# Brewer's Friend Website ?



## Cervantes (30/5/15)

I recently stumbled across the Brewer's Friend website.

It looks like a good online alternative to Beersmith etc.

I was wondering if anyone else used it and had any comments or feedback before I go signing up?


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## droid (30/5/15)

it's good, I have the 5 free recipes and a couple of brew sessions and then just edit my recipes for current batches but yeah I've been thinking of getting the whole business
knock yourself out


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## mattfos01 (30/5/15)

Dunno about the other stuff but the pitch rate and starter calculator in their tool section is my go to.


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## Brew Forky (30/5/15)

It's my goto for the calculators.


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## Cervantes (31/5/15)

I've been playing with this website a bit. As mentioned above, some of the calculators are fantastic, but the recipe design element, whilst showing promise, isn't as fully featured as Beersmith.

If they could add Mash, Water and Fermentation Profiles that could be pre-filled and then selected when designing a recipe, I'd consider switching.

But at the moment, I'll be using some of the calculators there (The water calculator is great) but will stick with Beersmith for designing recipes and record keeping.


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## Bribie G (31/5/15)

It's also on another thread. It's owned by the same mob who bought BrewMate, actually either owned or managed by Austin. Small world hey.

I do the ten bucks annual subscription and get all the features. Great application, I can design recipes on the PC and take the tablet out to the brewery as it's all synced in real time via the cloood.

Beersmith, which I also own, is way too overpowering for what I need software for.


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## takai (3/6/15)

It is what i use as well. BeerSmith's interface on the mac just annoyed me, and the lack of a tablet option was a pain. Hence going with BrewersFriend when i went digital.


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## mosto (13/8/15)

I was playing with the free version for a while before going for the annual subscription last week. My brew day last weekend was the first I've run solely off Brewer's Friend. Very happy with it. Still learning all the tools and tricks of the website, only gripe so far is something's are little hard to find until you know where they are.

As Bribie said, it appears the mob who bought out AHB also bought out Brewmate, as Austin is an admin on the forum.


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## Bribie G (13/8/15)

The forum is interesting, It's refreshing to have one's question answered by a guy from the Ozarks but the regular forum member really need to be upgraded to metric, I was trying to assist some guy, but didn't post in the end because his five gallon mash at 151 with six quarts or roods or something of two row was doing my head in.

Great system, with heaps of information about all the ingredients only a click away. And with the pro version you can create your own ingredients lists specific to Australia.

With Brewmate I would design a recipe on the PC, print it out on a4, take it out to the brewhouse where it would inevitably get scribbled over with edits then have beer spilled on it. With BF it's all there on my tablet and I can make changes there and then and check out the results, for example if I find I've run out of a certain hop that I was convinced I had heaps of :blink:


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## nala (13/8/15)

Bribie G said:


> The forum is interesting, It's refreshing to have one's question answered by a guy from the Ozarks but the regular forum member really need to be upgraded to metric, I was trying to assist some guy, but didn't post in the end because his five gallon mash at 151 with six quarts or roods or something of two row was doing my head in.
> 
> Great system, with heaps of information about all the ingredients only a click away. And with the pro version you can create your own ingredients lists specific to Australia.
> 
> With Brewmate I would design a recipe on the PC, print it out on a4, take it out to the brewhouse where it would inevitably get scribbled over with edits then have beer spilled on it. With BF it's all there on my tablet and I can make changes there and then and check out the results, for example if I find I've run out of a certain hop that I was convinced I had heaps of :blink:


Michael, I'm not convinced that it is as good as Brewmate.
I have paid for a one year subscription but will not be renewing.
I think that Brewmates simplicity and no chill facility is better than anything else for me.
I also have Beersmith, never use it for recipe generation.
Hate Brewersfriend forum,and also the ingredients listed by country...who needs that rubish ?


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## Mall (13/8/15)

Yep, I subscribe and use a lot. Suits all my AG needs and very accurate for water amounts etc...


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## Mr B (18/8/15)

Bribie G said:


> The forum is interesting, It's refreshing to have one's question answered by a guy from the Ozarks but the regular forum member really need to be upgraded to metric, I was trying to assist some guy, but didn't post in the end because his five gallon mash at 151 with six quarts or roods or something of two row was doing my head in.
> 
> Great system, with heaps of information about all the ingredients only a click away. And with the pro version you can create your own ingredients lists specific to Australia.
> 
> With Brewmate I would design a recipe on the PC, print it out on a4, take it out to the brewhouse where it would inevitably get scribbled over with edits then have beer spilled on it. With BF it's all there on my tablet and I can make changes there and then and check out the results, for example if I find I've run out of a certain hop that I was convinced I had heaps of :blink:


Water (Beer) proof tablet? 

I use Brewmate, transcribe into a paper book, using pen or sometimes even pencil, usually having to kick the kids off the PC inside to check a few things as I adjust ingredients for reasons you have mentioned, get their damn songs they are playing in my head, then head out to the garage to brew and listen to my music in hopeful relative peace. Get in and out so you don't get stuck heh

Invariably there is something urgent we need to go to so I finish in scant time to drain into cubes and leave, coming home later to do the cleanup.

Its a nice relaxing hobby,,,


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## ivars (16/1/17)

I have just made a very healthy starter of WLP540 but according to Brewer's Friend Pitch Rate Calculator that should not have been possible since the MFG date was 5 Jul '16 and the BB date 31 Dec 16. According to Brewer's Friend "Yeast is 195 days old, the viability is estimated at 0%." This is clearly wrong or am I not understanding something?
BeerSmith seems to give viability at a more believable 49%. Could someone please explain what is going on here?

In order to calculate what my starter was growing I manipulated the Brewer's Friend MFG date to reflect the BeerSmith viability number and built the starter accordingly. Any comments on that? Thanks.


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## Bribie G (16/1/17)

Clearly wrong. I regularly resurrect liquid yeasts that are up to two years old. I think with yeast viability it's more a question of how long is a piece of string. Canadian guy who used to post a lot once accidentally left a Wyeast under his car seat for a couple of years and it fired up.
I once accidentally froze a Wyeast and found it at the bottom of a hop tupperware in the chestie months later. Fired up great.

Since my earlier posts I have gone back to using BrewMate, by the way.


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## kalbo777 (3/2/17)

Has anyone used Beer Tools? If so how does it compare to Beersmith, Brewer's Friend etc?


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## fungrel (4/2/17)

ivars said:


> I have just made a very healthy starter of WLP540 but according to Brewer's Friend Pitch Rate Calculator that should not have been possible since the MFG date was 5 Jul '16 and the BB date 31 Dec 16. According to Brewer's Friend "Yeast is 195 days old, the viability is estimated at 0%." This is clearly wrong or am I not understanding something?
> BeerSmith seems to give viability at a more believable 49%. Could someone please explain what is going on here?
> 
> In order to calculate what my starter was growing I manipulated the Brewer's Friend MFG date to reflect the BeerSmith viability number and built the starter accordingly. Any comments on that? Thanks.


It's pretty much an educated guess as to how viable the yeast is. There is no way to factor in as many variables as you can imagine there could be when yeast is stored for that long. 
I always assume that the viability is closer to 0% when a yeast like yours is 195 days old. That way, you can build multiple step starters that are small enough to build a small colony back to correct pitching rate. I would be more cautious of the 49% number than the 0% number. E

ither of the numbers are probably incorrect.


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## wide eyed and legless (4/2/17)

I have had a 500 g packet of s04 packaged in 2012 best before date 2015 I have been using the amount projected by Brewers Friend for my last 6 brews and each has fermented out spot on, though I am mindful of the viability of yeast, I think a lot has to do with how it is stored.


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## yankinoz (4/2/17)

I use their mash pH calculator, which the knowledgeable Martin Brungard wrote, and the results are good, spot on if the pH is then measured. I stopped using their strike water temp calculator because with my methods it overestimates heat loss to the vessel. I BIAB and after adding water transfer the pot to a box lined with earthwool. If you mash in an Esky, you might find that calculator is accurate. I've used their beer colour calculator twice and got some underestimation of colour, but that could be because I entered the midrange of the maltster's specifications and the grain might well have been a little darker.


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## Peter80 (17/7/17)

Why did you go back to brewers mate Bribie? Just wondering as I am currently using it but want to switch to a cloud based system.


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## Bribie G (17/7/17)

I found Brewers Friend to be too cumbersome, silly layout of malts into nationalities and very hard to edit the list. I found that if I added ingredients, next time I did a recipe they had disappeared.


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## Stouter (17/7/17)

Bribie, have you ever used BIABacus?
I tried it a couple of times with the very basic info filled in but found it a little overwhelming during my first brews. I keep meaning to set it up properly and revisit. Appears to leave nothing to be guessed though.
Been using BrewersFriend mostly.


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## Jack of all biers (17/7/17)

I only just recently started using the brewers friend recipe design function and thought I was being conservative by putting mash efficiency in as 86%. Brewed and hit the numbers exactly. Checked the mash efficiency calculator using the exact numbers and it spat out 96% efficiency. It makes me question whether they use the same equation in the two calculators.

Anyone else notice this?


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## Stouter (17/7/17)

I haven't done efficiency calcs since I started with it. I usually put in 75% as the nominated figure at the start of a recipe build. I did try the brewing log entries to work through for it but find it a pita. Too many times I forget to transfer my readings info from paper to the computer, or the computer isn't available.


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## Jack of all biers (17/7/17)

Cool, but knowing efficiency outcome helps when recipe designing. If I change my system or crush then the efficiency will change. If that's not consistent (ie different equations) then using the outcome of the efficiency calc in the recipe designer will result in inconsistent beers.


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## Stouter (17/7/17)

Yep, that's where I'm coasting, inconsistent brews.


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## Jack of all biers (18/7/17)

Gotcha


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## Meddo (18/7/17)

Jack of all biers said:


> I only just recently started using the brewers friend recipe design function and thought I was being conservative by putting mash efficiency in as 86%. Brewed and hit the numbers exactly. Checked the mash efficiency calculator using the exact numbers and it spat out 96% efficiency. It makes me question whether they use the same equation in the two calculators.
> 
> Anyone else notice this?



Absolutely. I've gone away from using Brewer's Friend because their calculators are inconsistent/inaccurate all through the recipe builder, the brewday logs and the standalone calculators. It's 6-9 months since I've used it but from memory the standalone stuff was the most accurate/consistent.

As an example, I could use first principals (and their standalone boiloff calculator) to calculate a post-boil volume/gravity from a given pre-boil volume/gravity, enter both in the brewday log and it would say that the efficiency was different between the two. It took me months of missing my targets before I realised that the calculations were at fault.

I reported a number of issues/bugs/whatever with the calculations probably 9-12 months ago and got fobbed off. As far as I know they still haven't been fixed, so as much as I like their interface and cloud storage I didn't renew my subscription when it came up a month ago.


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## Bribie G (18/7/17)

TBH for most of my brews nowadays I just use "_BribieMate" _ and accurate scales, thermometer - I have a dipstick for the urn, a bucket with marks on and a refractometer as well.

So firing up _BribieMate_ that resides somewhere in the cerebral cortex I can whip out an ESB for example with base malt up to mark _A_ on the bucket, plus whatever spec malt as I have favourite combos like 50 / 50 Carared / Crystal.
I mash at 66 using strike water that was on high dipstick mark and boil down to low mark. I know exactly what 20g of Galaxy or 35g of EKG is going to give and how much Ella or Styrians in the cube.

The only time I hop onto Brewmate is to double check a spec malt or a hop combo that I want to try out. And of course Brewmate is invaluable at Comp Season time as I'm usually branching out into styles I don't regularly brew, Imperial Hefepoodles etc. 

No tickets on myself but after nearly a decade of AG brewing I'm well aware of the importance of accurate measurement and records but for day to day brews I guess I'm like a woodworker who can whip up a coffee table mostly by eye or a Two Hatted restaurant head chef who doesn't need to go running to the recipe books every five minutes. Two hatted? Hmm maybe that's a bit too many tickets....

So in my case I've got my software and I'm not really interested in buying a new system.


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## Lord Raja Goomba I (18/7/17)

Fairly similar to what I do.

Most of the time the biggest user error is not in formulation.

It's in silly things like forgetting to put the 'element cover' in the urn and wiping out a BIAB bag.


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## Meddo (18/7/17)

OT a bit but I guess it depends which approach you want to take. I'm only 12-ish months into my brewing career, I don't brew as often as I like, and I never brew two similar brews in a row, so I don't get much of a chance to develop my own calibrated eye and I've relied on tools/calculators to try to develop consistency. I'm also an engineer and prefer to understand the theory behind what I'm doing rather than developing an empirical "if I add this much grain to this much water and mash/boil for this long I get 1.0XX wort from my system" approach. That's not a criticism of that method, it's just not the one I choose to take.

With this background, I initially relied on the Brewer's Friend recipe builder and brewday logs to attempt to predict my brewing outcomes and calibrate my recipes to my rig. What I found though was that each brew was regularly coming out below the predicted OG and other gravities (in particular the pre-boil gravity) despite re-calibrating with measured data after each brew and lowering the planned efficiency for the next brew each time.

After probably six brews like this I got suspicious and started testing the consistency of the calculators, recipe builder and brew log and was pretty unimpressed with what I found. Aside from the inconsistent and inaccurate efficiency calculations which I have no explanation for, there is also a designed disconnect between the recipe builder and the brewday functions (which wasn't obvious to me but maybe I'm just obtuse) and a bug that seems to be related to deadspace calculations which leads to discrepancies between the two even when accounting for that designed disconnect.

I'm not saying that it's completely detached from reality as the discrepancies are small and plenty of people are happily using it, but there's enough bugs and errors in there that I decided to abandon it and build my own spreadsheet recipe builder using standard brewing calculations and hacking in LC's IBU calculator (thanks @Lyrebird_Cycles  ). Since doing that, my last six or so brews have been within a point or two of predicted gravities and I now only use BF for the inventory management which is pretty great being cloud-based.

I've certainly made errors in my process at various stages but I'd like to be able to think that a commercial product that is basically a series of simple calculators won't be the culprit when something turns out wrong, unfortunately that hasn't been the case. The other disappointing thing for me is that very few of these tools, including BF, publish the formulae used at each step (they do for some but certainly not all) so it's very difficult to check whether those calculations are functioning as intended. I know that most probably aren't interested in that level of detail but it's when bugs crop up that lack of auditability becomes an issue.

Apologies for the rant - clearly I haven't quite moved on from how pissed-off I was at the time about this and how BF support fobbed me off (while a paid-up subscriber) when I raised these issues despite me providing detailed worked examples of the faults that I'd identified in their system to make it easy for them (I know, I know - I was THAT guy). There were already multiple unresolved threads on their support forums regarding these problems at the time that had just seemingly been abandoned as too hard, and it appears that @Jack of all biers is experiencing it still. A bit too early on a work day to RDWHAHB unfortunately so I'll just blow-off steam here instead... 

TLDR: BF is probably fine for general recipe guidance but there are enough inaccuracies and inconsistencies that I wouldn't recommend it for detailed analysis, calibration, and recipe adaption against your own rig.


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