Opinions On Beersmith And Beer Alchemy For Mac

[rehab]

Being the nice guy that I am, I'll give you my other licence for Beersmith2 on Mac when I dig it up.

Thanks heaps. That's awesome of you man!

 

[sim]

So after a tired skim of this there isn't anything FREE (yeap cheap bugger) for MAC users atm?

my "30 days, or 7 launches - which ever happens first" free trial of Beer Alchemy is going strong, to say the least h34r:

lovin it!


sim

 

[popmedium]

I've used Beer Alchemy for a year and a half now, and aside from simple spreadsheets, it's the only brewing software I've used. It does some things well, but it also has its bad points. It's missing some features that I would have thought would be pretty standard (such as being able to calculate pre-boil SG corrections), the interface is lacking a bit in terms of intuition, and there's some down-right usability issues (things like hitting 'Esc' and not prompting to save data comes to mind, which means having to re-enter stuff). The fact that you can only see one view at a time (as far as I can tell) is also limiting.

Allo!

With regards to preboil SG corrections, do you mean taking in to account temperature? Because it does that, at least from the mobile version anyway.

I use Beer Alchemy. You are right, there are some holes but all in all I find it more intuitive (although it could be more so) and the mobile app is really handy. More than anything I'm excited about version 2.0. The developers blog says it is underway and will include a load of new improvements, including being able to do BIAB calculations. Not sure how far off it is and although he is responsive, development seems to be slow and the communication isn't all that good either (as in, there aren't too many progress updates on his blog).

Joel

 

[tallie]

With regards to preboil SG corrections, do you mean taking in to account temperature? Because it does that, at least from the mobile version anyway.

No, I mean correcting for under efficiency. For example, say you were aiming for 1.070 pre-boil SG, but only got 1.060 - it'd be good to have a calculator that tells you how much malt extract you need to add to adjust the wort up to 1.070 (obviously including volume in the calculation). I don't know if other programs have that sort of calculator, but I would certainly find it useful at times.

For those that are using the mobile app, are you talking about the $5 BeerAlchemy Touch app? Or is there another app that you get if you've already paid for a BeerAlchemy license?

I still haven't tried Beersmith 2 yet - I'm waitin for my holidays so I can make better use of the evaluation period.

Cheers,
tallie.