Beer Smith ?

[Vossy1]

They'd be snookered with Beersmith then Perhaps they should lodge a support issue on the beersmith forum

Europe will soon sort em out as sacks aren't metric

[clogwog]

In Beersmith go to:

Tools
Options
Units

You can then set them to your choice of metric or imperial (US or English).
I have mine set on metric down to 1 gram increments. With this set up mine happily accepts 5003 grams of grains.
I don't want the system to work out the cost of a brew for me, I do it for a hobby, not commerce.

[delboy]

It does if you are only brewing 4.5 ltr's. I have just done it. It does make a difference. If the grain bill has four types and they should all be something ending in one gram and you up that to ten then it's 40 grams more and that does make a difference on a 4.5ltr batch. GO on try it
My point here is that it does not do everything i want it do. It actually does little along the lines of what I want it to do.

And i haven't even started on setting costs into it. Which you can't do effectively. So i'm just pointing out that it is a toy NOT a tool.

If a few grams doesn't make an iota of difference why do people post recipe's with exact weights? If it didn't make any difference recipe's would be
Bung in about 5kg of MO
Throw in about a handfull of crystal
put in some choc
Mash for whatever time you want at about 66C for 90mins but 68C for 3 hours is ok too
add any old hop you like.
boil for 60-90 mins. Up to you.
Yeast-whatever.

Best bitter/lager/stout/porter/IPA
All the same as it don't matter what you add.

Chill out? Why? I get told you gotta add this, add that, do it this way, that way, you can't do that, can't do this. Yet when i point out that BS isn't all it's cracked up to be i get accused of being too accurate and you don't need to be? Make your mind up. You've gotta mash for 90 mins at 66C but you can throw grain in thats near enough, or not? You've gotta sparge at 77C and your PH must be 5.3. But you can just bung in an amount of grain thats near enough, or not. Doing a DP historic IPA. You've gotta use fuggles or goldings or it won't be as it should. Why does that matter if the grain bill doesn't?
Jeez, lets get some continuity here or simply don't bother.

Its all just part and parcel of getting used to the process and getting a better understanding of it. If you understand the process in depth you get a feel for which things are highly crictical and what parts are simply bucket chemistry.
Here goes with one of my sweeping statements Show me a person who follows a protocol precisely to the letter and i'll show you a person who doesn't fully understand what they are doing (either that or they are a clock maker ).

Honestly though i went throught the same thing at the start but its like anything i guess once it becomes familar you automatically slip into RDWHAHB mode.

I have a lot of sympathy for what you say about beersmith, i downloaded it and after playing with it i came to the conclusion that i wouldn't bother getting a full copy as its just one more thing to worry about.
I tend to just steal my recipes from other people either that or bodge them together from scratch with maybe a little bit of help from clone brews and ray daniels while the water is heating up

BTW im also going to have a bash at your 'bung it in' recipe, it looks a cracker