Beersmith2: Um what's the point?

So I've been thinking about getting some software. I just downloaded the trial version of Beersmith2.

Right off the bat doing the equipment profile it asks about fermenter loss and loss to trub and chiller.

Okay aren't I downloading software so that I don't have to figure this out?

I'm sure that there are other things that the software is good for, but right off the bat there is information that I don't know. I can go to another online calculator that will actually figure this out for me.

Pretty disappointed already.

 

Well, there are equipment profiles available to choose from as a starting point.

I find many brewers are tweakers and prefer to dial in their equipment settings with equipment specific numbers that they have verified.

 

it's great software when you learn how to use it. you need to configure your equipment profile. have you watched any of the how to videos?

 

Any software is going to need to know what your system does.
It needs to know how adjust all of its measurements to accurately give you correct temps and volumes.

It don't automatically know if you lose .5 gallons or .25 gallons in your tun. It don't know if you lose .5 or .25 gallons from kettle. Or how much boil off you have. Combine all that and you have almost a gallon swing there.

Take the time to measure once. Plug it in, and it will figure all the rest for you.

 

I just don't see the point.

There's not a formula with all of this fantastic software that knows the answers? How can it vary that much that there needs to be a specific profile?

IMO we should be able to tell it the kettle size, grain amount, hop amount and it figures all of that stuff out.

If I have the same pot as somebody else are they going to have a different amount of trub? No they're not. Is the boil loss going to be different with the same pot? Maybe a shade but not by much.

 

So pick the most appropriate from the pre-written profile.

Trub loss may vary much between set-ups but boil losses definitely will as they are more dependent on the btu of the burners used and the relative humidity of the geography.

 

Um, ... because it does. People have differently-sized/configured mash tuns and kettles. Your valve might be higher than mine. Maybe I have a dip tube to get every last drop from my boil kettle. Maybe you're using an IC so you have no loss to chilling, but I'm using a pump and plate chiller and lose 2 quarts.

We don't all have exactly the same equipment, so how could any software automatically know exactly how much to factor in as losses for all these different stages, right out of the box?

How is BeerSmith supposed to know what kind of pot you have? You understand that there are many different sizes/shapes/configurations of pots, right?

I think you'd be surprised. Altitude, weather, and vigor of the boil (i.e., the power your burner is capable of, and what you have it set to) can all affect the boil-off rate by a considerable amount.

 

oh... i think i see the problem, you downloaded the wrong version. you want magicbeergeniesmith 3.1.

 

Here's the deal:

You tell the software the size of the pot.

You also tell the software what you're using to chill or how high the probe is.

The software is missing all of this information that we should be able to put in.

 

Just out of curiosity. What was it about said online calculator that sent you looking for something else then?

 

There's not a formula to figure all of these things out for you? Really?

How about this calculator for example:

http://pricelessbrewing.github.io/BiabCalc/

Lots of stuff here that is missing from Magic Beersmith.

So why spend the $?

 

You're oversimplifying. The same pot can be configured with all kinds of different dip tubes, each of which may have a different inherent "loss". Some brewers may have perfected a whirlpool technique in that same size pot, leaving all the trub in a neat pile in the middle, and they draw out clear wort from the side of the pot using a 90 degree pick-up tube. Some brewers use a false bottom in their BK, which can affect it. Others use a hop-taco to filter hops, others use hop bags suspended from a hop-spider.

In short, the software is good *because* it allows you to fine tune these things to your specific system.

Anyway, if you stick with it, you may find the value in a hundred other things this software does for you, but for this part, you need to get to know your system. If you're unsure, put in a placeholder value and then fine tune it after the first brew session.

Hope this helps!

 

But it's easier to just tell it how much to use as "dead space" in the kettle. And you need to tell it the same value for your mash tun, too, and people use widely varying vessels as mush tuns (pots, rectangular coolers, round coolers) and manifolds. Also, I like to prop up the end of my (rectangular cooler) mash tun opposite the end of the valve, to maximize how much I'm able to drain from it. Some people don't do that. So what value should BeerSmith assume for mash tun "dead space?"

I really think you're making a mountain out of a molehill here. This stuff is obvious and trivial, and you only have to do it once. If you weren't using the software, you'd still have to figure these things out, or you'd have no idea how much wort you'd end up with at the end of your brew day.

 

Looking for more.

Quick calculations for figuring out gravity for different grains etc. I was looking for an all in one.

 

It takes maybe a hour with a bucket of water to go in and figure out your deadspaces in the mash tun or kettle. It might only be something like 1/2G depending on how you handle trub (does it get whirlpooled out or do you pour everything into the fermenter?).

This thing can calculate/estimate damn near everything from parameters like mash temp/time, yeast quantity/age/type, and equipment. You can easily scoot around the timing for hop additions even in cases like FWH or mash hopping and get an estimate which can vary depending on volume, gravity, etc.

It's not perfect - I'd really like to see a way to organize malts/ingredients in the window by type or function - but it does a lot of handy things without you having to do all the calculations by hand.

 

What you are suggesting would involve many more metrics input in order to get a reasonable calculation from it.

Instead, beersmith has you running a few test to give it a baseline starting point.

 

For some reason when I brew with magicbeergeniesmith 3.1 my IBUs are way off...

Honestly though, use BeerSmith, dial in your equipment and you'll find out how great it is. There's no easy button when it comes to the setting up your equipment, just do it once and your done. Then again, there's something to be said for doing all your own calculations, maybe give that a go?

 

Even putting aside your nonsensical complaints about equipment profiles, BeerSmith has a number of other useful features, such as allowing you to fine-tune a recipe to dial in the gravity, bitterness, and colour without having to manually crunch the numbers each time. It makes developing a new recipe (and keeping it in style) fun, rather than drudgery.

I also frequently use the Refractometer tool to calculate the final gravity of my 1-gallon batches (since the straight reading is skewed by the presence of alcohol post-fermentation).

Those features alone are easily worth the cost to me ($28, or about the cost of a really good batch of beer).

 

I am not seeing anything there that would not need be adjusted to a specific system.

You would still need to determine your boil off rate from actual use. I do not BIAB so cannot speak for why dead space losses do not apply but would still not assume that trub losses do not vary from system to system based on heating and cooling capacities.

 

someone should stick to extract

 

No, you're not and no, you can't. No software is going to be able to know how much wort you're losing to your fermentors and chiller and boil kettle and mash tun.

 

Are you verifying that the AA% is correct for the hops you are using, using the correct IBU calculation methods, and checking for pellet/leaf.

I had always found that there was "something" I overlooked initially with each recipe I initially keyed into software that caused the calculated results to vary from the recipe base.

Most often it was that the AA% varied between what was available to me and what was used for the recipe. Thus, the quantity had to be adjusted to match the recipes intent.

Or, are you meaning something much more. Are you comparing tested final IBU versus calculated?

 

Overall I appreciate the replies, the legitimate non emotional replies that is.

I think I'll give it a run and see what other features are available that will help in future brews.

I was just thinking that there should be formulas to make it easier so as not to experiment as much. Although this may be the case that it does take a lot of experimentation out, I see that future versions could contain this other 'missing' data.

 

You only need to put your equipment profile in once. After that, for every recipe you brew, beersmith will tailor that recipe to your system and let you know exactly what to expect. If you like to get recipes from other people (like the recipes here), they will only work for your system if interpreted through a recipe program like beersmith. Otherwise, you are brewing someone else's recipe that is tailored to their system.

 

I was specifically referring to IBUs in magicbeergeniesmith 3.1...(it was sarcasm)

My IBUs are spot on with BeerSmith2! Cheers!

 

Realize that any software for brewing is a 'modeling' of the process. The more information you give it about your process, the more accurate the model becomes.

As several have stated, the software cannot know what your particular equipment is or how you operate it. For instance, I have a 5.5 gallon pot which I use for BIAB. I choose to overproduce my wort and leave about a quart of wort in the pot. Someone else may throw the whole lot into a fermentor. Same equipment used differently.

Think of it like a GPS. When you first get it, the GPS has no idea of where you call home is. Once you tell it, it can guide you.

 

There are a lot of online tools that are free to use so i cant see myself buying that app.

 

I opened up this thread kind of expecting a different discussion, so I'll just ask the question and see what you guys think.

For someone who doesn't have Beersmith yet, is there a significant difference between Beersmith and Beersmith2? I've really just been waiting to acquire a "brewing laptop" at which point I'll make the purchase, and I guess I'm curious about any big differences (if any?).

Honestly I haven't put much research into it yet (will do after I get that laptop!) and figured this might be a thread where it was being discussed is all. More so looking for anything I should be looking for or watching out for.

 

BS is an awesome program and very well supported/designed by the creator, if you have questions you can actually email Brad and he will respond! IMO, IF the capability DID NOT exist in BS to calibrate to your specific system, then this would be a shortcoming of the SW. BECAUSE WE CAN calibrate exactly to our specific systems, BS is much more accurate and you can therefore be much more repeatable in your brewing.

Watch some of the videos and use the SW a few times, the basic equipment profiles are ok but probably none will exactly match your system. And as stated earlier, the more dialed in you get the SW, the better it will calculate your brews.

 

I bought* it and love it personally.

*Had some Amazon credit so technically it was free after using the credit, but after using it I can easily say I would have paid the money to buy if it came to that.

As everyone else said, dial in your equipment and processes and it will help you achieve/maintain consistency. Those equipment losses are things you'd need to know even if you didn't use tools. If you did not know trub loss, boil off rates, equipment losses, etc then you could end up with 6 gallon batch after boil one run, and 4.5 gallons after another.

Sure there are tons of online tools to do it, but I can do everything from my Samsung S5 - no laptop needed.

For that matter, I don't even need an internet connection if I am storing the recipes locally. I can also show anyone at any given time my recipe, because I always have my phone on me.

 

Brewtarget. Investment issue solved

 

You seem to have too many poor assumptions here that lead you to believe similar setups should have the same performance. For an identical recipe, factors that may vary between setups could include:

Diameter of kettle
Vigor of boil
Use of finings
Use of whirlpooling
Use of hop sacks
Temperature/humidity
Whether or not you care about trub getting into your fermenter
Mash tun dead space

You can brew once and take good measurements and pretty much have a good feel for these things.

 

As many have mentioned, you can select the pre-populated profile that best suits your needs and go from there. It'll get you close, sure. If you want to get spot on, dump 1 gallon of water into the start of your process and transfer it, measuring how much you have left (for me, from the Mash Tun to the Boil Kettle). Record that value. Fill the boil kettle up with 1 gallon, transfer it through your chiller (if you have one) and measure how much you gather. Record that data. Bam - you've got 90% of what you need by moving 1 gallon of water and it took about 3 minutes. Record actual real-life data when you boil your wort to get expansion and boil-off data if you want it. You're now 99% of the way there and it took near zero effort - but more effort than just picking a profile that was close enough.

I'm waiting for BS3.0 that does all the brewing for me, and knows what beer I want to brew without me putting anything into the recipe.

 

That's the Google glass version right?

 

Are you saying that BS3.0 will know what I have in inventory for grains and hops and tell me what I need to brew using what I have? <sigh> I will probably hold out for 4.0 then when the software will also measure out my water and preheat it for when I get up in the morning, all ready to brew.

 

Hopefully that one can interface with some kind of Bluetooth Breathalyzer lockout mechanism. That's a brewday feature that a lot of people could use.

 

If there are other online tools or software packages that do not require a certain number of inputs then they are simply ignoring them or making default assumptions for the sake of simplicity. Of course there's going to be a balance between simplicity and accuracy but you can't have both pegged at the same time.

The thread was started with a defeatist attitude. It could have gone a different way and garnered a lot more constructive responses.

I've been trying to adapt to Beersmith 2 for a while now having used Beer Tools Pro for many years and I'm still having trouble with it because it's a change.

 

I used BS 1.4 for a long time, then upgraded to 2 when it came out. I still miss 1.4.

BS2 corrects some errors (e.g., how boiloff was calculated). It adds a bunch of new features. However, the biggest change was a new GUI that I really don't like. Although it has all the functionality I could ever ask for, the GUI is definitely half-baked.

 

Interesting...thanks for the feedback!

 

I agree I could've handled the whole 'what for' reasoning better. I did go onto brewers friend website and found what I was looking for though.