How good is Beersmith's convert tool?

[Erythro73]

Hi all,
I'm preparing myself for a soon-to-be second batch. A lot of the recipes here, on this board, are for all-grain brewing, but I'm doing brewing with malt extract and specialty grain.

I noticed Beersmith's Convert tool, to go from an All-Grain recipe to an Extract (or the other way around). Is this any good? Will the final beer be about the same with the two versions converted with Beersmith (as close as possible)? Is it possible that is goes wrong? This tool can expand the number of recipes I can do by A LOT.

Thank you!

 

[bferullo]

before i went AG i would use the tool. I think it worked pretty well. Only way to tell for sure would be a side by side comparision i suppose. The only thing to be careful about when convertiing recipies are what grains are "mash only". I don't think all AG recipies are readily convertible, but I am still a relative brewing newbie

 

[hal2814]

Keeping in mind that BeerSmith is shoving a square peg into a smaller round hole, it does a pretty good job. With some recipes, it won't really matter if you use grain or extract. Then there are some recipes that just aren't going to be the same without a mash. And there are going to be some recipes you flat out can't convert without a mash. I guess what I'm saying is that BeerSmith converts as good as anything can, but there are going to be times when the AG recipe and its extract counterpart are very different.