BeerSmith 3 Release Notes
This page provides detailed release notes of all of the significant changes in BeerSmith 3.
Major Features:
- Wine, Mead and Cider Support Added
- Support for Folders in the Cloud (and on BeerSmith 3 Mobile) as well as “unlisted” recipes
- Secure SSL/https data connection to cloud for data integrity
- Water profile tools and mash pH adjustment now integrated in the recipe builder
- Streamlined user interface including smart dialogs that hide unused fields for current task
- Temperature can now be specified for whirlpool hop additions
- A ton of new data – support for fruits, juices, honey, wines, new hop products, new add-ons…
- Boil altitude adjustments to adjust utilization for high altitude brewing
- Dozens of new features and fixes for brewers of all types
- New licensing system – tied to your cloud account lets you flexibly manage activations
Mead, Wine and Cider Support
- Recipe builder supports mead, wines and cider types and dynamically adjusts session data
- Mead, wine and cider style guides are now included with the program
- Report system customizes report to style of beverage brewed
- Support for juices, fruits, honey as native ingredients and most are preloaded for use
- You can add new ones knowing just their brix value
- Equipment profiles for popular mead, wine, cider sizes as well as scaling support
- Support in the cloud for mead, wine, cider recipes and sharing
- Color icon system lets you choose color for mead, wine, cider
- Support for TINOSA and TONSA-2 mead nutrient system built into recipe yeast tab, along with GoFerm needed for dry yeast hydration – also available as separate tool
- Mead nutrients adjust down proportionally when using large fruit proportions
- Support for Brix as a gravity measurement – can be set in Options->Units
- Yeast tolerance field added for yeasts to provide accurate FG estimate for high gravity beers, wines, meads
- Backsweeten tool to add in backsweetening ciders, meads or dessert wines
- Added “none” as a carbonation profile option for still meads, ciders, wines
- Fermentation profiles updated to include extra stage for extended aging
New Beer Brewing Features
- You can now specify a temperature with each whirlpool hop addition for more accurate IBU estimation during the whirlpool/steep
- A more accurate utilization model has been added to carry forward boil hops into the whirlpool – check the “Estimate Boil Hop Util in Whirlpool” box in your equipment profile to enable it
- Altitude adjustment for hop utilization is available – set “Boil Elevation” in Equip profile
- The yeast tab has been updated to allow two stage starters for liquid yeast and hydration instructions if working with dry yeast.
- New Water tab supports directly building a water profile in the recipe builder
- Ability to either include or exclude water agents using “Don’t include water agents” on water tab – to account for cases where water profile itself may already include water agents. Supports both mash and sparge water additions.
- You can match a water profile directly from the water tab using “Match a Target Profile” and it will match both water profiles.
- Water matching tool also breaks out and calculates the mash and sparge water additions separately and adds them separately.
- Old “water volumes” tab is still available as a button “Detailed water volumes” at the top of the water tab.
- You can now exclude gypsum as an addition in water tab or water profile tool
- Mash PH adjustment support for lactic, phosphoric and acid malt is integrated into the mash tab now so you can directly record acid ingredients and see effect on mash pH.
- This allows you to make an “up front” pH adjustment in recipe as well as measure the mash pH to make a final adjustment
- Full support for juices, fruits, honey built into program now – adding a new juice or fruit is as easy as taking its Brix or gravity value and color and using it
- New “Use in” field for fermentable ingredients lets you add fermentables during steep, mash, primary, secondary and also supports new fruit, juice and honey types
- Yeast starter tab has been simplified and made dynamic so it only shows fields needed based on yeast type used (dry or liquid).
- Volumes for extract as well as water needed is now calculated for extract brewers
- Also volumes for honey, grains, juice also shown so you can manage water needed
- Alcohol tolerance for yeast strains incorporated into the FG estimate for high gravity beers
- Refractometer tool now available as a pop-up in session dialog to make measurements easier
- Age profile now supports 4 stages for extended barrel aging
- Import tool to import BeerSmith 2 data on startup (also on File menu)
- Entire add-on feature reworked to show add-ons by type, and many new add-ons included
- Add-ons can be added from ingredient and profile “choose” dialogs to make finding new data easier
- Revamped fermentation readings section (session page) use current date and also allow for easy export to a CSV spreadsheet if desired
- Extract grain steep temperature field now added for extract brewers (session tab)
- Water additions, steep volumes, extract volume now shown for extract brewers (session tab)
- New mash profiles added for RIMS/HERMS brewers
- Notes, design and session tabs now show batch age in days for easier session management
- Support for display of multiple individual beer style guides at once
- Corrected bug in FG estimation that underestimated attenuation of yeast when working with a mash profile that incorporated steps at both low and high mash temps.
- Corrected bug that showed whirlpool hop additions in reverse time order on some displays
- Can now use “SG” as a data entry value for refractometer adjustments
- I recommend Brix or Plato if possible as some SG scales are not terribly accurate
- Added table sugar as an option in the carbonation tool
Cloud Integration Improvements
- Cloud now supports folders on both mobile and desktop – lets you manage recipes online
- New ‘Move to folder’ and ‘Copy to folder’ buttons simplify moving recipes or entire directories between cloud and local
- Secure connection (SSL/HTTPS) on both mobile and desktop for data and password security
- New sharing option for “unlisted” recipes that don’t show up in search results but can be located by your friends using a recipe id or sharing link
- You can rate recipes found online directly from the program now
- Cloud search now lets you find and share meads, wines and ciders
- com site revised to support mead, wine, cider types as well as sharing
User Interface/Usability Improvements
- New neutral styling/color scheme to get away from 1990’s blue
- Simplified editing dialogs for ingredients/profiles to reduce complexity
- Recipe pages (i.e. design, session, etc) are all customized to recipe type now to show most important data fields relevant to extract, all grain, cider, mead, or wine brewing
- Other dialogs such as equipment editor, ingredient editors, etc…are all now dynamic as well and will display only fields needed to complete the current task based on data types
- Redesigned bookmark bar at top to feature most popular functions used
- Revamped many ribbon and tool bars to make it easier to understand/manage data
- You can now add new ingredients on the fly when choosing a new ingredient
- News feature shows important update announcements (a few a year)
Data Improvements
- New add-on system improved to make it much easier to manage add-ons by type (File->Addons)
- Wine, mead and cider style guides are added as default additions
- Basic fruit, Knudsen juices, cider apple varieties available as fermentables by default
- A large number of new misc items added as defaults to support beer, wine, mead, cider brewing
- New add-ons for cryo hops, hop powders, hop extracts, new fermentables, much more
- Revamped equipment profiles added to reflect most commonly used beer, mead, wine, cider types for brewers
- New mash profiles for RIMS/HERMS brewers included by default
- New carbonation profiles for “none”
Licensing/Activation Management
- Activation system was redesigned to support quick online activation via cloud account rather than retaining a key
- Licenses can be activated and deactivated from your cloud profile page
- Ability to have both permanent licenses and subscription licensing which will lower entry price point as well as options for professional feature
- New subscription options will give users free access to major upgrades plus cloud space
- New system will also support additional online recipe editing capability for the future
Bug Fixes/Stability Improvements
- Added extensive data checks up front to detect cases where users may have moved/deleted data external to the program
- Corrected resource leak that could cause problems when adding or editing a large number of new items
- Corrected bug in printing of shopping list that could cause crashes
- Most simple edits are now “modal” dialogs for profiles/ingredients which resolves a crash bug on some platforms and also simplifies user interface.
- Fixed issues with title scaling and close box on tabs for high resolution screens
Fixes/Additions in 3.0.2 Beta
- Added new feature to calculate both mash and sparge water additions separately in the water tab within a recipe and also integrated this with the match water profile dialog so you can automatically calculate separate mash and sparge water additions – which is pretty convenient!
- Corrected crash on Mac in yeast tab where changing dates or editing yeast dates would cause a hard crash
- Corrected brew day timer which stopped when switching tabs – now it keeps running
- Corrected a large number of issues with Copy to Folder and Move to Folder commands – particularly affecting movement of folders/data to the cloud. Now they work properly.
- BeerSmith 2 importer now carries over critical options settings like metric units, cloud login, personal info and other critical settings from BS2 to BS3.
- BeerSmith 2 importer also carries over current “select” fields and add-ons where applicable
- Corrected bug in BeerSmith 2 importer to carry over add-ons for uninstall from BS2
- Corrected labels on longer fermentation profiles – was previously a mess for longer aging profiles
- Changed “finalize activation” dialog and process so it will give the user a second chance if they fail to log in using the web link during activation – should help with online activation
- Moved backup files to AppData directory to handle case where user accidentally deletes/moves the Documents/BeerSmith2 folder. This should provide better recovery options
- Corrected a number of smaller issues with activation that were not displaying activation user name, autorenew and a few other items
- Created an offline activation process to use with systems not connected to the internet – not intended for general use
- Corrected error where cloud search would still show “searching” if offline and unable to connect
BeerSmith 3.0.2 updates
- Added a second stage to the recipe starter calculations for liquid yeast allowing two stage starters. Also revised recommendation system so it makes recommendations for two stage starters, and revised report strings to handle one and two stage starters or show dry yeast hydration instructions for dry yeast
- Major cleanup of the water profile tool to clearly show mash/sparge volumes used and added notes to that effect. Now saves profile name when matching a target water profile. Also adjusted some water functions to correctly handle extract/wine/mead/cider appropriately.
- Added a button to defer sparge salts to the boil – an option some pro brewers use.
- Added a button under mead nutrients on starter tab (for meads) that lets you add the nutrients to the ingredient list in one click.
- Corrected “substitute” of whirlpool hops which was not carrying forward hop temps
- Replaced “l” with “L” for liters for added clarity in printed reports
- Corrected errors in total water needed function for extracts and other types
- Allow Lang.xml to be in the Documents directory now for easier installs (it works in program directory as well).
- Fixed an error when changing equipment in the design tab – if equipment was not compatible with recipe type it would display a message and not properly update batch volume. Fixed.
- Added a number of wine grape ingredients to the ingredient base – listed by brix content for easier creating of wines either directly from grapes (pressed juice) or pure wine base.
- Added Old “water volumes” tab to tab list. Did not like it as a separate button.
- Cleaned up total water volume function to correctly estimate total volume for extract, mead, wine, cider recipes
- Added basic wine grape juices by brix value for ease of use in wine making.
Fixes in 3.0.8 Release
- Fixed issue with storing directory name which was causing problems with some foreign users
- Fixed crash that occured when selecting some choice/type fields by clicking the keyboard
- Fixed issue with calendar not showing bulk age dates
- Fixed issue with report templates not showing bulk age dates, added more bulk age fields
- Fixed error with HTML messages being too small on high res screens – also made them resizable
- Fixed issue with title bar being too long for very long recipe names and cutting off buttons
- Corrected problem with trial period expiring if you changed documents directory
