what is the best brewing software?

oliver tate · Post by **oliver tate** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:00 pm

Hi there, not sure where was best to post this,

I am looking at getting a beer recipe program and would be interested to here what people think is the best. Up until now I have used the free beer engine for my extract brews and the basic biab spreadsheet for some BIAB brews. I am going to have a go at a three vessel ag brew soon but will still do biab brews for smaller batches. Is there a program that covers both of these? Part of the problem I have had so far is that when I have converted recipes from the beer engine program to the biab spreadsheet they have given me very different hop amounts when I have scaled each of the brew lengths down to my biab brew length (9.5 litres), not sure why?

Anyway, I also have an android phone, so is there anything on the market which also has a android app as I don't have my pc to hand when brewing

Any advice much appreciated, I did try searching for similar posts but could not find anything similar.

oliver tate · Post by **oliver tate** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:01 pm

Hi there, not sure where was best to post this,

I am looking at getting a beer recipe program and would be interested to here what people think is the best. Up until now I have used the free beer engine for my extract brews and the basic biab spreadsheet for some BIAB brews. I am going to have a go at a three vessel ag brew soon but will still do biab brews for smaller batches. Is there a program that covers both of these? Part of the problem I have had so far is that when I have converted recipes from the beer engine program to the biab spreadsheet they have given me very different hop amounts when I have scaled each of the brew lengths down to my biab brew length (9.5 litres), not sure why?

Anyway, I also have an android phone, so is there anything on the market which also has a android app as I don't have my pc to hand when brewing

Any advice much appreciated, I did try searching for similar posts but could not find anything similar.

AdyG · Post by **AdyG** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:06 pm

BrewMate is a good freeby, I was using it for BIAB just with normal all grain recipes and it was pretty accurate.

I've since switched to Beersmith 2, which cost me about £18 but you get a free 21 days trial. It is favoured by a lot of people on here and is very customisable to your brewing style.

chris2012 · Post by **chris2012** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:18 pm

BeerSmith is very good imo, it has an Android,iOS,Windows,OSX & Linux app too.

Dave S · Post by **Dave S** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 2:20 pm

Yeah, although I've never done BIAB I was puzzling over why/how a recipe would differ between AG and BIAB, after all, BIAB is AG. But I agree Brewmate is OK. I've also used BrewTarget which I thought was great, but I got a discount licence for Beersmith 2, (£13 I think) and now I use it exclusively.

oliver tate · Post by **oliver tate** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 3:16 pm

Dave S wrote:Yeah, although I've never done BIAB I was puzzling over why/how a recipe would differ between AG and BIAB, after all, BIAB is AG. But I agree Brewmate is OK. I've also used BrewTarget which I thought was great, but I got a discount licence for Beersmith 2, (£13 I think) and now I use it exclusively.

Thanks for replies. I cant get my head round why the hop additions are different, could it be because 1 uses ibu and other one uses ebu? I thought they were the same thing. The bittering additions were about the same but late additions very different. Anyway, I will check out suggestions tonight, thanks

Apologies to admin for posting the thread twice, not sure why it did that!

vacant · Post by **vacant** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 4:52 pm

I don't get too hung up about bittering "exactness". I find it amusing that a pack of hops might claim to be 7.45% AA - two decimal places? Please!

I think AA decreases with time and storage conditions.
Is this AA an average from the wholesaler's entire harvest? The plant(s) my cones come from may be very different.
I've never met anyone who (without the numbers) has commented that a sample home beer was "double" the bitterness, of someone else's they'd just tried.
Similarly, tell any difference between a calculated 28 and 33?
We don't worry that hop packets don't list a flavour strength or aroma strength. What? No numbers to plug into some brewing software? We wing it.

Maybe I'll reclassify my hops as low (e.g. around Saaz), medium (EKG?), high (Target) and anything above 15% can go in the "mental" category

Post by **orlando** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 5:30 pm

BeerSmith.

It is the only one that is really developing. I understand there is a major upgrade coming that will incorporate a lot of new developments in home brewing and with its tablet and smart phone options it is the most sorted software out there.

edonald774 · Post by **edonald774** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 6:04 pm

I'm a big fan of beersmith for the pc and my android phone

chris2012 · Post by **chris2012** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 6:09 pm

One cool thing I like about BeerSmith, is that it can share your recipes with your devices through the 'cloud'. Admittedly you can only share 15 at once for free though.

Matt12398 · Post by **Matt12398** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 6:31 pm

Beersmith for def.

It could be that the different software uses different hop formulae i.e. Tinseth vs Daniels, Rager or Garetz.

Vacant +1

chrisheartsbeer · Post by **chrisheartsbeer** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 6:36 pm

+1 for Beersmith: apropos hop AA there is even a function for calculating aalpha loss depending on how you store your hops. Great piece of software.

Dave S · Post by **Dave S** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 6:45 pm

chrisheartsbeer wrote:+1 for Beersmith: apropos hop AA there is even a function for calculating aalpha loss depending on how you store your hops. Great piece of software.

But will you ever be able to tell the difference?

legion · Post by **legion** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:11 pm

I have brew mate and beer smith and currently prefer brew mate. Beer smith is a lot more full featured but I started with brew mate and find it easier to create my recipes.

Need to give beer smith another go...

Post by **orlando** » Wed Jun 12, 2013 7:27 pm

Dave S wrote:
chrisheartsbeer wrote:+1 for Beersmith: apropos hop AA there is even a function for calculating aalpha loss depending on how you store your hops. Great piece of software.
But will you ever be able to tell the difference?

Jim's Beer Kit

Practical Homebrewing

HomeBrew Forum

Sponsored by BREW-SCHOOL