# Brewmate Vs Beersmith Vs Promash



## jaypes (4/11/12)

Hi All

Is anyone using these applications to assist with brewing? I have BrewMate and BeerSmith (eval) and am pretty overwhelmed with the info provided being a newb and all. 

Just wondering if the paid ones like BeerSmith and ProMash are worth the coin? Is this something I should be investing in to assist my learning? I mean they are both under $30, I spend more than that on lunch in 2 days - I could easily go the 40 hour famine.

_I did do a search before starting this topic, as you can imagine I got a few hits on the keywords 'beer' and 'mash'_


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## pk.sax (4/11/12)

If you are a kit brewer, stick to brewmate. Will help to calc the extracts from extra ingredients and hop bitterness etc.

Haven't tried beersmith, gave promash a go and liked it's segmented sort of setup.

Also, IanH's spreadsheet gets a good rep for kit/extract brewers.

PS: never anything wrong with just paper and pencil.

Also, online recipe makers like hopville.com work well too, simple as well.


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## bignath (4/11/12)

jaypes said:


> Hi All
> 
> Is anyone using these applications to assist with brewing? I have BrewMate and BeerSmith (eval) and am pretty overwhelmed with the info provided being a newb and all.
> 
> ...



Those three programs are the main three (in my opinion) that brewers use. there are others too which are excellent (Beertools Pro) is amazing too. 

I have them all apart from Pro Mash. It's quite outdated in its interface, but still very accurate and many brewers love it.
Brewmate is free, very accurate, has timers and is really easy to use.
Beersmith is PROBABLY considered the industry standard. It's not free, but offeres much tighter control over all settings than Brewmate. Has inventory support, timers, excellent recipe filing blah blah blah.
Beertools Pro is also excellent, and probably the most modern looking, is super accurate, offers tight control over all parameters, but takes a bit of getting used to and setting it up for your systems little quirks can be daunting.

Personally i use Beersmith at the moment, but before Brad (owner/developer) included the timer function in the latest release, i was gladly using Brewmate. Kindly offered for free by a fourm member here (Rob or Randy Rob....something like that).
If you go with Brewmate, i'd donate to his cause (there's a button to click on his website) as the amount of effort he has put into the program deserves to be rewarded in my opinion. Not under any obligation to though.

Bribie will probably be along soon with his B Double vs Ferarri comparison photo, which is a really good analogy.

Brewmate does everything a brewer needs to make decent beer. Beersmith just does more, and you could argue has the ability to do it more accurately, but all that depends on the needs of the brewer using it.

You don't need to use the massive B Double truck to nip down the shops for a bottle of milk. Take the much easier to drive Car.
Both will bring home milk.

All are excellent programs, and my advice would be spend some time with all of them, work out how they work, and it'll become clear pretty quickly which one you prefer.

Lots of info around about setting them all up for your system's requirements.


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## Rod (4/11/12)

Brewmate is good

would be handy if it had can goods such as coopers in the grain bill


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## Jay Cee (4/11/12)

Brewmate works for me. I know most of my gear's volume requirements, or how to remedy quickly for variations, so I dont really use software for anything other than recipe formulation. And Brewmate is dead simple, uncluttered and does exactly what I want it to do. 

Beersmith is fairly impressive though, and has many more features. I can see why so many brewers use it. 

There is an inventory on Promash which I thought was pretty cool so you can keep track of supplies you have. Providing you keep it updated. 

But... Brewmate keeps brewing simple.


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## Guysmiley54 (4/11/12)

Jay Cee said:


> There is an inventory on Promash which I thought was pretty cool so you can keep track of supplies you have. Providing you keep it updated.



The inventory function is one I really would love to see brought over to BrewMate. I would happily pay an upgrade fee for it  Apart from that it's great for my needs.

Some of the other major features that I can recall being missing in BrewMate (that are in BeerSmith) are equipment profiles, water chemistry profiles. If you don't feel you need those features at the moment, BrewMate is the tits!


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## Guysmiley54 (4/11/12)

Rod said:


> Brewmate is good
> 
> would be handy if it had can goods such as coopers in the grain bill



It has liquid extract as an option and you can also add new presets to the fermentables drop down menu to suit as required.


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## Rod (4/11/12)

Guysmiley54 said:


> It has liquid extract as an option and you can also add new presets to the fermentables drop down menu to suit as required.



somewhere in my memory bank i think there was a site with 

hop values and other bits for coopers cans


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