I am thinking of upgrading to more advanced brewing software and want to get some opinions. I have been using Hopville for the last two years or so and I like it, but I consistently run into calculation errors (possibly me, but doubtful) 
Anyway, what do you guys use or prefer and why?
I went from promash to beersmith2 just recently, I like it well enough and there is alot you can do with it once you get use to it. Promash hasnt been update since 2003 and from what i hear never will so eventually it will go by the way side, so I switched.
I use Brewer’s Friend and have found it extremely accurate in predicting gravities when designing recipes. I also like the yeast pitching calculator on Brewer’s Friend as it can calculate up to three step-ups on a starter. Its also free to save up to five recipes. I’ve never used BeerSmith but a friend that uses it says there’s a lot of calculations you can do with your mash.
Beersmith for recipe calculations. Bru’n Water for water calcs and Brewersfriend for yeast pitch calcs.
All wonderful tools. What an awesome time to be a homebrewer. So much great information at our fingertips.
I’ve been using Beersmith 2 for about a year now and I have to say, that I love it. It has more bells and whistles than I will ever use, but it’s fantastic for building recipes and scaling as well. I’m a huge fan.
I use Beersmith 2 as well and really like it. Great for recipe creation, completely manageable in terms of being able to edit ingredients, add, keep and track inventory, play with mash schedules, create brew day sheets, brew day timers with alarms, print comp sheets, etc.
Try BeerSmith for Free.
Never look back.
Now if only someone invented an app to convert my old ProMash recipe files ;D
NICE
i use ibrewmaster on my iphone and ipad. i love it. i tinkered with many of the other online systems, promash and beer smith, but i like having everything on my phone. i run into other brewers and it is kind of nice to pull up a picture, recipe, batch etc right away.
I use Brewer’s Friend and it added a label generation option that includes a QR code to the on-line recipe (only for public recipes). Pretty neat for club meetings:
I had been using a freeware program called qbrew, with much success for a few years. It is very basic.
I have recently upgraded to Beersmith2, but am still learning it, so the jury is out. It is far more complicated, but also does a lot more. But really, I have no complaints so far except that I haven’t figured out how to customize it so it is just giving me the info I actually want (instead of everything I want and a bunch of other crap).
now that is cool
An option for having encoded links for recipes is also on the works. That way you don’t need to make a recipe public but are still able to share out with others.
There are a lot of neat things that can be done with an online recipe editor.
Kai
I realize that I’m likely in the minority, but “online” kills it for me. I have no internet access in the “brewery”, and spotty access a lot of the time. Ah, the joys of living away from civilization!
I hear you. I’m not a big fan of the cloud either but I do appreciate its aspect of mobility. I moved away from recipe calculators to only paper b/c I didn’t want to lug a laptop to my brewing area. Now I’m moving back to these tools b/c I can simply use my phone.
You could install a stronger WIFI our use Ethernet over power line to solve the internet access issue. But keeping all the stuff on the laptop also works.
Kai
I’ve played with Hopville and BeerSmith, but I am solely using Brewer’s Friend now. I love having access to everything online. I get to tinker with recipes during downtime at work. The developer is quite responsive to issues, and is constantly adding new useful features.
While a lot of features in the Android app are just links out to the website, the webapp works just fine on my phone.
I’ve considered both of those solutions, but I’m too cheap to spring for anything yet. I don’t have a smartphone, so that option is out. I brew in a detached garage about 50-60 ft. from the house. I have an old desktop running Promash there and my solution at this point is to put recipes on a flash drive and just carry it back and forth from the house to the garage.
+1 except I use the Mr. Malty yeast calculator.
I have been using Promash for years and it does everything i need for recipe formulation. The only thing I dont like about it is running up and down the stairs to my PC on brew day.
I just downloaded the trial version of BeerSmith2 and have to admit there are alot of useful features. Like all new software there is a considerable learning curve and eventually i will make the switch.
Question: does beersmith lite work with beersmith2 or are they 2 seperate animals? I would like to use the full version to create and modify recipes and the lite version on my ipad for the brewery. do the two work together?