Homebrewer's Toolkit Review
I've been brewing for about 8 years and have tried multiple brewing programs, including Brewtarget, Beertoad, spreadsheets, and eventually landing on Beersmith. I'm coming to this from the perspective of ease of use, how well could someone who has not brewed much pick up the program and run, and from the perspective of how well information is laid out for me on a brew day.
I am going to give the "Too Long: Didn't Read" version first, and then go into detail. This program is not very good, I'm very sorry to say. Information is not given in any kind of concise fashion, instead being spread across multiple pages. Rather than listing ingredients first, they are listed in bits and pieces off to the right, while the initial display has nothing but Style and Total cooking time like the length of my boil (the "cooking" time) is a relevant detail. The second screen has dial gauges for Color, Bitterness, Batch Size (do I need a dial for that?), OG, FG, and ABV.
Grains are on the third screen, for which my 6 grain Imperial Red only takes 1/3 of the screen, Hops on the fourth, Yeast on the fifth, Water Bill (which includes mashing, sparging, mash profiles) on the sixth, Botanical s on the seventh, Brewing notes and tasting notes on the 8th and 9th. Comparing to Beersmith, all of this information is displayed on the main page where I can see all of it, at once. Dial gauges are inefficient while slider gauges, while not as pretty, show just as much information in less space. Ingredients are all listed in Beersmith while they are listed separately and strangely in Homebrewers Toolkit.
Homebrewers Toolkit
The input interface is awkward. You click on Recipe Details, then you slide right to get to the type of ingredient you want to enter. Next you click on the arrow icon, not the grain icon, and slide right again to get to the grains. Now you slide up to get the add button. Your grains are always displayed horizontally so you really need to filter them. Click on the grains you want and click Add. Then you have to re-filter to get a new set of grains and click Add. Notice that we have not entered amounts yet so now we have to go to Brewing Sugars (?) and click on a grain and choose Edit. Under this next screen, you can enter the amount as well as change the category, potential gravity and maximum return. I'm not sure why I would want or need to change these values. The whole process is quite awkward and took a lot more time than on any other program I've used, even a web-based program where I would expect more clicks and steps. The same thing goes for inputting the hops bill, the yeast, etc.
Recipe Expected Values
But it actually gets worse. I typically do a single-rest mash, but the mashing profiles are not listed that way. The Mashing Schemes (chosen under Water Bill Mashing swipe up and choose Select Profile) are listed by style, and they all have a protein rest and most have 5 steps, including Beta-Glucanase, Protease, Beta-Amylase, Alpha Amylase, and Mash Off. I don't know anyone who uses mash profiles like this. Yes, you can delete steps but nowhere do I see where I can create a standard single-rest mash profile.
Grain And Hop Bill
The water volumes are also significantly off. Homebrewers Toolkit tells me I need 13.4G for mashing and 1.4G for sparging. This doesn't even come close to the volumes that Beersmith give me (and that I know are correct) of 11G for mashing and 7G for sparging (43.2Qt and 6.98G, specifically).
Recipe Style Analysis
The grain selections are quite limited and are missing nearly all of the commonly used Crystal malts. The Hops selections are also very limited (I got hits on about half of my commonly used hops, missing, among others, Willamette and Falconer's Flight). Yeasts are not listed by manufacturer or supplier so it's difficult to get specific yeast info without filtering and then filtering.
Terms are not straightforward: cooking time instead of boil time; hop "gifts"; brewing sugars instead of grains. Timers are not well laid out and equipment profiles are awkward and very limited.
I really had hopes. When I opened the program, it was attractive and clean looking. However, it is nearly unusable, at least to me. I like my information right in front of me, and Homebrewers Toolkit spreads it out over many sparsely populated screens. It's inefficient and awkward. It gets 10 IBU out of 100.
- Homebrewer's Toolkit:
- OS Windows 8.1 (available on the Windows Store)
- Cost - $9.99 (full featured demo available)
I've been brewing for about 8 years and have tried multiple brewing programs, including Brewtarget, Beertoad, spreadsheets, and eventually landing on Beersmith. I'm coming to this from the perspective of ease of use, how well could someone who has not brewed much pick up the program and run, and from the perspective of how well information is laid out for me on a brew day.
I am going to give the "Too Long: Didn't Read" version first, and then go into detail. This program is not very good, I'm very sorry to say. Information is not given in any kind of concise fashion, instead being spread across multiple pages. Rather than listing ingredients first, they are listed in bits and pieces off to the right, while the initial display has nothing but Style and Total cooking time like the length of my boil (the "cooking" time) is a relevant detail. The second screen has dial gauges for Color, Bitterness, Batch Size (do I need a dial for that?), OG, FG, and ABV.
Grains are on the third screen, for which my 6 grain Imperial Red only takes 1/3 of the screen, Hops on the fourth, Yeast on the fifth, Water Bill (which includes mashing, sparging, mash profiles) on the sixth, Botanical s on the seventh, Brewing notes and tasting notes on the 8th and 9th. Comparing to Beersmith, all of this information is displayed on the main page where I can see all of it, at once. Dial gauges are inefficient while slider gauges, while not as pretty, show just as much information in less space. Ingredients are all listed in Beersmith while they are listed separately and strangely in Homebrewers Toolkit.
Homebrewers Toolkit
The input interface is awkward. You click on Recipe Details, then you slide right to get to the type of ingredient you want to enter. Next you click on the arrow icon, not the grain icon, and slide right again to get to the grains. Now you slide up to get the add button. Your grains are always displayed horizontally so you really need to filter them. Click on the grains you want and click Add. Then you have to re-filter to get a new set of grains and click Add. Notice that we have not entered amounts yet so now we have to go to Brewing Sugars (?) and click on a grain and choose Edit. Under this next screen, you can enter the amount as well as change the category, potential gravity and maximum return. I'm not sure why I would want or need to change these values. The whole process is quite awkward and took a lot more time than on any other program I've used, even a web-based program where I would expect more clicks and steps. The same thing goes for inputting the hops bill, the yeast, etc.
Recipe Expected Values
But it actually gets worse. I typically do a single-rest mash, but the mashing profiles are not listed that way. The Mashing Schemes (chosen under Water Bill Mashing swipe up and choose Select Profile) are listed by style, and they all have a protein rest and most have 5 steps, including Beta-Glucanase, Protease, Beta-Amylase, Alpha Amylase, and Mash Off. I don't know anyone who uses mash profiles like this. Yes, you can delete steps but nowhere do I see where I can create a standard single-rest mash profile.
Grain And Hop Bill
The water volumes are also significantly off. Homebrewers Toolkit tells me I need 13.4G for mashing and 1.4G for sparging. This doesn't even come close to the volumes that Beersmith give me (and that I know are correct) of 11G for mashing and 7G for sparging (43.2Qt and 6.98G, specifically).
Recipe Style Analysis
The grain selections are quite limited and are missing nearly all of the commonly used Crystal malts. The Hops selections are also very limited (I got hits on about half of my commonly used hops, missing, among others, Willamette and Falconer's Flight). Yeasts are not listed by manufacturer or supplier so it's difficult to get specific yeast info without filtering and then filtering.
Terms are not straightforward: cooking time instead of boil time; hop "gifts"; brewing sugars instead of grains. Timers are not well laid out and equipment profiles are awkward and very limited.
I really had hopes. When I opened the program, it was attractive and clean looking. However, it is nearly unusable, at least to me. I like my information right in front of me, and Homebrewers Toolkit spreads it out over many sparsely populated screens. It's inefficient and awkward. It gets 10 IBU out of 100.
