Yet Another Brewing Software Question.

[katzke]

Well I have looked at ProMash and it did not get me excited. Tried BeerSmith and generally like it except for its quirks. Tried BeerTools Pro and it will not run on my old Win98 desktop and my old notebook will not run at 1024 X 768.

Now I am looking at Suds for excel and StrangeBrew. Do they have any technical problems like not calculating things correct? Especially if you set them up for losses and such? I do not mind doing workarounds with cheep or free software but when one has to pay it is not right to have to make adjustments for program faults.

All I want is a way to make up recipes that will tell me how much water to heat up for BIAB, what the OG, IBUs, Color, ABV, and FG will be for a given amount of grain and hops. As long as it prints the recipe I can write notes on the paper. It would be nice if it had a large list of grains and hops. But I guess if the calculations are correct and it has a way to enter the grains and hops it would be better then what I have tried.

Any comments on my 2 choices or suggestions for other software? Web based is out it must be standalone.

 

[phonos]

Have you tried brewsta? It should do everything you mentioned above.

 

[raven19]

I would recommend either beersmith or promash, as there is plenty of others using them here on AHB. They have the grain bill list you are looking for along with water additions, etc...

Cant comment on the others though.

2c.

 

[katzke]

ProMash sounds good I just did not like the feel of it. BeerSmith has way too many problems with calculations and workarounds.

StrangeBrew looks like it will work for me. A big plus is I asked a question and was given not only an answer but the way to fix my problem. This is an open source program (free).

Suds excel looks like it will work but I have not run it for a real test yet. I may need to change the way it calculates mash water for use with BIAB. But it would not be hard as it is just an excel spread sheet.

 

[Airgead]

I've been using Strangebrew for years. It does a great job. No problem with the calculations. The only thing it doesn't do is separate a recipe and a brew session so you can't tweak a recipe on brew day and save the original without copying the whole recipe.

Cheers
Dave