Beer Smith Mobile (android) good enough stand alone, or do I NEED the desktop?

Title kind of says it

Do I need the desktop application or is the mobile version complete enough to work standalone without the desktop app? I've got some play store promotional credits and am thinking about buying the mobile app, but I'm not a beersmith user on the desktop.

The mobile version is the best phone brewing software I've tried, but it is nowhere near as robust as the desktop version. If you're looking for some simple recipe creation and convenient tools the mobile might be fine for you. I like the ability to keep inventory so the desktop version is what I use the most.

I started with the iPhone version (I now have the Android version) and could create recipes, use it on brew day, etc.

However, the Desktop version (as stated by snowveil) is robust and just for the inventory feature alone is worth having. You will also find that making modifications, creating recipes, etc. are all far quicker on the Desktop version.

The mobile version and the desktop version work very good together.

My typical workflow is: [DT = desktop, M = mobile]

[DT] Create recipe and store in the appropriate folder
[DT] Copy the recipe to the log folder (this is where you store the version of the recipe you are using for your brew day)
[DT] Change the name of the recipe in the log folder to include the brew date (what I use for versioning)
[DT] Copy my versioned recipe to the cloud
[m] Brew day - open the cloud folder to access my recipe. I can now use the timer, capture drew day info etc. As long as I'm working in the cloud, and info that I save will also be available at my desktop.

Also, you can always download a trial copy of the desktop version to try it out.

-Dan

I have both but never really used the mobile version (Android). I always have my laptop with the desktop version with me on brew day. I use the mobile version just every now and then for some quick checks.
One word of caution - be very careful with the recipes you store in the cloud. At least in the beginning of the mobile version there was no easy way of telling which version of the recipe you are looking at so I accidentally used an old version. Maybe I'm just blind or stupid, and maybe they have changed that since. Cheers!

Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably wait for now.

Does anyone know if I bought the desktop version would the mobile come with it?

MiddleButtCheek said:

Does anyone know if I bought the desktop version would the mobile come with it?

Click to expand...

Nope, not even a discount

I use the Lite version of the Android app for the calculators and brew day timers. I just store my recipe for the day in the cloud. I still use the desktop version for recipe formulation, even going as far as to access it with remote desktop when I'm on my Chromebook or tablet.

I migrated to the Android mobile version a few months ago when it was time to replace my aging and vulnerable XP computer, and because I left windows entirely and went with a ChromeBook.

Dealing with the mobile version on a tiny phone screen without a real keyboard was inconvenient, but not fair to blame on the platform itself – those issues are more hardware related. Using my Android tablet has largely solved that issue nicely. Now having used the mobile version for the last few brews, I find that I'm frankly starting to like it. Sorry, but it’s true. I find the menus more intuitive and less confusing. I still have access to the same database tables of malt, hop, yeast, water profile and brew-house profile and it still does all my calculations. I’m not a power user like some others on this thread that use it for managing inventory, pricing etc., so that could be a deal breaker if those are your needs. My use is purely for recipe creation, brew day timers, note taking and sharing recipes and other profiles with friends.

And by the way, I find sharing anything in BeerSmith way faster on my android than on windows – perhaps that’s just be me though. For example, I recently wanted to share a recipe with a brew buddy and it took about 10 seconds to send from my tablet (Open the recipe in “My Recipes” and hit the “copy” button) then another 10 seconds for him to receive it (Locate my recipe in “Find Recipes” and hit “copy&#8221. No muss no fuss and all done from his back deck over a frothy one. It is just as easy sharing water profiles, specialty malts, hops or yeast, or even equipment profiles.

I recently solve one of my long-standing frustrations with BeerSmith, but curiously thought of the solution on my mobile platform rather than my Windows version. My frustration has always been the software’s inability to solve for FG & ABVs based on my personalized brew equipment and/or fermenting processes. Unlike the ability to calibrate brew-house efficiencies which BeerSmith does very well (our’s is 81%, for example), I’d never figured a way to calibrate attenuation efficiencies (mine have typically been 7% better than the attenuation estimated by the Wyeast or White Lab yeast profiles). Entering in fake brew day readings and post-fermentation FG readings to compute more accurate ABV and attenuation values works, but IMO that’s a lousy way to design a recipe. My crude fix was to create a copy of the yeast I was using (Wyeast 1056 for example) and tamper with the attenuation numbers to match my 7% adjustment, then save as “1056Mod”. So now when I design my recipes, I simply select the modified yeast profile and all my calcs work out great. Rocket science this is not and this could have been done on the windows version just as easily. My point though is that it wasn’t, it was done on Android. And I believe at least part of the reason is that I’m finding the platform comfortable and intuitive.

Just food for thought.