Mac Users? Do you use the brewing software I found?

[Steve973]

I've recently purchased a Mac Pro (intel), and I've been searching for the mac version of all my favorite programs. Of course, I love Promash and I have gotten lots of use out of it. Well, I stumbled across a free program called Homebrew Formulator, and it's pretty impressive. Apparently, it implements all of the BJCP guidelines and calculations, so I look forward to trying it out with my future all grain sessions. Are any of you familiar with it? And does anybody know if the calculations and predictions are on-par with those of ProMash? It'd be very cool if it was since it's a well-laid-out piece of software, and since it seems to have most (if not all) of what ProMash has.

 

[user 4295]

I have not tried it myself, but I have heard from some people on other boards that they like it a lot. I use Beer Alchemy on my non Intel Mac. It is a great program. I also have a PC laptop that I had to get in order to run some investment software, so I also have Promash.

If I had an Intel Mac I would either use Apple's Boot Camp to run Promash natively in Windows, which has the disadvantage of having to shutdown OSX and reboot into Windows (rumor has it that OS 10.5 will allow both the Mac OS and Windows to be running simultaneously) or you could purchase Parallels Desktop for Mac, which is an emulator that will allow you to run Windows software within OSX.

John

 

[Cregar]

I have been reviewing Beer Alchemy... I will be buying it shortly as soon as I get my equipment. I didn't really care for Homebrew Formulator... it's a Filemaker runtime application and it seems like those never run very well. If was re-created using the built in OSX programing suite, it would be a great app.

 

[Catfish]

Damn you OS 10.2.8!!
Guess I'll be using Recipator for now.

 

[Cregar]

<hijacked>

wow catifsh... your behind the times

The New OSX

</hijacked>

 

[Steve973]

Wow, BeerAlchemy seems very cool from the web page and screen shots. Do you find that it's very accurate in its predictions? Is it comparable to promash's accuracy, in your experience?

 

[Steve973]

I just downloaded the trial version and I was messing with it a bit. It's laid out well, and pretty easy to use. The one thing I noticed about it is that it seems to calculate OG a little bit lower than it should. For example, i put in 10 lbs of pale ale malt, and it thought that the resulting OG would be 1.055 after boil. Doesn't this seem to be a little bit low?

 

[andre the giant]

I entered some of my old recipes in Beer Alchemy and it provided me with some interesting info... but I really need to work with it more to find out how useful it would be to me. Unfortunately, the trial period has run out, and I'm not in the mood to buy right now.

Boy do I love my macs. I have an ibook and a G4 at home, and two dual G4 towers a couple G4 powerbooks and a MacBook Pro at work... Oh... and one HP running Avid Xpress in the corner. :S

 

[DrewsBrews]

I, too, use BeerAlchemy. I also have a PC I use as a slave for a couple PC programs I need, so I tried Promash on it. Frankly, that sucker is fugly.

BeerAlchemy is well laid out and supported by a programmer who uses it himself (not to mention that any program running natively on a Mac looks like a work of art compared to Windoze programs). He's made some pretty big advances in features in the six months or so that I've used it. He's also responsive to questions and comments.

Regarding the discrepancy you found in the OG, you have the ability to edit the characteristics of the ingredients you use. They're all in separate lists. The creator of the program is in England and used ingredients he's familiar with. Of course, if you use a different brand/manufacturer than he did, you'll have different values for your ingredients.

If you buy it, just be sure to keep a handwritten list of any changes you make because updates will overwrite them.

 

[jcarson83]

What ever happened to doing your own calculations?

 

[Steve973]

What ever happened to doing your own calculations?

The answer is simple - technology.

 

[jcarson83]

The answer is simple - technology.

Well I use a spreadsheet. But I did it myself so I have a good understanding of where the numbers are coming from.

 

[Steve973]

I'm a java developer, and I was considering writing my own app for that purpose. I tried contacting whatever the brewing chemists' organization is called to get the data for the calculations, but they never responded. My motivation was because it doesn't seem that Promash is updated very often, and I wanted to create something that I could update as often as I wished, and I intended to make it open-source so that others in the homebrewing community could collaborate on it. A third bonus is that it would be platform-independent, so that all of our friends could use it, free of charge, no matter what type of computer they were using, as long as they had a working JRE.

 

[jcarson83]

I got most of my info from various websites. As far as the equations no one really agrees on the best way to do it. But most of them come up with similar numbers.

 

[Catfish]

I'm a java developer, and I was considering writing my own app for that purpose. I tried contacting whatever the brewing chemists' organization is called to get the data for the calculations, but they never responded. My motivation was because it doesn't seem that Promash is updated very often, and I wanted to create something that I could update as often as I wished, and I intended to make it open-source so that others in the homebrewing community could collaborate on it. A third bonus is that it would be platform-independent, so that all of our friends could use it, free of charge, no matter what type of computer they were using, as long as they had a working JRE.

I've got a few textbooks if you want any of the calculations I will try and find them for you.

 

[ian]

I just downloaded Homebrew Formulator and have spent about an hour dinking around in it. Looks OK to me, if a little clunky.

I tried downloading and running Beermeister but it won't run and I'm wondering if its only for 10.4 like Beer Alchemy. I too am short on upgrades to the OS. Damn 10.3.9!!

Can anyone confirm about Beermeister for me? I don't see a version requirement beyond OSX on anything.

 

[clayof2day]

I also use Beer alchemy. I used to use a spreadsheet and OG comes out really close to the spreadsheet I used to use as well as the Recipator. I do like it as you can modify all the characteristics of your ingredients, add new ones and all that stuff. If the OG is coming out low I would say first make sure you have it set at the right efficiency calculations as well as batch sizes.

Matt

 

[Brewsmith]

I'm going to have to try out Beer Alchemy. My new G5 is a blast, but all of my recipes were previously done on my now dead PC using promash. I'll download it tonight and give it a whirl.

 

[Cregar]

Beer Alchemy will import files from Promash

 

[Brewsmith]

Too bad I didn't back them up... I did however keep good notes and printouts from recipes.

 

[Steve973]

Yep, the .rec import ability of Beer Alchemy is pretty cool. Sometimes the import isn't 100% accurate, but at least you can confirm and adjust during the import process. Beer alchemy seems to be really great. The jury is still out on whether or not it's better than Promash. Fortunately I have Boot Camp on my Intel Mac that allows me to run windows, so I can run Promash and compare it to Beer Alchemy.

Yeah, I'm a geek.

 

[scottl]

I use BeerAlchemy as well, great program.

For all you not running Tiger it will still launch, it's just a little shakey. I use it at home (w/ 10.4) mostly, but when I'm at work (w/ 10.3) and want to add in a recipe or muck around it works as well.

Under 10.3.x it will give you a message when starting it up that it's not guaranteed to work but it will still run. Just beware when importing or exporting a large number of recipes because it tends to crash.

 

[Brewsmith]

I just downloaded it yesterday. Fairly easy to use, although I'm still trying to adjust to the format. Adding new ingredients has been fairly easy. I've been copying all my recipes in. Still have about ten more to go. The recipe summary looks nice and clean and easy to find everything. We'll see how the brews go this weekend using it.

 

[user 4295]

Here is a link to a .zip file that contains the Promash recipes of just about all the AG recipes available from B3. These files are also easily imported into Beer Alchemy.

Recipe files

John

 

[Steve973]

Here is a link to a .zip file that contains the Promash recipes of just about all the AG recipes available from B3.

Cool!!!!!!!

Um, what's B3?

 

[Exo]

Some nice recipes in that file. I think someone likes their hops!

 

[user 4295]

Cool!!!!!!!

Um, what's B3?

B3 is short for the Home Brew Supply House Beer, Beer & More Beer. They also have a very good Forum as well. Not as fun as here though, but very informative.

John

 

[Brewsmith]

Well the recipe seems to work out great in Beer Alchemy. The color and est. gravity seem to come out right on. I'm running about 75% efficiency on my system every time and the numbers in the program are dead on. I've had a little trouble with the mash calcs though. The strike water seems to come out low. In other software I just set the thermal mass to 0 because I preheat the mash tun, but the results in the program come out a few degrees lower than other software.

 

[Cregar]

Looks like Beertools.com is coming out with software for OSX called Beertools Pro.

Looks pretty interesting.

 

[barrycycles]

Don't for get that BeerTools Pro is also going to be for PC also....even thou there may only be a few of us left...wink wink

B