Charlottesville Area Masters of Real Ale

I use a piece of free, open source software called qbrew.  It seems to do the calculations correctly, but it is not very good at saving recipes, so I write them down.

http://www.usermode.org/code.html

What does everyone else use?

This is a good topic and I'm curious about what other people are using, as well.

I use QBrew, too, and I find it to be adequate.  It helps me get a ballpark idea of IBUs, SRMs and estimated OG and FG.  But it doesn't have the advanced features that I'm sure ProMash, etc have.

What are people using?

(BTW - If your QBrew is like mine, it saves the recipe but not as a .qbrew extension.  Open and drop down your "file types" and choose "all files" and you might see your saved recipes.  It simply saves them as "file".  WTF?)

I'm using a binary provided through the Ubuntu Linux repositories.  I think I remember the Windows variety working better than this one.  If I had more time, I'd write something similar in Java with fancier capabilities, but I don't have the time to do so at this point.  The equations and "database" information aren't really that hard to understand and use, and a well designed program would make usage and updates of that information much easier.  And since I brew and constantly use free software, I ideally think everyone should have a program to do so.

I was using a program called "Homebrew Formulator" (free program for the Mac) and it's...ok.

My laptop is mac and I usually have it nearby when I brew. My PC is no where near I brew otherwise I'd consider ProMash.

I have heard excellent things about BeerSmith.  They have a free trial and it only costs $20 to a license.  The author has also been constantly updating his software, something that other homebrewer level software packages have not been doing.  I keep meaning to download and use BeerSmith, but other things occupy my mind and then boom, I am at my next brew day already.

Thanks for the formulation links. I'm a mac user as well and have been using Beer Tools free trial version. They cater to the mac crowd and I'll probably purchase and download their brewing suite. Its about $25 or so. BYO seems to consistently have discount codes for Beer Tools in their mag each month. It seems quite user-friendly, visually pleasing, and helps me hit my numbers consistently. A few issues ago in BYO, Chris Colby wrote an article about creating your own recipes and used Beer Tools in his article. A paid stunt? Probably not. Of the many calculation suites available (and I'm guessing he has them all) its probably the one he had open on his desktop.

For a while I was using my good old noggin, a cheap calculator, and a few brew books. A few low OGs convinced me something else had to be done. Then along came free brew trials. Software saved my life. Was that last statement a bit dramatic? Perchance.

I'm a huge fan of Beersmith...I'm not familiar with any of the other brewing software, however.

It's definitely worth 20 bucks. In addition to doing all the calcs for you, it has a huge database of grains/hops/yeast/etc, cost estimator, personal inventory, nice interface, list of beer styles...

You can design your recipes and then Beersmith will compile a list of what you need to buy. If you have your inventory up-to-date, it will subtract what you already have in stock from the shopping list. I usually buy ingredients for half a dozen or so recipes at a time online and it saves a ton of time.

It will also print out instructions for everything you need to know of brew day: ingredient amounts/time/temps/etc.

Regardless of which particular software you choose, if you have a computer, brewing software is a huge help and is very inexpensive.

I use Beer Tools online calculator.  Overall, I like this interface, the selections, ease of use, etc. But one thing I've noticed is that it really tends to low-ball the IBUs.  For this reason alone I've thought about using different software.  I tried the ProMash evaluation once and the IBU estimate was much better, but I didn't care for the interface.  I've continued to just use Beer Tools with the understanding of what their IBU calculation translates to for me in real-world terms. 

been using promash for a long time. it's the only way to fly. well, either that or beersmith, which I hear has a more polished GUI---but I don't care too much about that.

Anyone out there with a Mac recommend their software of choice? It seems that the options are a bit limited? It seems like you can go with BeerTools or buy a pricey Microsoft-to-Mac platform conversion kit.

I have been using Beersmith for about a year and a half.  It does everything I want it to do and is inexpensive to boot.  Online updates are free and are done through the GUI. Kick the tires and try the free trial first. Promash is the only other software I have seen heavily recommended, I am not sure if it has a free trial.

ProMash does have an evaluation version that you can try. Being a Linux user, I installed QBrew after reading these posts.  Still tinkering around with it a bit, but I'm glad that a few of you recommended it. Thanks!

I wanted to resurrect this old thread on brewing software to state that BeerSmith just did several new short videos that walk you through some of its features.  I learned a couple of new things by watching them, so you might enjoy seeing them too.

http://www.beersmith.com/blog/2009/12/28/beersmith-software-video-tutorials/

I've been using QBrew for more than a year now.  Overall I've been very happy with it.  But now I'm venturing towards some recipes that don't supply grain bills by the pound.  Instead, it's all expressed in terms of percentages.  Is there a brewing program, preferably free 'cause I'm a cheap bastard, that allows you to develop recipes by punching in percentages?  ProMash is ok, but it isn't free, and IMO it over-complicates things.  I was looking for something with a simpler interface.
A friend also sent me this article containing a bunch of open-source brewing software links.  I haven't looked through all of these yet, so maybe my best option is in this article somewhere.
http://sourceforge.net/blog/whats-brewing-in-open-source/