Exactly what is, if any, the advantage of Beersmith over free softwares such as Brewtarget or Brewmate?
Let’s see, it’s very robust in supporting multiple methods of brewing (BIB, decoction, etc), there’s large installed base of users for advice, it’s a business so support should be better.
Is that better than free?
I’ve tried BrewTarget briefly and QBrew (another open source recipe creator), and Beer Smith is definitely more feature rich in terms of extras (e.g. grains from specific maltings). You can download Beer Smith from the website for free and use it for a full month before you have to pay. Try it and see if you like it better than the freeware versions.
+1 This is the best advice. I haven’t used the freeware you mentioned so I can’t compare them. But with the free trial you can and decide if its worth the money.
I did the free trial and so far thought it looked a lot nicer, but as far as the functions, I felt Brewtarget had all but the timer. I did find Beersmith more complicated to use but I don’t know if that was because I just wasn’t used to it. So far I don’t see any differences that are worth $27.95 but I could possibly be missing something. Which is why I asked the question.
To the first responder, what is the “base of users”?
Yeah, if you’re satisfied with freeware there’s no real reason to switch over. Being commercial software, Beer Smith might have more active development in terms of future features, bug fixes, and those things, whereas freeware might be less active since its essentially volunteers who do the work.
I would assume that’s just referring to Beer Smith forums for advice, troubleshooting, etc.
I’ve been a happy user of Beersmith, but I’ve just this week been giving Brewer’s Friend a try. So far… I like it.