If you read the info on the website, Jeff advises you to change that to gal./hr. It’s in the system settings.
As does Promash.
Bump. Anyone know if the website will be up and running again?
Only one guy knows that answer to that and he hasn’t been “returning calls” for like 10 years!!!
I have a very soft spot for ProMash; it’s like an old girlfriend I can’t forget. Even after not being updated in more than 13 years, it still does more than almost any other comprehensive brewing software app. BeerSmith has a far more modern look and feel, and some additional features, but it’s less user friendly and has what I consider to be a few errors and inconsistencies that bother me from an accuracy standpoint.
I knew ProMash developer Jeffrey Donovan from long ago, but in a professional rather than personal context. I understand his life has taken more than its share of twists and turns over the years. I get the feeling he can’t quite let go of ProMash, either, but he also can’t seem to bring himself to summon the will necessary to develop a new version. I don’t know if the current banner that appears when you access the promash.com site is a sign that he intends to resurrect it, or merely that he continues to own the domain and doesn’t want it to go dark.
If I could speak to Jeff personally, I’d tell him that a developer seldom realizes just how close the relationship can be between an application and its users, and how some of us would go to great lengths to encourage him to do what needs to be done. The market for it is insignificant in terms of the tiny potential profit and the considerable work involved. It’s a labor of love, and homebrewers, who are notoriously “thrifty,” wouldn’t pay what it would truly cost for a professional product. So I’m reluctant to tell someone to make the sacrifice when the returns are so small.
But none of this stops my longing for a new and improved ProMash.
Agreed Bill! Jeff needs to sell the entire Promash brand to a knowledgeable programmer that can handle today’s operating systems. I get the impression that he no longer has the programming abilities needed to update it. I wish I had those capabilities, but unfortunately I’m just a civil and environmental engineer.
I finally switched to BeerSmith a couple of years ago. It took me some time to get used to it but I really like it now. I like being able to use the phone app during my actual brewing. I didn’t realize that Promash worked on the newer operating systems. I used to run it on a laptop with XP. When I upgraded that laptop I couldn’t install promash because I have it on old floppy discs and no longer have a drive for those. If it ever does get re-released I’d love to give it a try again
I generally agree with you about Promash, Martin, but why does it need to be updated? It works flawlessly already.
I’m with you Denny. I can’t think of another feature that another program has over Promash.
The thing that is missing is compatibility with newer operating systems. I just bought a new Windows 10 laptop that I figured I could use in the brewhouse since it has touch screen. But, Promash can’t be loaded onto it. I think the message said that Win 10 requires 32-bit or higher software. If Jeff would just recompile that existing program into a modern platform, it would be fine for what I need.
Interesting…works great with Win7, but I haven’t tried 10 yet. Did you try to do an install or just copy the files? File copy works fine.
The touch mouse features may not be supported on an older application. If I recall properly - the touch screen support requires an additional library. It is also likely that it will need some additional work before it will compile correctly.
In Windows 10, you could try to run it in compatibility mode. Right click on the executable and select the options to run it in whatever ‘mode’ necessary. The emulation may slow it down a bit, but the modern computer speeds probably more than make up that emulation. And most likely only support keyboard and mouse functions.
I am running Promash on a W10 desktop with zero problems.
How did you get it to install? W10 refuses to do anything with the install file. Do I just need to copy and paste the files out of my other working installations onto the W10 drive?
Yeah, copy and paste works fine.
slight detour…
As a somewhat selfish/biased computery brewer/person, what has you tied to promash that other pieces of software don’t do or don’t do as well?
I’m working on an article that compares all the more popular pieces of software to get a running list of features and issues that people run into.
Like I said a page or two ago, I tried to use promash but it was too clunky and felt super out of date. The user interface was extremely annoying to me, and some default options (boil off rate for one, pet peeve) just didn’t make sense at all with modern brewing knowledge.
I feel that something so out of date, and with how much progress has been made with modern techniques and information, that it cannot possibly be a superior product when compared to the more supported/updated options:
Beersmith, or the myriad of online alternatives like brewers friend, brewtoad, mine, or even homebrewhedonist.
ATM I use a rather eclectic list of software/spreadsheets/calculators.
Bru’n water for water chemistry/ph.
Mine for water volumes, temps, and efficiency estimations.*
Beersmith for recipe formulation/scaling of recipes for my small batches (usually do .75-2G now)
Brewunited for yeast starters (looking forward to the one being worked on by omega yeast labs!)
*working on recipe formulation and a modification of the Tinseth formula which will incorporate iso acid solubility (from someone’s master thesis) and instantaneous wort gravity instead of average (idea I had and emailed Tinseth about, math seems to check out so far but still testing)
I was running on a Windows 7 machine and did the free upgrade. Still works just fine.
I use promash for recipe formation because that’s what I need it to do. Not give false predictions for FG, try to calculate batch sparges or anything else. Like you I use water spreadsheets and yeast growth calculators as well, but by not relying too much on brewing software I think I’ve learned more than I would have otherwise.
Plus, I think beersmith is cluttered and full of useless stuff. I’d probably use brewers friend if I wanted to switch.
^^^I agree with that. I don’t use Promash right now but I have checked it out. I also tried both versions of Beersmith and it wasn’t really my thing either. What I use now is a copy of Brewmate before it got sold off and switched up to Brewersfriend. Not the online version, the software based program. It does exactly what I need it to do, calculate recipes for me. I actually like to do a some of the figures on my own like my water volumes, sparge water needed…etc.
Another vote for Brewer’s Friend here! Web based and accurate. Plus, I sent them an email requesting they add a feature to the hopping module in the recipe builder. They replied and liked the idea. So before too long we should be able to enter IBU for a certain hop charge and it will calculate how many grams/oz needed to hit that IBU for that charge. Right now you enter variety, change AA% if you need to, minutes in the boil, and it tells you how many IBU from that. This new option you could also enter variety, AA%, and boil time and the software will tell you how many oz/gms. Should be helpful for stuff like heavily wirlpooled recipes where you know you want X amount bitterness from the 60min… I know you can do it now by repeatedly editing the amount till you hit the IBU you want. This will be just a little more streamlined.
Works for me on the win10 OS, just cant acces the help files. I tried copying them from an older machine but no luck.