Beersmith 2.0

[jward]

Beersmith 2.0 is out. If you already own a copy you can buy the new one for ~$20 instead of ~$28 if you buy before end of August. I haven't had time to evaluate it, but when I went to load a beer.xml file it said that feature would be available soon via an update.

[JonW]

The bug list is pretty long right now. I'm sticking with 1.4 until more of the issues get worked out. Still, it is a good upgrade and well worth the price. I spoke with the author, Brad Smith, at NHC. Nice guy and he is dedicated to this software. He quit his day job and is focused solely on developing and making this software the best homebrewing tool out there.

[lexuschris]

I just downloaded the trial version this week, and loaded up all my .BSM files into it. I think I'm going to like it, although there are a few little bugs here & there still... Will most likely by the upgrade shortly, although will use 1.4 until it settles out...
--LexusChris

[lexuschris]

Just an update on BS 2.0...

So, when you install 2.0 it leaves 1.4 in place .. that is a good thing. I still go back to 1.4 to do things like export to HTML for my brewlog webpage. That is not currently supported in 2.0.

New features like building your own fermentation or mash schedules are cool. Since I brew mostly ales, I have my ale fermentation profile set as default. It includes ramping up over time and step temps over time. I also like the expanded area for notes.

The pop-up windows for selecting stuff does not automatically grab focus.. so you have to click in them once before you can scroll (mouse-wheel). The yeast starter details do not look like they impact the recipe, maybe they do .. but realy hard to tell... Recipe views tend to sort items in the order they were entered. Not all views, but it pops up in odd ways. If you decide to replace your Crystal-120 with Special B, it tends to show up after your yeast in some of the views & print-outs. And, there new 'beer color icon' is not as good as their previous one...

All-in-all, minor annoyances. If I could export to HTML from 2.0 and see better sorting in my views, I'd be 100% happy. As-is, I use 2.0 for most things... and go back to 1.4 for printing out my recipes for brew day.

Cheers!
--LexusChris

[backhousebrew]

Downloaded the BeerSmith trial program. I didn't realize how much the program does. I'm hooked. I'll be ordering the full program soon. It's been very interesting to input my old recipes and see if they fit into the right style category.

[JonW]

I made the initial switch to 2.0 when it came out, but due to the number of bugs, I went back to 1.4 for a while. However, I've now been on 2.0 since Sep/Oct and really like it. There's several parts I don't actively use like the inventory, shopping list and calendar, but for recipe creation/scaling and recording data, it's the best $20 you can spend brewing.

[brahn]

Downloaded the BeerSmith trial program. I didn't realize how much the program does. I'm hooked. I'll be ordering the full program soon. It's been very interesting to input my old recipes and see if they fit into the right style category.

I was very surprised at the meeting to find out that you'd never used brewing software before. It's definitely the way to go. I use Beer Alchemy on my mac, but for PC BeerSmith is the best I've seen.

[BrewMasterBrad]

Just bumping this topic to see if anyone has updates on the bugs in BeerSmith 2.0. I noticed on the BeerSmith web site that version 2.1 was released on May 15, so hopefully that includes most of the bug fixes.

I did find a new Android app (not sure if it is available on iPhone/iPad) called BrewAide which allows you to download your .bsmx or beer XML recipes. It includes several cool tools including converters and a brew day timer that automatically populates the timer with settings for whichever recipe you have open. Planning to use it for the first time in a brew session this Saturday. I have it loaded on my Android tablet and I have not encountered any bugs yet other than some of the XML fields have incorrect values in them. When I have time, I am going to try to edit one of the XML files to see if I can correct this issue so that the correct values show up in BrewAide. I don't have BeerSmith 2.0 yet, I don't know if this is an issue when importing .bsmx files.

[JonW]

The buggy stuff from the initial 2.0 was fixed long ago. I just updated to 2.1 two weeks ago. Not seeing a whole lot different except for two major items: brew timers and their new cloud recipe storage.

Although I won't use the brew timers because of my BCS system, it does look pretty good. It has both a mash timer and boil timer and the boil timer has all the hop additions. Everything is pulled right from your recipe.

I haven't dug into the cloud storage portion much, but I did put a clone recipe I developed up there.
http://beersmithrecipes.com/viewrecipe/ ... wer-10-ipa

Supposedly there will be new tablet and phone apps coming that will also be able to interact with your cloud recipes.

[Greywolf]

I have toyed around a little with 2.1
I too do not see much difference, what I am really waiting for is the cloud availability via smartphone. I would really like to be able to refference my recipes while at meetings or out with friends.

[BrewMasterBrad]

I have toyed around a little with 2.1
I too do not see much difference, what I am really waiting for is the cloud availability via smartphone. I would really like to be able to refference my recipes while at meetings or out with friends.

That's one of the reasons I really like the export to HTML feature in BeerSmith 1.4. I can save my recipes to my web site so I can reference them no matter where I am. The BrewAide program for the Android allows you to retrieve your recipe files from Dropbox, so I saved all my recipes as a single XML file and put it on Dropbox. The app was able to retrieve them without a hitch, so I can see all my recipes in BrewAide as well as my web site.

By the way, I just noticed that BeerSmith is having a sale this weekend. Only 19.95. I think I will buy a license now.