Beersmith. Marvel or Monster

1 year ago | saracen (Moderator)

It seems everyone is using Beersmith, so I'm feeling a bit left out. I've just been watching the tutorials and it seems very complex and confusing, with many factors, such as colour and equipment profiles, very different to anything I am used to. Now... be honest.... is it easy to use, or just too complex for a bear of very little brain such as I.

If you're not living on the edge..... you're taking up too much space!!

Planning: - To get some more brews on now the weather's a bit cooler
Fermenting: - Ginger Beer experiment
Conditioning: - A normal bitter with Styrians
Drinking: - All of it!!

E-mail: arnyfris@gmail.com

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Responses

Tony:

Posted 1 year ago by Member

Morning Saracen
I picked it up and started using it straight away but now every time I use it I discover something else about it. I think the best thing about the software is that you can use it right away - relying (initially) on the standard settings. I'd say that the vast majority of the settings are there to allow you to match a beer profile exactly, which is something I don't care an awful lot about and no plans (at the moment) to enter any competitions.
Enter your equipment details (size at least), your grain, your hops with their aa, your yeast and any other bits... select your mash profile and that's about it really. Once you've come up with something that's coming close to what you want, you can start messing with amounts and with different mash profiles etc.
I couldn't do without it now - not to mention that I've spent many a happy hour sitting here trying out different brews on paper!

Beer will get you through the times of no money better than money will get you through the times of no beer
(with grateful thanks to the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and slightly adapted)

Nath:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

Yeah its easy enough to get into, I, like tony, set my equipment up as best as I could do, y'know the norm how many litres post and pre boil, deadspace etc and then I just adjusted it after I brewed if I had a slightly different outcome. Thats the hardest part really, everything else is quite straight forward (until you wanna delve into triple decoation mashes - something I wont be doing!)

Just download it, free for 2 weeks have a couple of brews with it and if you go for something else then no money lost a a few brews to boot.

Drinkin' - nowt, it's all gone

Plannin'-
Loads a beer after an upgrade!

nathbrew@gmail.com

Greg:

Posted 1 year ago by Admin

When I first downloaded the trial I thought the same as you Saracen. I had been using beer engine too and thought that beersmith was far too complicated so I didn't bother buying it and went back to beerengine. After a few months and more recommendations on here I decided to take another look and persisted going through the learning curve and I was so glad I did.

Its worth sticking with it. As Tony and Nath said, just go with some of the defaults to start with while you get used to it. The main difference (which is confusing at first) is that you have to setup your equipment. Size, deadspace, loss to boil/hops etc. Its pretty easy to do and you will get much more accurate results from your brew days once you get that info in. You can brew using the defaults then enter the info as you gather it. Same goes for sparge/mash as it has lots strange American options, I just choose simple 1 stage mash and kind of ignored the rest as I mainly used it for hops/grains etc so didn't really care what mashtemp/sparge volume came up in the recipe.

I've just moved over to BeerAlchemy (as I have a mac) and had the same problems all over. Hated it at first but now I've got used to it find it excellent and dare I say it even better than Beersmith. Sorry chaps but its true and now macs do really rule!!!!

Hamish:

Posted 1 year ago by Moderator

until you wanna delve into triple decoation mashes - something I wont be doing!

No I won't be doing decoction mashes either, saw a video by a German fella, it took him 3 hours to mash his brew.

Planning: Wheat beer fermented with Schneider Weisse yeast, a Stout, lots of hoppy pale ales
Fermenting: Marynka pseudo-lager
Maturing/Conditioning:
Drinking: Wheat beer, ESB, Vienna lager & shop bought stuff

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