What brewing software do you use with BIAB?
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i use Brewmate it's free and fairly easy to use
Beersmith works just fine for me.
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I've never purchased anything as I did not know up front how well it would function for BIAB. Most often I have used the calculator developed by 'priceless' and on his blog. Easy as pie! http://pricelessbrewing.github.io/BiabCalc/
I have tried to use the biababacus, but I am just not adept enough with excel. It looks GREAT but requires a lot of data entry and research into things like the Lovibond of every malt you use. I'll keep trying but I feel like I'm years away. http://www.biabrewer.info/index.php
I have tried to use the biababacus, but I am just not adept enough with excel. It looks GREAT but requires a lot of data entry and research into things like the Lovibond of every malt you use. I'll keep trying but I feel like I'm years away. http://www.biabrewer.info/index.php
Black Island Brewer
An Ode to Beer
I use BeerSmith.
ggriffi
Well-Known Member
+1 for Beersmith
WI_Wino
Well-Known Member
Brewtarget for me. I don't use the mash wizard though, just use it for recipe formulation and predicted gravities.
would steer away from iBrewmaster2 for this. Maybe I'm lazy, or just an idiot, but I struggle to get all my needs from the BIAB part of this. I use it for almost everything else I do with BIAB brews, but have never been able to get the mash part to work. ymmv.
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Another vote for BeerSmith, any time I've missed a number I've traced it back to my being my own fault.
pricelessbrewing
Brewer's Friend Software Manager
This comes up pretty often. Maybe I'll do a thorough write up and comparison.
There are quite a few free calculators out there, for obvious reasons I say mine's the best. It has a more features, is more accurate, and is completely flexible. Every variable is changable, so it can be used to any equipment or process,and not just full volume biab but also partial volume with sparge, or traditional mashes.
Beersmith is completely capable of doing almost everything mine does for biab mash. The things it can't do, but mine does, are hop absorption of wort, thermal expansion of mash or wort at any temperature (about 2-4%), or height of the liquid throughout the brew day. With that said, it is an incredible piece of brewing software. It is not very user friendly to me though, I'd rather use my calculator and keep recipe formulation and storage to beersmith.
Brewers friend just seems to separate imo. Need to use too many separate places to figure everything out.
With that being said, I focused on biab mashes and made it as user friendly, functional, and flexible as possible. There are some things most ppl don't use, such as the volume heights but I use it to check my boil off rates and make sure my absorption is where I expected.
There are quite a few free calculators out there, for obvious reasons I say mine's the best. It has a more features, is more accurate, and is completely flexible. Every variable is changable, so it can be used to any equipment or process,and not just full volume biab but also partial volume with sparge, or traditional mashes.
Beersmith is completely capable of doing almost everything mine does for biab mash. The things it can't do, but mine does, are hop absorption of wort, thermal expansion of mash or wort at any temperature (about 2-4%), or height of the liquid throughout the brew day. With that said, it is an incredible piece of brewing software. It is not very user friendly to me though, I'd rather use my calculator and keep recipe formulation and storage to beersmith.
Brewers friend just seems to separate imo. Need to use too many separate places to figure everything out.
With that being said, I focused on biab mashes and made it as user friendly, functional, and flexible as possible. There are some things most ppl don't use, such as the volume heights but I use it to check my boil off rates and make sure my absorption is where I expected.
pricelessbrewing
Brewer's Friend Software Manager
Np. If you have any questions about my calculator, feel free to ask. Brulosopher has a good video tutorial on brew smith, should be able to find it with a quick Google search.
GearDaddys
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Beersmith.. Once it clicks and you understand it, I don't know how you could get by without it.. At least for recepie formulation, scaling, and organizing.. Not to mention the wealth of tools that it includes..
haeffnkr
Well-Known Member
No one mentioned TastyBrew
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/recipe.html
It is great, it is free and very easy to use.
If you hit your volumes the numbers will be spot on.
You can back into the numbers to find out what your brewhouse efficiency is to figure that out also.
I tried Beersmith once or twice... made my head spin.
good luck
haeffnkr
http://www.tastybrew.com/calculators/recipe.html
It is great, it is free and very easy to use.
If you hit your volumes the numbers will be spot on.
You can back into the numbers to find out what your brewhouse efficiency is to figure that out also.
I tried Beersmith once or twice... made my head spin.
good luck
haeffnkr
monkeyman1000
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I've been using the Biabacus from BIABrewer for the past 2 years and really like it.
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BIABacus
Beersmith
Another vote for BeerSmith for recipe formulation, and Priceless' calc for water volumes.
Brew on
Brew on
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BeerSmith works well. If you take care in setting up your profiles effectively, volumes and gravity readings are spot on.
Personally, I use a combo of Brewer's Friend and the priceless calculator.
I think what you're seeing in this thread is kind of a mini polling of what's popular with brewers, but not necessarily what's the best software for you. So with that, I'll throw out a few things I considered in making my decision. Hopefully you can apply them to your situation and arrive at a good decision for you. I should also note that I only evaluated Brewer's Friend, Beersmith, and BIABacus. I took a quick glance at BrewToad but found it lacking so I dismissed it.
One, I wanted something that would allow access to all my brewing information (recipes and sessions) via the web, from any device, computer or mobile platform.
Two, it had to be able to store recipes and brew sessions in one easily accesible place, logically ordered so I could find them.
Three, it had to be easy to set up and have a logical user interface.
Item one winner: Brewer's Friend.
Beersmith has limited information that is accessible via the web (a few recipes I think). Also, it requires the installation of software on your actual computer hard drive. My opinion is that approach is a little dated. I rarely install actual software on my computer nowadays.
BIABacus is not platform neutral. You need Excel to use it. It does not play well in Google Sheets either.
Item two winner: Brewer's Friend
Both Beersmith and Brewer's Friend are equally capable of storing recipes and brew sessions, however because of point one above, my choice is BF.
BIABabacus is sorely lacking in this arena. But, cutting it some slack, it is only a spreadsheet that does some calculations and should not be expected to do this well. Although the creators have tried to incorporate this functionality, I found it clumsy to have a separate file for each recipe and other files for each brew session.
Item three winner: Brewer's Friend
Beersmith felt like the UI was designed by an enigneer. I'm an enigneer myself and know what it's like to pick up another engineer's tool and try to make heads and tails of it. It just wasn't laid out well and took too much time to set up.
BIABacus was easy enough. You just need to get accustomed to some of the terminology they use. One major drawback though. The last I checked, all inputs had to be done in metric. Sure, it would convert for you and show the imperial equivalent. But I want to be able to enter gallons and pounds, not convert to liters and kilos only to have the spreadsheet convert it back to gallons and pounds.
Brewer's Friend was by far the easiest to get up and running.
One more thing. Brewer's Friend also handles all my salt addition calculations and pH predictions. That wasn't even on my list of original wants and was a huge added bonus.
william_shakes_beer
Well-Known Member
I poke the recipie into my own spreadsheet and use tasty brew to look up values I don't already have available. Knowing where the values come from helps me become a more intuitive brewer.
Beersmith. Once I got my system dialed in and input into Beersmith I can pretty much hit all my volume and gravity numbers dead on. The program is great but it did take a me a while to understand the program.
The Scale Recipe is really handy since a lot of my brews would exceed the kettle limits so with a click of a button I get the recipe dialed down to what will fit.
The Scale Recipe is really handy since a lot of my brews would exceed the kettle limits so with a click of a button I get the recipe dialed down to what will fit.
LLBeanJ
Well-Known Member
Brewers Friend for mash pH calcs. Beersmith for everything else. I tried BF for recipes, but that was after having already been spoiled by BS and I found it to be rather underwhelming.
