I have used this site for the first time and loaded a recipe in that I am going to try once my other is done and I see whether I got it right or not. I like that the site tells you how much mash water, how much sparge water and how much total capacity you will have from the grains and the mash water in Gallons. I know for you guys this is easy to figure out, but for me I am liking it because I know whether I can use my 5 gallon pot or I have to break out my new stuff for a smaller batch. I am still learning the other stuff, ie apv, color, and stuff like that. It seems like a pretty good tool for me to use at least to start with. RR
No worries bud, some people like to make things harder than they need to be. I like Brewfather and use it, whatever works for you. I think the layout of Brewfather is more intuitive than others.
I have used Beersmith for many years and I am going to guess that Brewfather is not much different. In Beersmith you need to create a custom equipment profile if you want to get accurate results. I’m sure that the same is true for Brewfather.
An equipment profile is created simply by measuring everything, especially your liquid volumes. You want to know how much liquid is going in and how much is coming out and where/how much are the losses. Brewfather has instructions for making a profile and I am including a link to Brian at Short Circuited Brewers. It seems he is making a profile for an all-in-one system but the concept is the same for just about any combination of equipment you may have. I have used his video tutorial for making Beersmith profiles in the past and find them to be among the best at explaining it thoroughly.
I like Brewfather. I’ve tried it a few times just for grins. It has a nice interface. It also has some nice premium features; one I would like is the Tilt hydrometer integration.
I actually use BeerSmith because I have it set on autopay and it happened to renew for another year right when I was checking out other tools. Some of the math in BeerSmith irks me. It doesn’t match the equations from Palmer’s How to Brew especially re: mash and sparge volumes. I’m thinking about switching when my year is up.
I’ve been using BrewFather for about a year and half. It does everything I need for normal beer brewing (it’s not the best for planning meads, IMHO, but you can kludge it just manually inputting your OG).
As mentioned above, you’ll want to measure, measure, measure and update your equipment profile to get the most accurate volume/gravity predictions.
I have checked out Brewfather and like it as well. I especially like the recipes from our European HomeBrew brothers/sisters. It gives me a glimpse in how a local Brit would brew a proper Bitter, etc,…
For volumes, I bought a scale that can weigh water and my wort. Water is 8.34 lbs/gallon. I weigh mash and sparge volumes. I also weigh the wort I get after boil. I know the empty weight of kettle. I just put the kettle on the scale and then subtract the kettle’s empty weight. You then have to adjust for gravity. BeerSmith has a tool for this, but the math is easy; take the wort weight / 8.34 / SG to get the volume of wort from weight.
Go metric: 1 L = 1 kg.
(Yes, I know technically at room temperature, it’s more like 998g but are we really going to quibble over 2g of water?)
Mash and sparge volumes like almost everything else in Beersmith can be adjusted by the user.
Indeed. The sparge water volume BeerSmith tells me I need is is different from the sparge water volume Brewfather (and my spreadsheet made from Palmer) tells me I need.
It seems to me BeerSmith makes different assumptions about the temperature of water volumes.
PS. All the parameters I know how to adjust are the same in both tools: grain weight, mash water ratio, boil off, shrinkage, boil time, batch size, dead space,…
Good point.
They had me at no fractions.
Assuming the marks on the kettle are right ;D. There’s a reason bakers weigh everything.
If any of the brewing software out there would let me do everything by mass, I’d totally do that.