beers software recommendation please

BrewBoyJoe · Post by **BrewBoyJoe** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 4:45 pm

Dear All,
What are the software package of choice for all grain homebrewing? I hear Beersmith mentioned a lot but with so many freeware programmes out there is it really necessary to pay good money for software? If the answer is yes then I’d probably pay it! It’s around £20 I think… tho paypal does give a poor rate so I’d need to work it out!
Initially, to ensure I knew what I was doing I plugged the equations into Excel and did things longhand. This became time consuming pretty quickly and I just want something that works quickly and is flexible to US and European units and is generally user friendly, working out Brewhouse efficiency, manipulating hop and grain bills to my specs quickly. Loading recipe’s of others.
I’ve been using Brewers Friend and find it a bit glitchy! Particularly with the grain bill it doesn’t seem to work in a sensible way! The hop additions and IBU calculartor seem to be inline with what one would expect so I think that bit works well!
What do most people use? Do I need to part with my hard earned cash!
Cheers
Joe

Post by **themadhippy** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 5:13 pm

i've stuck with beer engine, http://www.practicalbrewing.co.uk/main/ ... eerengine/ simple,yea a bit dated but its free and works under wine without any problem

Bazz · Post by **Bazz** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 8:17 pm

I use Brewmate, free, simple to use and hassle free, ideal for a technical dim wit like me.

BenB · Post by **BenB** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 9:22 pm

I love Beersmith. I rarely pay for programs and I've got the PC and mobile versions (albeit the mobile version I got on a 50% Amazon deal). Love it!!!

Hanglow · Post by **Hanglow** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 9:42 pm

I used to use Brewtarget which I liked a lot but it deleted my entire database of recipes by itself and I couldn't recover it, so not that unless you are meticulous about saving the database yourself every time

Brewcipher is really good and free, it has an excellent water treatment part based on the recipe. IT's a spreadsheet only so you have to save individual recipes rather than as a database
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id= ... sp=sharing

I paid for Beersmith and like it

legion · Post by **legion** » Mon Nov 23, 2015 11:54 pm

I like brewmate which is free, paid for beersmith but continue to use brewmate.

jimbothenav · Post by **jimbothenav** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 12:53 am

Brew Mate touches all the bases for me. I tried a couple of other free progs but quickly settled on Brew Mate as it is simple to enter ingredients with nice easy to read out of the predicted results.

gobuchul · Post by **gobuchul** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 1:21 am

If you order Beersmith from this Aussie website, it's only about £13.

It's very good and well worth it my opinion.

http://brewadelaide.com/retail/index.ph ... cts_id=162

brewnaboinne · Post by **brewnaboinne** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 2:17 am

Beer engine works for me, and it's free.

Ren · Post by **Ren** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 6:28 am

Beersmith and bru n water is what i use

Steveicky · Post by **Steveicky** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 8:19 am

I use Beer Engine which looks a bit dated but works well.

After a breif departure to several other bits of software I returned to Beer Engine as it seems to be excellent for tweaking recipes.

BrewBoyJoe · Post by **BrewBoyJoe** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 12:34 pm

I'm sick of messing around with poor brewing software! Others have obviously got some of the above to work well for them but I've struggled! I liked the PR vids for brewsmith and will go cheap using the Ausy site! The recipe function... 100,000 rated recipe's that can be amended to your brewing conditions and all the calculations done for you! That all sounds pretty useful! I never pay for anything IT wise so they must have done a good PR job on me!

Post by **orlando** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 1:05 pm

BrewBoyJoe wrote:I'm sick of messing around with poor brewing software! Others have obviously got some of the above to work well for them but I've struggled! I liked the PR vids for brewsmith and will go cheap using the Ausy site! The recipe function... 100,000 rated recipe's that can be amended to your brewing conditions and all the calculations done for you! That all sounds pretty useful! I never pay for anything IT wise so they must have done a good PR job on me!

BS2 is at least updated, it is the most likely to continue into the future and adapt to changes in brewing and home brew technology, bloody bargain.

vacant · Post by **vacant** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 1:16 pm

I've used Joliebulle for quite a few years now. Nice clean interface and it can import Beersmith recipes fine (just tried it). I wouldn't recommend it as the developers are Swiss and their english is worse than my french but google translate helps and they fix reported bugs

BluePanda · Post by **BluePanda** » Tue Nov 24, 2015 3:48 pm

Another recommendation for BrewMate here

Jim's Beer Kit

Practical Homebrewing

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