Beersmith is the biggest, and is the best "all in one" software. There's a number of (small-ish) issues with it, and a number of improvements I would make for user friendliness. The only thing that's inaccurate is the mash chemistry / water adjustment formulas (uses Troeser formulas instead of @MartinBrungard s), and the yeast starter formulas (uses Jamils formulas instead of Troeser).
Brewtarget is an open source free software alternative, that on the surface looks very similar. It's a work in progress, and currently I don't think it's quite ready to replace beersmith. It's getting close, and I like a lot of the new things that the development team has planned for version 2.4. The biggest issue for recipe formulation in brewtarget is that mash temps don't influence attenuation (FG), this is something they're patching on the next version I believe.
Brewers friend is the biggest online "all in one", and is pretty decent. Again there's a learning curve, but I don't think it's as thick as beersmith. Some ingredient malt specs don't match what I get from malsters (or from beersmith), so the efficiencies and gravities don't always line up. They don't seem to update their standalone calculators (the efficiency calculator is horribly inaccurate).
Next is brewtoad, homebrewhedonist, and a couple other free online ones that have small user demographics. I don't really recommend any, there's always something that conflicts or doesn't work well when compared to the others.
I definitely recommend using an online calculator in conjunction with setting up your beersmith equipment profile and mash profiles in order to make sure it's calibrated correctly. Setting up beersmith can be cumbersome, I recommend checking out brulosopher's video guides. One such calculator (mine) is located in my sig, let me know if you have any questions about it.
My general process is
- recipe formulation in beersmith.
- Water volumes, temps, mash parameters, and brewday numbers from my mash calculator. Get efficiency estimation, and plug that back into beersmith, and scale the recipe according to new brewhouse efficiency.
- Mash PH and water chemistry from Bru'n water.