Brewtoad vs Beersmith, am I missing out?

[benjii]

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).

 

[tones0606]

Cheers for that site, Recipe database looks good

 

[r055c0]

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)

 

[Parks]

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

 

[GalBrew]

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

 

[brewologist]

I love the inventory list in Beer Smith.

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

 

[431neb]

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.

 

[Khellendros13]

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.

 

[benjii]

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.

 

[Khellendros13]

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.

 

[sjskeels]

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?

 

[Camo6]

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?

 

[brewtas]

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.

 

[tricache]

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:

 

[tavas]

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.

 

[brewtas]

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.

 

[bradmccoy]

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

 

[bradmccoy]

And it has a pretty comprehensive list of ingredients.

 

[Pickaxe]

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.

 

[welly2]

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.