Brewing software evaluataion

[Multigrain]

I have been a BeerSmith user for a couple of years and this week my license expire. I am in two minds if I should renew the license or not.
This post basically became a massive rant with my frustration with the BeerSmith program. I understand if most people cannot be bothered reading through it all (also, I am not an native English speaker if you find spelling errors..). But I am curious to hear what people are using and what features of BS you cannot be without.

When BeerSmith3 came I was hoping for it to be a proper upgrade of the program that it need so badly. Apart from an improved water chem section (which still have many flaws in my opinion) the "upgrade" was basically bug fixes. There are still plenty of things I can pick on, I might make a list later in this post and send it over to the BeerSmith team as feedback.
I generally like the software despite its flaws, but with BS3 a new pricing model arrived where you pay an annual fee. I decided to try it out for a year and to be honest I dont think the program is worth the annual cost, I expected more frequent upgrades/improvements not just paying for bug fixes.
Considering the userbase BS must have a pretty good cash flow, making enough money to upgrade their UI to something more user friendly and in time and make the program more dynamic. I much rather they create an awesome brewing software before throwing money at creating podcasts and articles, there are plenty out there already.

My main issues with the program are:
** This is the biggest flaw: Lack of proper documentation.
Sure Brad have created a few short videos about the features, but no where have I found proper documentation about the software or in detail description on how different features work and what effect it has to other variables. There are thousands of forum threads online where people are asking for "how to do this in BS" and people have basically found out stuff by playing around and finding out themselves or created hacks to make it work for them. Not good enough.

• Unable to set a global metric profile. I do BIAB and the default grain absorption is way off and there is no easy way of changing it. I mean what does "fl oz/oz of grain" mean!?
• Unable to create an "alternative" BIAB profile. I do a semi sparge BIAB and so the pre-made BIAB profiles does not allow for it. So i have to do a "hack" by modifying the global absorption rate instead of the biab with potential other side effects.
• Cluttered and non intuitive interface that easily throw you out. Every now and then I get weird values that are tricky to debug, sometimes it just does not add up, probably because of my BIAB profile "hack". Some input values appear to cascade in ways I cannot track. Basically I think BeerSmith try to be "clever" and do everything for you, but instead it confuses you. I would like to have more manual control.
• There are still features that are not working from BS2. Like the rating and versioning. I am sure the features work as intended, but its not logical to how I expect it to work and there are no documentation so I dont know how to use it.
• Their cloud service is horrible and clunky, I have lost recipes due to their cloud service. How I dont know, you dont get feedback from the software that a recipe is in their server. I much rather back it up on google or dropbox etc than using their service. But thats not an option.
• You cannot adjust ingredients "on the fly" in the recipe. For example the colour of the basemalt you use is lighter/darker than the most similar malt in the ingredient list. To correct I have to create a new copy of that ingredient and then add it to my recipe. Would be much better to be able adjust the colour for just that one ingredient in the recipe directly.
• To sum it up, too many undocumented variables that you cannot control.

So to round it of..
What are your experience with the program? If you have changed from using BS to another software, do you hit your numbers as well? Do you miss any features of BS?
I do a bit of programming myself, maybe I should just create a program that works for me and call it a day. A simple spreadsheet probably do it. Maybe someone has a spreadsheet already?

 

[RichardM]

I use Beer Smith to formulate my recipes and I produce good beers. I can't remember what the subscription fee is but it is not enough to bother me when I consider the use I get from it

 

[Smileyr8]

I use Brewtarget, its not perfect but its free

 

[Hanglow]

I used to use brewtarget and liked it a lot but it then decided to delete my entire recipe database for no reason so i binned it off. I now use beersmith 2 and find it good for most things and i find my way around it easily water enough. For water treatment i used the free mph water spreadsheet which is the best one available.

You can use the latest version of the mph water spreadsheet in the excellent BrewCipher 6 brewing spreadsheet which I can also recommend. It's free too, although not as nice to look at as dedicated software. If you are fine with the utilitarian look of a spreadsheet i dont think you can find anything better, paid for or not.

You can get it here
//drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-9BMe0xDqppODg1NjVjM2QtNjBjMC00YmM5LTgzN2UtYmNhYzk0ZTg0YWNm&usp=sharing

 

[Rodcx500z]

I use brewmate its free I find it very good easy to use, I tried brewers friend but couldn't get on with it

 

[The Baron]

Try Brewers Friend it free to try and you are limited to 5 recipes but you can print each one off and keep in a brewers log and just then edit the one you have printed to form a new recipe thus endless or you can just pay the subscription if you use it a lot and it stores unlimited recipes

 

[Rodcx500z]

Screen shot of brewmate

 

[Sandimas]

I'm still using Brewmate too, I like it's simplicity. I don't need all the other add-ons but appreciate it may be too simplistic for some.

 

[Brew_DD2]

I use Beersmith 3 on Mobile and I share a lot of the above frustrations. It's a great piece of software, but it is updated nowhere near often enough and it is buggy and the design is not intuitive. I'm really tempted to switch over to Brewfather as it is very similar, but I've gotten so used to Beersmith that I haven't made the jump across yet.

 

[Drunkula]

what does "fl oz/oz of grain" mean!?

It means the fluid ounces of water absorbed by an ounce of grain. They're medieval measurement units so you might have to work out the same thing in litres per kilogram then convert.

You cannot adjust ingredients "on the fly" in the recipe.

Double click on an ingredient in a recipe then "Edit details" and the changes are for that instance only. If you want you can use 'save item' in the right menu if you'll be using it again. For instance I'll change the name of a repitched yeast to say "Kristalweizen repitch" change the cost to zero and write a note of what beer it was first used in.

 

[marshbrewer]

I use brewers friend, but two things are annoying me enough that I'm thinking of switching;

1. They bill your card in US$, so my bank charges me a foreign currency charge which adds about 36% to the monthly cost. It's pennies, but it annoys me.
2. It's become really slow and a bit unresponsive over that last few months on all my devices

I'm thinking of biting the bullet and making a proper effort to get used to something like brew mate.

 

[The Baron]

I use brewers friend, but two things are annoying me enough that I'm thinking of switching;

1. They bill your card in US$, so my bank charges me a foreign currency charge which adds about 36% to the monthly cost. It's pennies, but it annoys me.
2. It's become really slow and a bit unresponsive over that last few months on all my devices

I'm thinking of biting the bullet and making a proper effort to get used to something like brew mate.

Try uninstalling and a fresh install my brewers friend is ok

 

[marshbrewer]

Try uninstalling and a fresh install my brewers friend is ok

I'm using the web version on different devices and getting the same laggy performance.

 

[GerritT]

BS3 user here. It works for me, but I use it as recipe storage, and occasionally to translate a recipe to my setup.

 

[Deathstar]

BS3 for me as am a macOS user, and they have ported it. I did not think the fee was expensive for the features that I need.

 

[Smileyr8]

I used to use brewtarget and liked it a lot but it then decided to delete my entire recipe database for no reason so i binned it off.

Funny you should should say that, I had the same thing happen to me, I thought it must have been something I had done.

 

[Hanglow]

Yeah I vaguely remember searching for a fix for it and found some other posts on another forum about people with a similar experience.

 

[LeeH]

Brewfather is fantastic, I had BS3 but it’s showing it’s age now.

I highly recommend you give the free trial ago.

 

[BrewsWayne]

I agree with LeeH. I have used BeerSmith since 2009. I have now completely switched over to Brewfather. I really like the way it integrates with my iSpindels. He recently released a full version of it for the iPhone.

 

[JonBrew]

I use brewers friend, but two things are annoying me enough that I'm thinking of switching;

1. They bill your card in US$, so my bank charges me a foreign currency charge which adds about 36% to the monthly cost. It's pennies, but it annoys me.
2. It's become really slow and a bit unresponsive over that last few months on all my devices

I'm thinking of biting the bullet and making a proper effort to get used to something like brew mate.

I noticed the slow down on android after the last update they ran but it seems fine on desktop.

Also agree the currency thing is rubbish.

Aside from the above, I think brewers friend is great and I particularly like that it's online based.