So I haven't been brewing much the last couple years, maybe just a couple few beers in Fall. I'm on Linux and had been using Beersmith 2 for a few years. Unfortunately after upgrading my machine earlier this year and just recently installing BS2, it turned out to not be compatible.
I've been trialing BS3, however it is a bit buggy (a lot of entry fields are truncated, makes it difficult to view and enter data). Honestly, I haven't been a fan of the workflow, and ver3 didn't seem to offer anything new of use to me.
I decided to give BeerTools Pro a try. Nearing the end of my trial, and finally got it figured out. I really like the workflows, it's faster and for me easier to run through recipe design. I also like the brew steps report and the automatic calculating of volumes based on temperature.
However, I found it was not really predicting final gravity. Changing mash temps, even dramatically (145 -> 155), did not. Changing yeast strains with very different attenuation (WLP001 with 73-80%, WLP002 with 63-70%) did nothing. Thinking maybe this was a bug in the version I had, I submitted a ticket.
Unfortunately, the reply I got did not help. I was told, basically, that 1) BTP does not try to predict terminal gravity because there are too many variables and no good algorithm for predicting and 2) Linux is behind versions but there is no timeframe for an update.
So here I am looking for something new. I want something local, not online/cloud based. I've read that BrewTarget hasn't been updated in quite awhile. I'm playing with BrewCipher, which looks VERY promising, though being OpenOffice based it's a bit laggy and a lot of the fields are truncated (and it's protected so I cannot adjust font size or anything to accommodate).
At this point I'm probably either going to stick with BrewCipher or just buy one of the brewing calculation handbooks and do it myself from scratch. But, I was hoping my, now apparently overly long post, may find some other ideas from the community. Thoughts?
Thanks!
I've been trialing BS3, however it is a bit buggy (a lot of entry fields are truncated, makes it difficult to view and enter data). Honestly, I haven't been a fan of the workflow, and ver3 didn't seem to offer anything new of use to me.
I decided to give BeerTools Pro a try. Nearing the end of my trial, and finally got it figured out. I really like the workflows, it's faster and for me easier to run through recipe design. I also like the brew steps report and the automatic calculating of volumes based on temperature.
However, I found it was not really predicting final gravity. Changing mash temps, even dramatically (145 -> 155), did not. Changing yeast strains with very different attenuation (WLP001 with 73-80%, WLP002 with 63-70%) did nothing. Thinking maybe this was a bug in the version I had, I submitted a ticket.
Unfortunately, the reply I got did not help. I was told, basically, that 1) BTP does not try to predict terminal gravity because there are too many variables and no good algorithm for predicting and 2) Linux is behind versions but there is no timeframe for an update.
So here I am looking for something new. I want something local, not online/cloud based. I've read that BrewTarget hasn't been updated in quite awhile. I'm playing with BrewCipher, which looks VERY promising, though being OpenOffice based it's a bit laggy and a lot of the fields are truncated (and it's protected so I cannot adjust font size or anything to accommodate).
At this point I'm probably either going to stick with BrewCipher or just buy one of the brewing calculation handbooks and do it myself from scratch. But, I was hoping my, now apparently overly long post, may find some other ideas from the community. Thoughts?
Thanks!
