I'm even going to record a video of the bugs and send it to them, since they can't seem to understand what's happening when I email them. However, it definitely has the best functionality, IMO. It's easy to use, logical, and all of its calculations are spot on. Even with the bugs, I haven't found a better mobile app. Still, nothing compares to Beersmith's desktop application. That's the best that I've seen, all around.

I totally agree about iBM2. It's incredibly buggy and pretty ugly, BUT it has the best features and layout. It seems like they're working on improving the app rapidly, so hopefully they'll get at least the worst of the bugs squashed soon. It really seems like they're avid beer people who just don't know that much about design or creating great software. Fingers crossed!

I was a little confused when I first started using brew smith on my iPhone but After playing with it it's totally the best I've tried! It has all the conversion tools I need all of the ingredients and descriptions I would need too! I have used it for three brews now and let me tell you the ability to enter my ingredients and have it develop the brew day schedule for me is really convenient. I'll be honest there are I few feature I'm trying to figure out but in all as a extract and part time allgrain brewer this more then serves the purpose.

Interesting how two users can have completely different opinions of the same product.

I'm a long time Mac user and found BeerAlchemy so mac like and user friendly. The ability to sync from my mac to iphone/ipad was amazing for me. Again, for me, it was the most logical and user friendly of all I've tried. I simply found IB2 atrocious to navigate and very fragmented.

Just my opinion.

I wish you well with IB2.

Jim

Ragtop, did you find any horrible bugs or missing functionality in BA? Reading the App Store reviews, it seems like it might be pretty but somewhat broken or not-so-thorough.

Ragtop232 said:

Interesting how two users can have completely different opinions of the same product.

I'm a long time Mac user and found BeerAlchemy so mac like and user friendly. The ability to sync from my mac to iphone/ipad was amazing for me. Again, for me, it was the most logical and user friendly of all I've tried. I simply found IB2 atrocious to navigate and very fragmented.

Just my opinion.

I wish you well with IB2.

Jim

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I find that interesting too! People are funny. I guess it all depends on our backgrounds and how we think. For me, BA just wasn't set up in the order my brain works. If I'm on the recipe tab, I should be looking at a list of recipes, not the first recipe in the list, with a separate button to bring up the list. Also, I don't want to see the water chemistry for every batch. I don't pay any attention to water chemistry, so it's irrelevant to me. I do want the function there in case I choose to use it in the future, but I don't need it spelled out on every recipe. Also, the ingredients were extremely lacking, as was the equipment profile set up.

One of my favorite features of iBM2 is the Batch List. Having a separate list of all of the batches I've done and being able to track each one individually is awesome. It makes tweaking and comparing recipes so easy, and you can make separate notes for each individual batch. This has really helped me refine my recipes. Also having the fermentation and bottling/kegging schedule laid out is really nice. The ingredients are pretty comprehensive, too.

I guess there truly are two types of people in the world: those who think in logical order, and Mac users. :cross:

TheZymurgist said:

One of my favorite features of iBM2 is the Batch List. Having a separate list of all of the batches I've done and being able to track each one individually is awesome. It makes tweaking and comparing recipes so easy, and you can make separate notes for each individual batch. This has really helped me refine my recipes.

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YES. This alone is enough to sell me on iBM2. They still have to fix those nasty bugs though.

TheZymurgist said:

I guess there truly are two types of people in the world: those who think in logical order, and Mac users. :cross:

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Being a mac user since 1986, I find this comment very humourous. I have tried various brewing apps though, and I find iBM to be the most intuitive and usable. I love the batch management feature and the fact that it has integrated brewig timers. As a European, I like the scaljng feature, which allows me to brew American recipes without having to calculate wverything by hand, and most importantly, to scale recipes fitting to my equipment, a thing that Beersmith fails miserably at. I agree with your criticism of BA, and the various bugs contained in iBM2.

Ah yes, the old Ford/Chevy analogy. Diversity is what makes the world interesting. I look at the BA database structure the same as iTunes. All my "parent" recipes are stored in the master library. From here, every batch I've created from the parent recipe is listed under the parent recipe and filed chronologically based on brew date. e.g. My house Pale Ale will show as parent and then I have 43 individual batches under the parent that I can quickly access. Once I open either a batch or the parent recipe, I can use the navigational buttons across the top to go directly to any area in the recipe by just touching the corresponding button.

I use a Braumeister 20L, but before I had a 10gal setup and I found it not to difficult to setup an equipment profile, once setup, when doing a new recipe, just select your equipment profile and it's ready to go.

I found BA's list of ingredients adequate for my use. I also really like the inventory module, once you complete a brew, you can update the inventory from your batch and it will automatically deduct the grains/hops/yeast/special ingredients used in the current batch from your "In Stock" inventory. You can also track your orders from the "suppliers" area. Once you place your order from the "New Order" module, you can then enter it into inventory automatically once received. It has great calculators and conversions. Scaling is achieved by changing an equipment profile, say from a profile that creates 10 gallon batches to a profile that generates 5 gallon batches.

Most other things are pretty consistent from Vendor to Vendor as far as features go. I do wish BA would include a brew timer. For me, that's really the only glaring omission I've found so far.

Jim

I really like BrewPal. It is easy to use for recipe creation and also has the brew day timers built-in.