Never herd of beer friend,but beersmith is one of the leading programs out there. Many here use it.
The annual payment thing is enough to make me not even consider the other one.
All things being equal, you can pay a ONE TIME $24.00 for BeerSmith at Birdman Brewing,
I use Beersmith, and I have for over 6 years. I like it. My equipment profile fits, and works, and my inventory is updated. I liked the original version more than the upgraded version, but there is support and it's easy to add things (like homegrown hops) to the list.
BirdmanBrewingCo said:And it's actually just $21.89. :rockin:
http://www.birdmanbrewing.com/beersmith-2-brewing-software-downloadable-version/
And it's actually just $21.89. :rockin:
http://www.birdmanbrewing.com/beersmith-2-brewing-software-downloadable-version/
Same here. Subscription based models immediately make me look elsewhere.
Beer Smith cost $27.99, Brewers Friend is $9.99 for a year and $17.99 for two years.... My question is which program do you use and why??
I've been planning to buy Beersmith before my next brew day. Once you have a product key, can you use that key on multiple devices. i.e., I've got my desktop computer that I do most of my work on. But I've also got an old laptop I've been thinking about formatting to Ubuntu and using as a brew day computer, and then the mobile app for brew days at a friends house, etc.
I've been planning to buy Beersmith before my next brew day. Once you have a product key, can you use that key on multiple devices. i.e., I've got my desktop computer that I do most of my work on. But I've also got an old laptop I've been thinking about formatting to Ubuntu and using as a brew day computer, and then the mobile app for brew days at a friends house, etc.
I suggest you try Brewer's Friend online... It's free to use but you can't save recipes, etc without subscribing. Unlike Beersmith, you can go right to work without doing a lot of configuring. You can of course configure to your heart's content...... and save those configurations when you subscribe.
H.W.
This is what I did. Always utilize a free service before dropping cash on a pay-to-play service. You can always "theory-craft" the recipe in BF then write the numbers down in a notebook (once I brew a recipe I remove it from my BF app and write it in my notebook of beer recipes/notes).
I am contemplating Beersmith now because I have my system down so I know what sort of predictions I can make about the myriad number of measurements you can make.
If I bought BS right away I would've still spent a long time figuring out my system, you can enter whatever settings in BS you want but if you don't know how your system will react those settings are completely useless.
I have used both......... I much prefer BF to BS, and get consistent and accurate results, the efficiency setting is about the only one you need to adjust, rather than going through all the nonsense of setting up your system parameters. But I only use the bare minimum of the capabilities of these programs. All I want is to be able to dial in the OG,ABV, SRM, and IBUs, inputting my grain and water volumes, mash temp, and yeast. The rest of the features are quite useless to me, except for a few calculators. I would prefer a minimalist software package actually.
H.W.
This is why I recommend running a trial of each software package and determine which works for you.
I move between 10 liter batches (BIAB) indoors during the cold months to 20 liter batches (traditional 3V mash tun) outside when the weather turns, um, warmish(?). Having both systems dialed in in BeerSmith allows me to move recipes from indoors (development stage) to outdoors (production stage) and hit all my numbers consistently. My systems are completely different for trub losses, dead space, brewing process, and efficiency and BeerSmith allows through the scale recipe feature for seamless movement between the two.
Some people don't need that sort of detailed ability, and other software covers their needs just fine.
This was the more eloquent point I was trying to make. Try both, but always take the cheaper option first. Particularly for someone trying to make the step into creating their own original recipes.
I started right out the gate with creating my own recipes for beers, if I had been using BS or BF, they all still wouldve been bad(in some case only a little bad), BS wouldn't have necessarily make my recipes better since I was still making the ingredient choices. If I had bought BS for 8 bucks, I would've been extremely sour about BS simply because I bought a calculator for brewing and my beers still werent coming out the way I wanted them (well, 60% of my issues were recipe related, the rest was not knowing my system/not brewing often enough).
Is the BS trial version a "trial" version or "free" version? Aka do you only get to use it for like 2 months on your device and then they say "oh you can only use this now if you purchase".
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