OnTap Magazine

ontapmag.co.za | Autumn 2019 | 59 B rewing great beers is an art, for sure. But I’ve never had a good beer from someone who wasn’t also just a little bit obsessed with the whole science of brewing. You know, the part of the process where you get to don your lab coat, haul out the test tubes, and get all mathematical and stu . Now for some, that’s a wonderful opportunity to reach for some graph paper, various scienti c calculators, and get down to some serious number crunching. Want to calculate attenuation? How about pre-boil gravity? No problem, let me just conjure up some di erential equations and Robert’s your mother’s brother. But if you’re like me, you love the geekery of it all but don’t necessarily want to refresh your matrix algebra knowledge in order to brew good beer. For folks like us, it’s perhaps better to ask: hasn’t someone else already come up with something that can help? Fortunately, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” Welcome to the wonderful world of brewing software. Having tried a few of the available packages, my bet is on BeerSmith. When it comes to well- supported, easy-to-use and customisable brewing software, BeerSmith tends to blow away other software options like a plywood upright at a Nevada nuclear test site. More than a few professional brewers also enjoy using BeerSmith, even though other packages (such as ProMash) are supposed to cater more to commercial brewers’ needs. If you’re on an extremely tight budget, you can try BrewTarget, which is open-source and free. at’s all good, but like most open-source applications, BrewTarget can be somewhat overwhelming to novice brewers. It’s also not exactly the most user-friendly package out there, but hey, it is free. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a look at what brewing software can help you do. RECIPE FORMULATION I once did a few manual recipe formulations in the early days of my brewing career. It was roughly as much fun as listening to the sweet sounds of a yodelling competition. So, not much fun. If you want to start creating your own award-winning homebrew recipes, software like BeerSmith can really help. I’d go as far as saying that you really can’t do without software if you want to go into serious recipe formulation. One of the reasons for this is that it’s darned di cult to manually calculate things like original gravity of a beer, given a set of ingredients, as well as expected nal gravity, colour, IBUs and a host of other really vital facts and stats. Yes, all of SOFTWARE PRICING Self-explanatory, this one. But do watch out for annual licenses versus buying it once-off. BEGINNER- FRIENDLINESS Low, Moderate, High Will the software package ease you into brewing digitally, or does it require an advanced degree in engineering to just find where mash timer's at? SUPPORT BASE Small, Moderate, Large Even excellent software can leave you stumped occasionally. Having a large and active user base helps with those FAQs, as well as ensuring that recipes and new ingredients are constantly added. ADDITIONAL FEATURES Handy, interesting features that the package delivers to the homebrewer. BREWER'S FRIEND US$24.99 (per year) Can add photos of your beer. Free version available but restricted BEERSMITH 3 US$34.95 (once-off) or $14.95 (per year) Annual pricing includes cloud storage of recipes. Very accurate calculations BREWTARGET FREE Open-source, so updated often BREW ALCHEMY US$9.99 (once-off) IOS app BEER TOOLS PRO US$ 24.95 (once-off) Offers discounted subscription to BYO magazine BREWPAL US$1.99 (once-off) IOS app