Best brewing software?

Spreadsheet.

 

Spreadsheets are probably best if you're good at doing spreadsheets and understand all the math and parameters you need to keep track of, or if someone gives you a well designed template that's suitable to your needs. I'm good at excel and math, but I'm far lazier than I am good at excel and math, so I got beersmith.

Beersmith also works well, but you've got to adjust various parameters over a number of batches until your numbers match beersmith's numbers. This is a bit of a PITA, but once it's tweaked, it's pretty darn accurate. Beersmith should provide more tutoring on this particular aspect of the program, IMO. Maybe in future editions.

 

It's not magical, but here's the link...
BrewSheet

 

Equipment > Details is where you set your 'Evaporation rate' and 'Loss to Boil Trub and Chiller' and 'Lauter Tun Deadspace.' If these are off...your volumes will be off...as well.

'Mash profile' is where you set your initial temperatures for 'Grain' and 'Tun' and 'Sparge' volumes. If you want to double-sparge...you need to play around with the 'percentage of mash tun volume' to get two equal volumes. If these are off...your temperatures and volumes will be off...as well.

BS assumes x-% attenuation for each yeast variety...which I find is always too low.

 

All these, plus other things can affect your numbers. I had to adjust my Total Efficiency (on the design page) to reach a state of being nearly perfect every time (within two points, pretty consistently, as long as I follow the volumes exactly, obviously). I also had to adjust the other stuff too, but that was the big one that was holding me up. Someone here finally tipped me off to that one, it wasn't inherently obvious from using the program.

Playing with the mashing and sparging helps you plan your beer day better (knowing exact volumes is handy, especially if you use bottled water, which thankfully I no longer do).

It needs a better way to adjust for different yeasts and their appetites. Also, you'll probably have to add hops and grains and specialty ingredients, because the database won't be complete. I guess this is partially understandable because ingredients differ from place to place. It's not hard to add stuff tho.

Oh, and late hops add NO bitterness at all, ever, no matter what, or that's what the software says at least. It doesn't take into account bitterness levels from hop stands, whirlpool hopping, flameout additions etc. This isn't a fatal flaw, BTW, I just consider them to be zero most of the time, and don't expend much energy on the fact that I know they are NOT zero. In practicality, the amount of bitterness added to my beers from flameout additions won't be the make or break difference between good beer and bad. If there's a sizeable flameout addition, it'll probably be a hoppy beer anyway, and there will be some leeway for the additional IBUs that aren't accounted for by beersmith.

Overall, beersmith is pretty good, and if I had to make my own spreadsheet, I wouldn't, I would just keep using beersmith, despite its (overall pretty minor) shortcomings.

 

Yeah, and if you add them to the boil with one minute left, they are "boil" hops. (Boil and bittering being the same thing according to beersmith, my version says "boil.") It's a bit silly the way it's worded and how the interface works, but it doesn't really make any practical difference as it works just fine, except for not accounting for IBUs from FO additions.

Main thing to consider is that if failure to account for the extra IBUs from flameout additions is the make or break moment that turns your beer from best in show to drainpour, then you have bigger issues than which software to use.

 

beersmith with some manual calculations and a grain of salt (as pointed out the yeast attenuation stuff tends to not be too accurate for some of the more "exotic" yeast strains)

 

I've been using iBrewMaster on my iPhone and iPad. It's been a great tool and once you have your equipment information dialed in, it's pretty spot on.

 

The 5" 'aroma' setting doesn't mean make the addition with 5" left in the boil.
It means steep for 5" at flame-out.

No boiling > no isomerization > no bittering.

 

More correctly...
No boiling > less isomerization > less bittering
Isomerization requires high temps, but not necessarily boiling. But the higher the temp, the more isomerization.

 

Point taken VM...but isn't we splttin'hairs?
One or two IBUs is a rounding error.

 

Maybe. Depends on how much hops, and at what AA%, are being steeped. Atomeyes didn't say. I didn't want anyone taking away the notion that there is nothing.

As an aside, there are some commercial brewers intentionally getting a significant amount of bitterness from post boil additions (generally whirlpooling). Unfortunately I don't think there's much data available on utilzation rates under various post boil conditions (whirlpool vs steep, chill rates, etc.). Personally, I treat post boil hops as adding 0 bitterness, even though I know it's not true. There is some utilization data for steeping at various static temps which could be used as the beginning of a model, if the change in temp (cooling) over time was known/assumed. I think it's an area for some interesting work to be done.

 

I derive a good bit of utility from Beersmith, but I feel like there are some things that are difficult, counter-intuitive, amd needlessly complicated.

However, could it be that there was a problematic crush? When I brew wheat beers, I get lower extract, which I presume to be an inadequate crush setting for the smaller wheat grain (I have my malts crushed by the supplier, so I am at their mercy in terms of quality of crush).

 

Hello boys! sorry to thread jack again.

http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/x.../1957/22805/MalowickiMarkG2005.pdf?sequence=1

This gentleman correlated isomerization rates across a range of temperatures. It is an exponential relationship with temperature, similar to any chemical reaction. The flaw I see in this model is that he only investigated temps from 90 to 130 deg C - but still provides an approximation.

If you try modeling some of the numbers, youll find that you get about half the IBUs at 195 deg F as you would at 212. If you carry the correlation down to 165 deg F, you get about 10% of the IBUs. I usually add whirlpool hops at < 170 deg F to elimiate volatilization of essential oils anyway, so I ignore the IBU contributions.

 

All of my all-grain wheat beer recipes fall short of the predicted extract and I assume this is because the mill setting used at the homebrew shop, which gives me about 72% efficiency with all-barley mashes, is not the best for crushing wheat, which has a small sized grain. I've had wheat beers come in at 60-65%. It could be that I am wrong about crush having anything to do with your gose issues or even my wheat beer issues. Just throwing it out there as a possibility.