I’m finding that templates in MS Word and Excel are getting cumbersome.
So who uses what? ProMash seems to be the most common one I see online, but BeerSmith claims to be good for professionals too. Are there others that are solid, and is there anything I should “look for” in brewing software?
I use Beer Smith with no issues. I could definitely see how using Excel could be onerous. I’ve heard of others using ProMash as well. See this thread for more input from the pros.
I use Beersmith to design the recipe and give me all the necessary calculations, but I use Excel to document the process and end result…for me, it’s much easier to create a new tab for each new batch. To be fair, I’ve been using the same Excel spreadsheet since batch no. 1 and I’m not ready to give it up, but Beersmith has helped me tremendously in the recipe design and alteration phase.
I’m using BeerTools Pro for 10-15 bbls batches.
I’m using Promash for recipe/brew session, Excel for taxes, costing, etc.
I use beersmith for 2 bbl batches.
There’s one box checked for when I go pro.
+1 It’s what I’ve always used and I really like it. I’ve already begun scaling my recipes. 8)
I have received a few recipes from breweries in excel format. I’m not sure if they use excel to build the recipes (probably not) but the excel spreadsheets are more of a worksheet/check list for each brew day.
Probably easier to aggregate data from multiple brew days in excel spreadsheets than promash or beersmith.
The cost-keeping features of Beersmith are pretty limited, and kind of a pain to keep updated. If all of your cost-accounting is done in Excel, I don’t think there’s an easy way to get them (Beersmith and Excel) to talk to each other.
Does Beer Tools Pro spit out excel sheets with cost info?