# Brewtoad vs Beersmith, am I missing out?



## benjii (19/8/13)

My mates and I have been brewing for a good year and a bit now, all grain brewing for about the last 6 months of that time. We've recently gotten on to Brewtoad as a way of designing and recording our recipes and brew days. I like that site because it's quite simple (we were blown away by the sheer volume of functionality in Beersmith). But my question is this: What do you guys primarily use Beersmith for? (in terms of features like recipe storage, water volume calculations, etc...) I'd like to know if i'm really missing out on honing some skills by not using Beersmith to it's full potential (or at all).


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## tones0606 (20/8/13)

Cheers for that site, Recipe database looks good


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## r055c0 (20/8/13)

I use beersmith for designing beers, for me it's a great visual tool to see how your beer will (or should) turn out and where it falls within the guidelines of your target style. The brew day sheets are also a good guide for how your day should go but I've started building my own spreadsheet / calculator that I continually adjust to calibrate it to my system (mainly because it makes me feel like a wizard, I'm sure the Beersmith software is more accurate but if I wasn't into doing things myself I wouldn't be home brewing)


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## Parks (20/8/13)

I was just using the basic recipe features for ages but now as I strive for more control and repeatability I have been making more use of the entire interface.

* setting up all my equipment profiles - volumes, losses etc
* recording more notes - what starters I'm doing, dates, pre/post boil measurements etc

It's not exactly an intuitive interface IMO but once you get around it there's a lot to see and do


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## GalBrew (20/8/13)

+1. If you want to consistently hit your numbers, then setting up your gear profile in Beersmith is quite handy.


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## brewologist (20/8/13)

I love the inventory list in Beer Smith.

A great tool for keeping an accurate list of ingredients for brew day.


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## 431neb (20/8/13)

I agree that BS is not intuitive but it is a very useful tool. Plenty of brewers going for simpler options and making great beer. I have BS and it's been a learning curve. 

As a mac user all my life, I can't drive a PC too well. BS "feels" the same as a PC to me. I love what it can do but I've had a lot of dumb questions.

Comes down to aptitude. If you are tech savvy in a PC kinda way you'll be fine.


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## Khellendros13 (20/8/13)

I like the scaling options for batch size/conversion between extract/allgrain. Lots to play with if you want to adjust or add specific malt and hop details like current AA%, pricing etc. You can delve in and change how the backend is calculated too, like adjusting the utilization % of hop flowers/pellets/plugs, grain absorption etc.


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## benjii (20/8/13)

Excellent, thanks for the feedback guys. I can see how both systems can come in handy and to be honest I'll probably give Beersmith a try and just see how I go.


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## Khellendros13 (22/8/13)

benjii said:


> Excellent, thanks for the feedback guys. I can see how both systems can come in handy and to be honest I'll probably give Beersmith a try and just see how I go.


Can't go wrong with a 21 day trial and $20 key from Craftbrewer if you like it.


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## sjskeels (24/9/13)

I have been using brewmate (brewmate.net), haven't used brewtoad. Brewmate is free, has style guidlines, good database of ingredients, actually wondering what I would gain by going to beersmith - anyone have a good comparison between brewsmith and brewmate?


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## Camo6 (24/9/13)

To me Beersmith is a lot more in depth with a lot more fields of entry. This means you can tailor it to your system more precisely however if you overlook or change some fields by mistake you can throw everthing out on brewday.
It was a bit daunting to me initially and I switched back to brewmate for awhile but have since returned to BS with gusto.
That being said there are some functions of brewmate that make recipe design easier and if it works for you why change?


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## brewtas (24/9/13)

BeerSmith is pretty awful to use. It's so visually cluttered. Tabs on top of tabs on top of tabs. It may have options and all kinds of details but it shouldn't be on the user to wade through all that complexity to just design a recipe. If you're going to pay for brewing software like BeerSmith I feel that it should be properly designed in the first place.


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## tricache (24/9/13)

brewtas said:


> BeerSmith is pretty awful to use. It's so visually cluttered. Tabs on top of tabs on top of tabs. It may have options and all kinds of details but it shouldn't be on the user to wade through all that complexity to just design a recipe. If you're going to pay for brewing software like BeerSmith I feel that it should be properly designed in the first place.


Brewmate to me looks like it was designed for Windows 95 :icon_vomit:

I love my Brewsmith and the mobile apps which work with it :kooi:


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## tavas (25/9/13)

Basic recipe formation and storage can be done in both Beersmith and Brewmate. BS has a few more bells and whistles and is more asthetically pleasing, but BM has No Chill scale function and ability to create recipe using %age vs weights (I think BS shows %age but you can't switch to it for formulation. I could be wrong as I don't have BS on my work computer).

Both will work. Both need a bit of tweaking to get your system profile sorted. BS has more functionality but how much of will you use? I use BS because it has all of my prevous brews in it, but I still find I use BM to get the no chill compensation for hops. It works pretty good for me.


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## brewtas (25/9/13)

tricache said:


> Brewmate to me looks like it was designed for Windows 95 :icon_vomit:


Granted. But even though it isn't pretty, at least it's more approachable. 

Anyway, it's not an issue for me, I use Beer Alchemy.


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## bradmccoy (27/9/13)

Brewtoad is good enough for basic recipe formulation (estimated SGs, SRM, balancing flavours, etc.). And it's free.


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## bradmccoy (27/9/13)

And it has a pretty comprehensive list of ingredients.


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## Pickaxe (29/9/13)

Beersmith if you're a tweaker or like the detail, others of you want no nonsense. I found beersmith upped my learning curve and helped explain the relation of different readings, measurements and results. For. A while I cross referenced beersmith to brewmate, but deferred to beersmith, once I dialed my system in abs git things running.


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## welly2 (23/7/15)

Been using Brewtoad a little bit today but to be honest, bit disappointed. All the calculations were well out. There are some serious bugs with it. I'm going to stick with Beersmith.


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## Blind Dog (23/7/15)

brewtas said:


> BeerSmith is pretty awful to use. It's so visually cluttered. Tabs on top of tabs on top of tabs. It may have options and all kinds of details but it shouldn't be on the user to wade through all that complexity to just design a recipe. If you're going to pay for brewing software like BeerSmith I feel that it should be properly designed in the first place.


Really? I make a Luddite look like an early adopter of new tech and find beersmith easy to use and pretty intuitive. Horses for courses I guess


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## welly2 (24/7/15)

For all Beersmith's ugliness, I've just spent a bit of time with Beeralchemy and that I'm finding a bit clunky even though it's more "Mac-like". I guess I'm used to Beersmith with all its peculiarities.


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## Cervantes (24/7/15)

It's worth persevering and really getting to grips with Beersmith.

Once you dial in your equipment profile you can achieve great and repeatable results and generally hit your numbers every time. But you have to take records and get your equipment profile right.

I use Beersmith for recipe design and record keeping, but do use EZ Water or Brewer's Friend for my water calculations.


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## Lowlyf (27/7/15)

With Beersmith 2, Can you use the program on multiple computers? I have a Desktop PC at home, plus a Mac Book Pro plus my work computer and my android phone. I have beersmith on my phone already but I am wanting to run it on all 3 of my computers. Anyone had success with this?


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## zeggie (27/7/15)

Lowlyf said:


> With Beersmith 2, Can you use the program on multiple computers?


I managed to via a Dropbox folder but it was a PITA and wouldnt recommend it.

Ive been testing out Brewers Friend free trial and its tempting me to switch I must admit. So simple to use via multiple PCs, laptop, phone etc.


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## Parks (27/7/15)

Dropbox works fine as long as you remember to close the application on each computer and allow Dropbox to sync before opening it on another.

Once I got in the habit of closing it religiously it works great.


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## schoey (27/7/15)

Lowlyf said:


> With Beersmith 2, Can you use the program on multiple computers? I have a Desktop PC at home, plus a Mac Book Pro plus my work computer and my android phone. I have beersmith on my phone already but I am wanting to run it on all 3 of my computers. Anyone had success with this?


I run Beersmith 2 on 2 Macs and an iPhone with a subscription to Beersmith cloud. Works perfectly. Just make sure you save all your recipes to the cloud rather than locally, nothing more annoying than trying to lookup a recipe only to realise you saved it locally on another machine.


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## Lowlyf (27/7/15)

schoey said:


> I run Beersmith 2 on 2 Macs and an iPhone with a subscription to Beersmith cloud. Works perfectly. Just make sure you save all your recipes to the cloud rather than locally, nothing more annoying than trying to lookup a recipe only to realise you saved it locally on another machine.


What's the cloud cost ya?


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## welly2 (28/7/15)

Lowlyf said:


> What's the cloud cost ya?


I thought it was free. Don't recall paying for cloud.


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## dicko (28/7/15)

welly2 said:


> I thought it was free. Don't recall paying for cloud.


10 recipes are free which will let you put a recipe on the cloud then store it in your devices or desktop pr you can pay $1.00 / month for a basic storage amount.

http://beersmith.com/blog/2012/04/25/beersmith-2-1-and-the-beersmith-recipe-cloud-a-preview/

That link was the info on introduction...it may have changed since then.


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## rocketpants (28/7/15)

i use beersmith with dropbox and that works well enough. It took a while to get used to but is pretty easy once yu've set things up. There are a few good tutorials on beersmith web site and brulosphy.com has made a few vids which helped me greatly. the cloud function in BS is a PITA as i would like it sync my equipment, added ingredients, water profile, inventory and so on and sync over all my devices. but it doesn't. If i had my time again i'd probably go with brewers friend for its cos device sync capabilities.


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## butisitart (28/7/15)

me on a learning curve with beersmith - only fed a few brews through.
love their database on ingredients, beer styles etc. got a bit overrawed by it's depth, but decided to work on one new facet when up for it. so not yet doing efficiencies, but just mastered hop balances. gets better as i go along. on the one side, i think it would be unusual if you could jump on and master it in one brew. on the other hand, if you don't try to take the whole thing on in one go, then the bits that you've got under control are really really good.
my one complaint (and it could be false cos maybe i haven't found the tool) is that it doesn't add the 0.5% ish alc for priming sugar. or maybe that's automatically in there.
but yeah - money well spent in any event.


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## Nizmoose (29/7/15)

I have to put in a vote for brewtoad, after trying beersmith and really wanting to like it I found it just too clunky and annoying to use and not being able to swap inventory and recipes on the mobile app as easily as it could be is frustrating. I find brewtoad's ingredients database really good and whipping a recipe up seems a much less painful process on any device as its purely internet based. No messing with clouds or xml files or forgetting which recipe is on which device. Also the ability to write up a good brew log and keep them saved is great. IMO brewtoad is faster, simpler and much prettier (not that it matters too much) and when it comes to equipment profiles and numbers that's all written down for me separately and tweaked by myself.


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## butisitart (29/7/15)

cloud is free. beersmith comes with licence for up to 2 stand alones - so if you network the stand alones, recipe database problem solved. and if you cloud them, solved anyway. you need the software on the 2nd stand alone if you're going to do stuff on that one.
mobile phone i haven't used, so no comment


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