Best brewing software?

This. I just used it for the first time, and it is a very helpful tool. It is very flexible in how it lets you calculate stuff, and unlike most brewing software I've used, has a very intuitive and easy-to-understand interface. It lets you specify your recipe through as many mash/decoction steps as you care to use, and lets you calculate things using pretty much whichever constant you please - you can specify a temp and let it tell you a volume needed, or vice versa, for just about everything.

The only thing I couldn't do with it was a combined corn sugar/table sugar priming calculation, but that is about as small a concern as there could possibly be. Best 5 or 6 bucks I ever spent.

 

It probably is the milling. My LHBS has a separate mill for wheat, and they crush it much finer than the barley. I have no efficiency issues whatsoever.

 

Thanks for that.

 

I use Beersmith. Definitely has a lot of power "under the hood", but I rarely get that deep into it. I just want something to help me stay within style guidelines and give me a nice printout for brew day. It does that. Oh, and now there is a $4 version you can buy on iOS, so you can use your iPhone or iPad on brew day.

 

I'm not a fan of beersmith or promash, both are awkward and spit out incomplete information and have odd features I don't even want while lacking others I really need.

I've been using beer tools pro for years and continue to be very happy with it. It allows you to set your own utilization curve for hop additions and I have found it to be the most accurate and full featured software for both homebrew and commercial sized batches.

 

I think you're getting this from Figure 2.1. Correct? Eyeballing the various data points on the chart (unfortunately the raw data isn't there, just the picture), especially in the time ranges applicable to post boil hopping, I'd say 194F (90C) results in concentrations about 60% of 212F (100C). I think that chart is probably the best source of information for this. My only hesitation in using that ratio (as a factor x well known utilization curves, e.g. Tinseth) is that the Tinseth formula indirectly accounts for degradation of boil addition derived iso-alpha-acids over time (including post boil 'hot' time), while the degradation for post boil derived iso-alpha-acids isn't subject to additional degradation time. (There's no post-post-boil hot time...vocabulary is starting to fail me.)

 

Linky to chart?

 

The link to the .pdf is in mattbk's post.

 

Thanks, that will give me some reading material for myself for between my myriads of other reading material that I have to read.

 

I used equation 2.9 to calculate k1 (isomerization constant) as a function of temp, 2.10 to calculate k2 (degradation constant) as a function of temp, and 2.11 to calculate the concentration of iso-alphas as a function of time. 2.11 includes terms both for isomerization and for degradation. In Excel, I can now plot iso-alphas imparted to the beer as a function of whirlpool time at any fixed temp - ie, cool to 170, pitch your hops, whirlpool for 30 minutes - use the relationships to calculate the AAs/IBUs added.

While I'm good with Excel - I have no idea how to add pictures into these posts. If someone instructs me I can post a graph I've generated of iso-alphas vs temperature for a fixed whirlpool time (say 30 mins) - keeping in mind, again, that this is an extrapolation of the data in this paper to lower temperature ranges.

 

Interesting. I wonder why Figure 2.1 would seem to imply a different factor between 90C and 100C, since it would also include degradation over a given time period. (i.e. it's simply a measure of concentration, which is a function of both isomerization and degradation.)

 

I remember defending myself here talking about the iso-humilones degrading with a long boil. Just saying. ;-)

 

Yes, I see what you're getting at. There is an inflection point in the curve for temp > 100 deg C, and none for the 90 deg C data? I don't think the x-axis is plotted out far enough. Again, modelling the numbers, at 100 deg C, the max is at 150 minutes; at 90 deg C, the max would be at 245 minutes; at 80 deg C, the max would be at 410 minutes. Warning: do not conduct hopstands for longer than four hours!

The point of isoalpha degradation after 2.5 hr boils though, should be noted. Thanks for calling attention to that.

 

LOL. (4 hour hopstands.) Actually, what I was trying to point out was that the chart seems to show something close to 60% for the ratio between 90C and 100C concentrations over much of the timeline, while you got something closer to 50% by deriving from the formulae. I was trying to reconcile the two.

 

I use Beersmith at home and Brewology when I am not being productive at work.

 

Hmm, yeah. Not sure if the curve here is fit to the data or to the equation. Wondering if it's not a perfect fit. It is a start though.

 

I use QBrew. It's rather primitive and some of the numbers it spits out can be a little wonky (that's a technical term), but it's free, very easy to use and has a large ingredient database that's easy to tweak. All the recipes I've plugged into it have produced good beers.

 

I'm a beersmith user. The cool thing about beersmith is, you can use it right out of the "box" so to speak, only inputting very little info and be pretty close. Then as you use it and tweak as much or as little as you care about you can have it really dialed in for your system. Most people don't want to take the time to know what their system really does though. Lately I have been looking at Brewers Friend and really like what I see.

 

"either i don't get the hang of it or I don't love it. not sure."
I know this is an old thread but ^ resonated with me.

That's been my feeling about most of the brewing calculators that I've tried. I was looking for something simple and easy to use. QBrew is nice, but it doesn't have all the ingredients I use. Sure you can tweak it, but that takes time.

For the last few batches, I have been using All Grain Beer and have been really happy with it.

It has all the ingredients I need and looks like the list is constantly being updated.

 

I personally don't use any software – recommend the good ol' trial and error method. I just make sure to keep a log of everything I did on brew day. Once you collect enough recipes on paper (some good, some bad) you begin to figure out what'll work best.