Brewing software?

[DandyMason]

I recently got an Ipad and ended up buying Ibrewmaster... I had heard good things from northern brewer.

Anyone use it or know anything about it?

Seems straight forward enough I guess...

Any other good brewing/beer apps for ipad?

[sdixon]

Beersmith is now available for Linux. I downloaded trial version and it works fine. A little slim on the grain options, but I guess I an always add them manually.

[Chris Craig]

There's an addons menu item in the File menu where you can add the Weyermann Malts if that helps.

[fakr]

Chris, do you find Beersmith worth the $27?

[DandyMason]

I see beer smith Lite in apps for Ipad... but no beersmith. and you cant create recipes with beersmith Lite...

[Chris Craig]

I do find Beersmith worth the money. It's not just a database of recipes for me, although that helps.

It's the calculations (water and temp), scaling of recipes, the recipe cloud, etc.

[fakr]

broke down and bought it.  Pretty slick software.  There are a few things I don't really like already, but I imagine I'll have to submit functionality update requests with the company.

So far though, I'd recommend it.

[Chris Craig]

Out of curiosity, beside the ugly, clunky interface, what is it you dislike about it?

[fakr]

A couple so far are:

1.  I can't specify how many time I want to batch sparge...1, 2, 3, etc.  so I need to take the total sparge water volume, and devide it by the number of sparges I do.
2.  When formulating a recipe, the software calculates many things, like estimated ABV.  It also estimates final gravity.  This isn't really a bad thing, BUT if I stop fermentation before it finishes up itself, I get a lower ABV, but the software shows what it estimates, which can put the brew in a different style.

I ran into number two when inputting a recipe for an english special bitter I just brewed.  The estimated final gravity pushed the ABV above the style....but I stopped fermentation above the estimate, and the fina ABV does fall within the style.

3. When inputting actual measurements, the style guide comparison chart still shows the estimated values, not the values I input, so the comparison chart is then considere inaccurate....to me anyway...I don't care what it estimates so much, I care more about what the actual values are.

That's what I've noticed playing with it for 30 minutes.

BTW, the iphone version app sucks.  I can look at recipes, but no detail whatsoever.

[Chris Craig]

You can deal with the sparge volumes by editing the mash profile that you're using.  If you restrict the % vol that you can use when sparging, you'll get the desired number of batches. You can do this for the profile globally from the Profiles tab, or per recipe by clicking the check mark on the mash profile in the mash tab of the recipe.

When you are stopping the fermentation, you are, in effect, manually determining the attenuation of your yeast.  You can edit this per recipe by double clicking on the yeast in your ingredients list, or globally in the ingredients tab.

You are absolutely correct.  All the mobile app is good for is getting the ingredients list out of the recipe cloud.  Waste of money.

[fakr]

Thanks for the info....now I know where to send my questions!  haha!

[Chris Craig]

The software leaves a lot to be desired.  It took me a while to really get the hang of everything.  Overall, it's pretty powerful though.

[DandyMason]

Pretty sure ibrewmaster addresses some of those concerns Fakr, i havent figured it all out yet ... It doesnt make much sense to get this now that you have beersmith but for anyone who is looking for a decent iphone or ipad brewing app, its worth it to check ibrewmaster out.

http://ibrewmaster.com/upload/iBrewMast ... e_1.45.pdf

... user guide for a slightly older edition but same thing

[fakr]

That's great, I can manually set the attenuation of the yeast on a per recipe basis.  I also got the batch sparge counts working as well...
I like the software so far.

I did notice with the iphone app that additional recipe information is available under the "timer" tab...not as much info as beersmith mind you, but enough to be useful.