Beersmith inventory feature - is it useful?

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Sadu

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I have started keeping a bunch of ingredients on hand so that I can take advantage of free shipping over $100 on orders and not have to plan brews weeks in advance. Since I do mostly 1 gallon batches I can stock half a pound of each specialty malt (which costs a dollar or so) plus big bags of my favourite base malts and make up recipes on the fly. I have 20 or 30 small bags of malts at the moment plus 6 hop types in the freezer and 4 different yeasts in the fridge. I'm really loving it so far, and this lets me brew a wide range of styles.

How useful is the Beersmith inventory feature for tracking how much grain / hops are left? All my recipes go through Beersmith. At the moment it's not a huge hardship to look through the malt bucket at reorder time, but if people are getting good success with the Beersmith inventory then maybe I should give that a try.

Just interested to hear how people manage their inventory.
 
I have started keeping a bunch of ingredients on hand so that I can take advantage of free shipping over $100 on orders and not have to plan brews weeks in advance. Since I do mostly 1 gallon batches I can stock half a pound of each specialty malt (which costs a dollar or so) plus big bags of my favourite base malts and make up recipes on the fly. I have 20 or 30 small bags of malts at the moment plus 6 hop types in the freezer and 4 different yeasts in the fridge. I'm really loving it so far, and this lets me brew a wide range of styles.

How useful is the Beersmith inventory feature for tracking how much grain / hops are left? All my recipes go through Beersmith. At the moment it's not a huge hardship to look through the malt bucket at reorder time, but if people are getting good success with the Beersmith inventory then maybe I should give that a try.

Just interested to hear how people manage their inventory.

When I first started using Beersmith I used the inventory feature, but quickly became tired of how time consuming it was to maintain. I ended up creating an Excel spreadsheet with a tab for each ingredient type (hops, grain, yeast, adjuncts) and found that much easier to maintain. If Beersmith were to employ a favorites or tagging system where I'd see only my favorite ingredients that would be a start. What I'd really like is to be able to edit ingredient information via a grid view instead of having to double click on each ingredient.
 
The inventory feature has gotten better with this latest version. My problem with keeping the inventory up to date was always -- ME. I would forget to click on the 'remove from inventory' or remove a recently brewed recipe twice. Now there is a warning that pops up if I've removed a recipes ingredients from inventory.

Still, I keep a spreadsheet mostly because I do buy base malts in bulk and can monitor inventory levels more easily. I also track usage and cost by recipe on my spreadsheet and use the average price and ending inventory to update BeerSmith annually.
 
I tried to use it, but seem to have trouble remembering to click the damn button, so I've given up for the time being.
 
Inventory management might be slightly improved, but just what does it mean when it warns you about "recently" removing recipes? A month, year, 5 years? It really needs to have a removed checkbox and/or date so you can see that it's done.
 
It's an inventory system. It's only going to be as good as how good you use it.

I don't use it at all. (But I also have 3 copies of BS; on my home computer, laptop, and work computer, for whichever one is convenient for me to sit down and build a recipe on. it woudl be hard to track inventory on 3 distinct softwares.)
 
I use it and had all the right amounts in a laptop that crapped out. I have added the malts, hops etc. that I have in stock but not the right amounts, yet. When you are designing a beer that will be brewed, without making an order for ingredients needed, it is nice to know what you have.

If you don't have the list updated with at least the varieties you have, you will have to get up, go look to see if you have any, then come back to the computer and continue until you get to the next ingredient that you are unsure of....

I hope Brad adds a feature to tell you whether you have already removed the ingredients from inventory or not.

Which reminds me, I have a couple of recipes to use the remove items from inventory option.......
 
I would use it only if the inventory synced up with the phone using the cloud. Which it doesn't (I am pretty sure).
Otherwise I might as well use Evernote list (or use Notes etc.) that is always synced up across devices. The reason is - I am usually at the LHBS figuring out if I have some hops for the recipe I want to brew. And I have my phone but no laptop.

But I don't even update my Evernote list religiously (current is out of date by at least 2 months). Beersmith would be nice if it could pull ingredients from the braw log folder automatically. If I have to spend any time regularly managing my own inventory, that's not going to work for me. I might as well just walk over the to freezer/fridge/garage and check my hops, grains, yeast etc.
 
Reviving an old thread here.. but wondering if Beersmith 2 has an inventory that can be synced across 2 computers/mobile now.

I don't want to even waste time adding all my ingredients if not. I do keep an inventory in excel, which is in drop box, so if I'm at store I can reference it. But it would be nice if they could sync this feature across accounts. Or if somehow I can install my home computer's copy of BS into dropbox, so at work, just use that copy, and it sees the same profiles, inventory, etc. as at home.
 

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