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'
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 It's quite outdated in its interface, but still very accurate and many brewers love it.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.