Introduction
Hi all,
This week we’re going to get into something a little different. Instead of focusing on the brew itself, we’re going to take a look at the things we do and use to manage our beer before we even get to the brewing stage. That is, designing a recipe and helping to manage, track and tweak that recipe with accurate results using brewing software.
Although recipe creation could be done without brewing software (what did we ever do before computers!?) there’s no doubt in my mind at all that it’s infinitely easier.
Brewing Software
There is a myriad of options out there for brewing software, from small tools and calculators to fully featured apps that allow for multiple calculators and full recipe builders all in one app that is available on multiple platforms.
I’m going to attempt to cover several of these, from small calculators to a few different recipe building apps. Including:
- BeerSmith 3
- Bru’n water
- Brewer’s Friend
- Grainfather recipe tools
- Brewfather
I do apologise if your favourite app is not listed here. By all means do let me know if there’s a specific app or tool you’d like me to cover and I’ll endeavour to do so but I also feel it’s not fair to do a review or comparison of something I’ve not used.
Each of these ones listed are ones I have personally used and I’m not being sponsored by or paid for any of these opinions or reviews.
This said, if you would like to sponsor New Beerginnings or support us in any way, I welcome it! Please reach out and we can chat about what it could look like and what you can expect from me in return for your support. But I digress…
I’m going to evaluate each of these in terms of price, functionality, special features, versions (any different platforms it’s available on), ease of use and average time to make a recipe (where available).
BeerSmith 3
Beersmith seems to be almost industry standard at this stage. There are people who swear by it and some that are less quick to sing its praises but nevertheless it is arguably the most widely used. It has an unbelievable amount of information and tools for a brewer to utilise, some of these can arguably make it somewhat less user friendly than other apps.
Price
Approximately $50 for the basic version. This also gets you a cloud account that can hold just 15 recipes.
Certainly enough to get you started but it can get annoying to manage these when it gets full and you might end up upgrading pretty quickly to the gold subscription.
The gold is a $15/year subscription and gets you up to 125 recipes and includes all future updates of the app.
Functionality
Contained within BeerSmith is the following:
- Equipment profiles to dial in your brews to your specific setup.
- Customisable mash, fermentation and carbonation profiles so you can save your favourite methods or use one of the app’s built in recommendations.
- BJCP style guidelines that live update as you build your recipe to help you keep it in style.
- Grain, hop, yeast and other add ons to get a recipe based on the exact ingredients you plan to use on your brew day. Because not all pale malts are created equal!
- Water profile tools to help calculate your salt and mineral additions to get your water just right.
- Recipe searching to discover recipes by other brewers and brew them as they are or adapt to your own liking.
- Inventory keeping and Ingredient prices so you can keep track of purchasing ingredients and estimate the cost of a particular recipe.
Compatibility
BeerSmith 3 comes in formats for PC, Mac, iOS and Android devices so is incredibly compatible. The only catch is to use it effectively across multiple devices you really need to have one of the higher cloud storage accounts as 15 recipes doesn’t cut it.
Ease of use
As I started with them first, I find the mobile versions of BeerSmith easier to use but I must admit that the desktop versions do also lack quite a bit in terms of the UI. It has lots of options and functionality for sure but I feel it comes at the expense of being cluttered and looking very outdated.
Average time to build a recipe
iOS App – 3.45
Limitations
One major advantage for me of BeerSmith is the water profile tool it has built in. This tool exists in its full capacity in the desktop app only, the water options built in to the mobile version is so limited that it may as well not exist.
Bru’n Water
Bru’n Water is not a recipe builder but more specifically a very fully featured water profile tool in the form of a spreadsheet. It’s a great tool to accurately predict what water additions you need to hit a target profile and gives the most accurate estimation of mash pH that I’ve come across as it’s based on your grain bill and gets adjusted by acid malt or your salt additions. It also has a tab full of information about water chemistry so you can learn the how and why of how water affects your beer.
Price
Bru’n Water has a donation model where you can get the spreadsheet for free and choose to donate to help keep it up to date. This also gets you a different version of the spreadsheet with extra features to make it simpler and even more accurate to use. I’d really encourage giving your support as it’s worth the small spend.
Functionality
Not quite as fully featured as the other recipe builders on here as it’s solely focused on water but in terms of water I don’t think there is a better solution out there.
Special features
The best features of Bru’n Water for me are the mash pH calculator and access to multiple water profiles plus the ability to match to them quickly from your starting water source.
Compatibility
If you can use excel on your device, you can use Bru’n Water!
Ease of use
It takes some time to get your head around but once you’ve done it for a few different recipes and sets of grain bills it becomes fast and simple. It’s made even simpler by the water chemistry information and training contained in one of the tabs.
Average time to build a recipe
While you’re not actually building a recipe, there is a process to go through with entering your grain bill, setting your base and target water profiles and adjusting mash pH. This on average takes 5 minutes or so at first but significantly less time once you’re used to the process. I got it down to 1-2 minutes now unless I’m using an abnormally large grain bill or strange water profile that differs greatly from my starting water.
Limitations
I want to emphasise as strongly as I can that this is not a recipe builder, it’s purely a water profile tool. It is but one, albeit important part of your recipe building process.
Also, unless you have the paid version of the spreadsheet, you need to make a copy each time you make a new recipe, or else delete all the data in the sheet and start over each time.
Brewer’s Friend
Price
Brewer’s Friend comes in several forms, there’s the browser-based web app and the dedicated apps platform-specific apps for iOS and Android. Premium Membership allowing you to gain access to the web app is $3.45 AUD a month or around $34 a year. The iOS and Android apps are around $8 as a flat rate but will not sync across devices without the premium membership.
Functionality
In terms of functionality beyond simply creating a recipe, I like Brewer’s Friend the best. It has the ability to help you keep track of inventory along with a wide range of accurate and useful calculators.
Compatibility
As stated before there are web based apps along with apps for iOS and Android platforms. All of these require a premium account for full functionality. With this functionality comes cross-device syncing so you have your most up to date recipes with you everywhere.
Ease of use
Although simple, I found Brewer’s Friend the most clunky to use.
I found it took multiple steps to perform actions that other apps could perform with one or two or options for every recipe that can be covered in account settings in other platforms. Things like choosing metric over imperial measurements or EBC over SRM etc.
Having to select all of these options for each recipe greatly increased the time it takes to build a recipe from scratch.
Average time to build a recipe
iOS web app – 5.43
Limitations
Grainfather Recipe Tools
Price
Free, is best used however with a Grainfather to brew with. Which is not free, but is excellent! Anyone can use Grainfather recipe tools as a basic recipe builder and storage system.
Functionality
It has functions and features comparable to many other recipe builders, including:
- Import/export to .beerXML files.
- Style guidelines to keep your beer in range.
- Archive of grains, hops, adjuncts and misc ingredients.
- Mash, fermentation and carbonation profiles for you to use or customise and make your own.
Special features
The biggest reason to use Grainfather recipe tools only really comes if you have a Grainfather unit. Any aspects of your recipe up to fermentation will load directly into your Grainfather and be able to be tracked through the app, this includes all mash temps and boil schedule. It will also tell you the best time to start heating your sparge water and act as a great brew day clock that allows you to relax a little and be more productive with your brew day.
Compatibility
As it is web based, Grainfather recipe tools is compatible with any device that can access the internet. The app comes in iOS and Android versions.
Ease of use
I like the layout of the app, it’s a top to bottom recipe builder, you start at the top with fermentables then head down to add hops and adjuncts before ending up with mash, fermentation and carbonation profiles at the bottom.
It’s a very simple but satisfactory app that makes a nice interface to build off.
Average time to build a recipe
iOS – 3.21
Limitations
Other than the ability for it to connect to your Grainfather app for ease of brew days, the app is fairly basic. It’s very simple to use but there are other standalone beer recipe apps out there that do a better job. I tend to use only the import function so I can load a recipe into the app. I create my recipes in another app and export it to Grainfather recipe tools.
The other thing I have noticed recently with the Grainfather app is a slight inaccuracy with colour when importing or cloning recipes. I wrote up a clone recipe of a commercial beer (a stout) and it was so off that it ended up looking more like a porter or even a dark brown ale! Just double check things before brew day to ensure they’re going to turn out the way you expect!
Brewfather
Brewfather is bit of a newer app option that’s available to brewers. Another web app with a nice clean interface and simple structure to make designing a recipe a breeze. It’s by far my favourite of all that I tested as it has the accuracy and functionality of Beersmith combined with the modern UI and ease of use of the Grainfather app. It really is a best of both worlds.
Price
Free for a basic version or $1.99 USD/Month or $19.99 USD/Year for the premium version. The premium version allows more recipes than the basic free version but more importatnly, allows for the import and export of BeerXML files so it can talk nicely with other apps so you can import your existing recipes from another platform and I can also export them to the Grainfather app to allow for an easy brew day.
Functionality
- Recipe builder
- Water profile tool (a great one actually! allows you to select a profile manually or choose to use a profile recommended by the app based on your selected beer style)
- Inventory
- Equipment, Mash and Fermentation profiles, infinitely editable
- Very large Ingredients lists, if you can’t find it then its very easy to add a customer one and have it be remembered for next time.
- Batch & Fermentation tracking (Tilt, Plaato and iSpindel compatible)
Special features
It’s not that special but I’m just going to use this section to highlight a feature I really enjoy, which is the ability, when building recipes, to add items without always looking back at the main recipe screen. In other words, if you know you want roughly 4kg of Pale Malt, 500g of Munich and 150g of CaraPils (a great pale ale base by the way!) you can add it all from the one screen and not have to worry about being sent back to a screen again to hit “add malt”, then search, then select, then add to recipe. It’s a great time saver.
Compatibility
The free version is great to create a limited number of recipes in as a trial but doesn’t really allow for any compatibility, that’s a feature reserved for premium accounts. Once you’ve got that though and everything’s unlocked, it’s perfectly compatible and even allows options to scale the recipe correctly and make sure you hit the same numbers in both apps.
Ease of use
One word, Incredible.
Seriously, if you’re used to Beersmith this will be a walk in the park, if you’re totally new to recipe building, it’s intuitive enough to be able to get going with it without much guidance.
Average time to build a recipe
6.30 with some corrections to the recipe along the way.
Limitations
Free version very limited, good for a trial, that’s about it.
So that’s it, a quick run down of several of my favourite brewing apps/tools/recipe builders.
My personal choice is Brewfather as I find the workflow and functionality suits me the best.
Let us know which yours is or if theres anything different about these apps that I missed in this quick overview and we can go into a deep dive on it in the future.
If you have any feedback or edit suggestions for this post please contact us and let us know. We want to ensure the correct information is presented in the best possible way so that fellow brewers can stay well-informed.
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