Brewtoad shutting down

CornyKegs 728
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Years ago, Brewtoad used to be Hopville. It was a semi-decent resource for online recipe creation. It later became Brewtoad. In the process, there were some database changes that destroyed existing recipes. The values were all there, but they were no longer the correct ingredients. If your recipe used to have 12 pounds of Cargill Europils, it might now say it was 12 pounds of Durst Vienna.

I never went back after that fiasco.
 
Where is the best alternate to Brewtoad that (1) I can import the xml files to and (2) I don’t need to pay a subscription?

Also, grateful for the pen and paper brewing logbook I keep. They won’t be taking that away from me!
 
Well, nuts. I liked Brewtoad. Had many recipes on it. @garethliam I have used BrewersFriend, but it's $ for more than 5 recipe saves and it's subscription/yearly. I have also used BrewGR which is free, but I'm still working on its small quirks. There's BuildABeer, BrewEngine & EZRecipe for online and a myriad downloadable like Recipator and Brewtarget.

I have tried them all and also have BeerSmith. I had gravitated to Brewtoad for the easiest for me to use, but just as I always say, everyone likes different things. For instance, I don't like lima beans. People who do are not bad people, just different. (And wrong). but I digress.

You'll have to search and try them all to find what you like.
 
I'm fairly bummed those guys are going out of biz - it was by far the best UX and UI in recipe formulation - what are others doing moving forward? I'm not a fan of Beersmith, although I like the podcast.
 
I used it when it was Hopville and it worked well for me. I then went to Beersmith 2 for more control and features. When Brewtoad took it over I took a look and at that time did not like the changes.

I believe you can import the recipes to Beersmith but it is a paid for program. You can buy a copy or get a subscription. There are advantages either way depending on your needs.

There are other online and downloadable programs that are free. I can't name them off the top of my head. A search should find some.
 
For those that use BrewersFriend - can you just have 5 recipes on the free version at a time or is it you get to create 5 recipes and that's it? I just need something to work out the numbers before I brew, then it goes into pen and paper from there if it is successful.
 
Free BrewersFriend allows SAVE only 5 recipes and you cannot delete any (there's the rub).
But you can make as many without saving as you like.
You cannot link water profile adjustments to a recipe unless you save a recipe however.
 
Beersmith seems like a good way to go. It's pretty cheap, will run offline, offers cloud storage, and has tablet versions for phones/tablets. The learning curve can be a bit steep.

I think it'll be around for a long time. At least you're not totally at the whim of a cloud-based system.
 
shoreman said:
For those that use BrewersFriend - can you just have 5 recipes on the free version at a time or is it you get to create 5 recipes and that's it? I just need something to work out the numbers before I brew, then it goes into pen and paper from there if it is successful.
Click to expand...

You can only save 5 recipes at a time, but there is no limit to how many times you can edit a recipe. For about a year I used the free version like that. I would have 5 recipes I was working on, when I was satisfied I'd export or write them down, delete everything and start it as different recipe. I finally started paying for the subscription once this was not a short term hobby.
 
What a bummer. I use their water temp calculator. It seems to give me the exact right temp to strike my grains. I own beersmith. I wish I understood it enough to get an accurate equipment profile so it could tell me the temperature.
 
was wondering when this was going to happen. used to be a nice simple and useful tool as hopville. when it went to brewtoad they wrecked it so bad it just wasn't usable anymore. i'm guessing the authors/owners bit off more than they could handle.

good riddance. there's so much better out there.
 
shoreman said:
What's better out there? Every piece of software I try is so clunky and over complicated.
Click to expand...

to each their own.

i spun up my own sheet once i learned enough. i still leave pH prediction to brun'water or some others though. if i'm doing a repeat recipe i just adjust based on past results.
 
Might I suggest a notebook and a pen!

use BF for the water calculations


Aamcle
 
shoreman said:
I'm fairly bummed those guys are going out of biz - it was by far the best UX and UI in recipe formulation - what are others doing moving forward? I'm not a fan of Beersmith, although I like the podcast.
Click to expand...
Beersmith gets much easier after you have dialed in your equipment profile accurately. Took me what seemed like forever to get it correct, but it's an amazing program. And gets much easier to navigate and look at after spending some time with tutorials. Or just plain screwing around with on your own.
 
Well that news sucks. Brewtoad was my go to for inspiration then I'd usually plug the recipe into BS and tweak for my equipment and tastes.
Regardless of whether the site was good or not, it's still sad to see such a massive amount of information get trashed.
 
they trashed it years ago when they changed the name and the whole site. was never the same.

maybe they have a backup of the old site and can just spin it back up???
 
Another who left Brewtoad for Brewer’s Friend. Works just fine for me.
 
shoreman said:
What's better out there? Every piece of software I try is so clunky and over complicated.
Click to expand...
I really like the Brew Father web app.

The only knock is that it doesn't have a large public recipe DB, but you can easily import beer.xml files and has a very full list of ingredients and profiles to choose from and customize.

Give it a try.
 
shoreman said:
What's better out there? Every piece of software I try is so clunky and over complicated.
Click to expand...

When it was Hopville I used it. For me it was TOO simple. It gave you a workable recipe but did not give enough control.

Beersmith is a tool, not a plug and play. You have to learn how to use it. There are a ton of videos that run you through the program. You do have to make, then tweak your equipment profile and you have to work on some settings. Once that is done you can work up a recipe quite quickly. If I wanted to do a simple recipe I would think I could do it in about 10 minutes.
 
mopar440_6 said:
Regardless of whether the site was good or not, it's still sad to see such a massive amount of information get trashed.
Click to expand...

The "wayback machine", at https://web.archive.org/, may be an option.

I tried it when the initial "beertoad is shutting down" posts came out. I had no problem browsing to a couple of recipes. I tried it again today, but the server appears to be overloaded at the moment.
 
I have used several recipe calculators but I don't think I ever used brewtoad. That's a bummer they're going belly up though...
I have a copy of beersmith 2 and I like it but it's just too robust for what I need. When I was planning a small nanobrewery it was nice to scale my homebrew recipes up to larger sizes but I mostly just used it for recipe storage. I have always kept a hard copy of all my recipes in my "Brew Book" along with brewday notes, SG's, tasting notes, etc...
I have since moved from beersmith to an app on my phone called Wort. It does everything and it's pretty easy to use. It's free and I've yet to find any limitations on it but I only have 5 or so recipes saved in it since I use my Brew Book in conjunction. The Wort app does all the strike temps, mash volume, sparge volume, all the mash calculations, all the SG's, and you can add new grains and hops to the database easily, or change AA%'s on hops that are already in the app. I have an Android phone so I'm not sure if it's available on iPhone or other platforms or not. If you're in the market for a new, easy, cheap, and accurate, brewing calculator you should at least check it out. It's pretty much all I need for the way I do things.
 
For those of you who are also downloading your saved recipes from brewtoad and don't want the .xml format (or want to do twice the work like I do just in case you want to import a .xml) you can save the web page of each recipe as a pdf by using the chrome extension "fireshot" and saving the entire page as a pdf.
 
aamcle said:
Might I suggest a notebook and a pen!
Aamcle
Click to expand...

I use a notebook and pen and have actually upgraded last year to this Recipe Journal, its great and totally work the $9.

Homebrew Beer Recipe Journal

https://amzn.to/2BtXXx8

I do like to work the recipe out and brew it a couple times before it makes it into that Journal for a repeat brew. That's what I used Brewtoad for or to work out ideas when I might stumble upon a recipe in a mag or the forums.

Brew Father looks pretty good, I'm going to check that out, thanks!
 
Bs3. Once you get it setup it's great. I wasn't happy with the ph tool initially but after using it more I've found that using about 70% gets me we're I need. Were as brunwater required about 130%. I like that bs3 is all in one. But you so have to put in the effort of recording your numbers and setting the equipment profile properly to get good results. Cheers
 
I use free Brewer's Friend and Brun Water for mash pH.
Blazinlow86 said:
I wasn't happy with the ph tool initially but after using it more I've found that using about 70% gets me we're I need. Were as brunwater required about 130%.
Click to expand...
That's a cool idea. I'll have to compare my numbers with Brun Water vs BF and apply a simple adjustment, and THEN see which is more accurate. It would be more convenient to use BF for mash pH adjustment.
b-boy said:
At least you're not totally at the whim of a cloud-based system.
Click to expand...
I print my recipes and take all my notes on paper :)
 
I have used iBrewmaster for several years now - it is no longer in operation and has been kind of in the same boat. I have it on an old iPad and I am just waiting for the day it totally becomes useless. In the mean time, I generally always just e-mail the recipes to myself if I want to make sure I preserve them. Not sure if Brewtoad has that same option - but it is a quick, easy way to at least have them backed up somewhere that you can get to again pretty easily.
I try to keep handwritten copies of the most important recipes, and have been meaning to transfer recipes to Beersmith.... but, have been behind on doing that.
 
We had a number of customers reach out to us at ChoiceHops about recovering their recipes and brewlogs from the now defunct BrewToad. Since the world could benefit from more home brewing during this pandemic, we thought we'd help them out and build a simple BrewToad account recovery tool. We wanted to share it with others who may be in the same boat.

If you previously had a BrewToad account and want to recover your recipes and brewlogs, you can find our recovery tool here:
https://choicehops.com/brewtoad-recipe-recovery/

All you need is your original BrewToad username, which you can search for. The utility will set you up with a ChoiceHop account, which you're welcome to use or just download the data from. Either way, we hope your brewing this weekend. Cheers!
 
support_AJg said:
We had a number of customers reach out to us at ChoiceHops about recovering their recipes and brewlogs from the now defunct BrewToad. Since the world could benefit from more home brewing during this pandemic, we thought we'd help them out and build a simple BrewToad account recovery tool. We wanted to share it with others who may be in the same boat.

If you previously had a BrewToad account and want to recover your recipes and brewlogs, you can find our recovery tool here:
https://choicehops.com/brewtoad-recipe-recovery/

All you need is your original BrewToad username, which you can search for. The utility will set you up with a ChoiceHop account, which you're welcome to use or just download the data from. Either way, we hope your brewing this weekend. Cheers!
Click to expand...

I tried it out - recipes appear to all be there! Very cool to be able to play with them again - they have all been living as exported pdfs.
 
marc1 said:
I tried it out - recipes appear to all be there! Very cool to be able to play with them again - they have all been living as exported pdfs.
Click to expand...
Awesome, glad it worked for you Marc1! We have access to all the original raw BeerXML files and can restore any account - both the recipes and brew logs. And you can download the recipes or play with them in ChoiceHops. Cheers!
 
support_AJg said:
We had a number of customers reach out to us at ChoiceHops about recovering their recipes and brewlogs from the now defunct BrewToad. Since the world could benefit from more home brewing during this pandemic, we thought we'd help them out and build a simple BrewToad account recovery tool. We wanted to share it with others who may be in the same boat.

If you previously had a BrewToad account and want to recover your recipes and brewlogs, you can find our recovery tool here:
ChoiceHops | A home for beer brewers

All you need is your original BrewToad username, which you can search for. The utility will set you up with a ChoiceHop account, which you're welcome to use or just download the data from. Either way, we hope your brewing this weekend. Cheers!
Click to expand...
Thank you! Thank You! Thank You! I'm glad to have access to my recipes.
 

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