Things I wish BeerSmith would do differently

I saw the suggestion forum. But I'm not sure if some of these features aren't already there and I just don't know how to use them, or if the enhancements are actually needed.

- BeerSmith doesn't differentiate between a recipe and a brewing session. I shouldn't be entering my measured boil gravity, or measured kettle volume into the recipe. For one, it makes it impossible to go back to a previous session and see what my numbers were. Right now I keep track of my session numbers in a separate excel spreadsheet. Ideally, there would be separate sections in BS for recipes and for brewing sessions, so I can go back and look at a recipe for a beer I brewed six months ago and see what my numbers were. I shouldn't have to keep a separate recipe around for every brewing session if I want to record my numbers in BS.

- Tweaking a recipe is cumbersome. Let's say I want to brew a slight variation on a recipe, either because I'm forced or want to do a substitution. Right now I have to make a separate recipe. There should be a way to set version numbers on a recipe *and* keep all prior versions of the recipe accessible. I'm aware of the version feature on the recipe design page but it doesn't save the old versions. It just lets you identify which version you're currently looking at. Honestly that version field looks like a stub that was never coded.

- Making changes to my equipment profile doesn't change existing recipes. I understand this is probably by design, but it makes the software painful to use. If I brewed a recipe six months ago, and have changed my equipment profile since then, I now must go in and "re-attach" the equipment profile to the recipe. This kind of ties back in to my first point - there's no differentiation between recipes and sessions. If I'm going to brew a recipe again with a new equipment profile, why do I have to explicitly tell the software to use the new profile? Isn't it obvious that if I'm brewing today that I'm going to be using the equipment that matches my profile? The software seems to think I'd want to set aside my new equipment and use the old equipment because the profile is static.

- There should be a way to turn off everything style-related. Some brewers could not care less about styles, but I'm constantly reminded that my beer doesn't conform to such-and-such style. I could not possibly care less. I brew what I want to brew. If it fits a style, great. If not, I don't care. I shouldn't have a bunch of red flags thrown in my face when looking at a recipe.

- Can you please make the carbonation and fermentation fields part of a profile that I can set? Every single time I enter a recipe, I have to change the carboation method to "keg" and the fermentation to "single stage".

- BeerSmith doesn't differentiate between a recipe and a brewing session.

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I agree. I am guessing that you too were a Promash user previously? I would definitely like a differentiation between recipe and session, and not have to go back and tweak my recipe with measured values.

- Tweaking a recipe is cumbersome. Let's say I want to brew a slight variation on a recipe, either because I'm forced or want to do a substitution. Right now I have to make a separate recipe. There should be a way to set version numbers on a recipe *and* keep all prior versions of the recipe accessible.

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Again, I agree. I have been keeping seperate versions every time I make a change, but like you say, it's cumbersome. Especially when there is a 15 recipe limit on the cloud drive! Versions of the same recipe shouldn't count toward the recipe limit!

- Making changes to my equipment profile doesn't change existing recipes.

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Agreed. But this is a double edged sward...like you said, due to the versioning and recipe/session limitations, if your equipment profile changes, do you really want it to change previously brewed recipes? I think that unless the versioning and lack of recipe/session differentiation are changed, it is what it is...

- There should be a way to turn off everything style-related. Some brewers could not care less about styles, but I'm constantly reminded that my beer doesn't conform to such-and-such style. I could not possibly care less. I brew what I want to brew. If it fits a style, great. If not, I don't care. I shouldn't have a bunch of red flags thrown in my face when looking at a recipe.

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I personally like this feature, but respect your choice to ignore it. Just a suggestion, but you could simply pick a wide open style like category 21 or 23, which opens up the limits on everything, so at least you wouldn't be getting red flags all the time...? I think 21 has wide limits, whereas 23 has no limits, which would probably be ideal for you.

While we're discussing this, I'd also like to throw in Beersmith's lack of portability...It is ridiculously difficult to move recipes, profiles, ingredients, etc. from one PC to another...For example, I have Beersmith loaded on both my home desktop PC as well as my home notebook that I use while brewing (because it's portable!). Well, if I create a new ingredient, say Vanilla Extract on one computer, it WILL NOT show up on the other computer...UNLESS I use Dropbox and cross my fingers that the files don't get corrupted by accidentally trying to run BS on both computers simultaneously (ie. forgetting to shut BS off on the one I'm not using.)
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I guess what I'm saying is the recipe cloud is a great idea, but it needs to ALSO accommodate all of the other databases as well, such that BS is running locally as a client only, but all of the database files are stored on the cloud WITH the recipes.

A lot of this functionality is in BeerSmith. But, it isn't intuitive, so there is a learning curve. I am just another user, but here are a few answers to your frustrations.

LovesIPA said:

- BeerSmith doesn't differentiate between a recipe and a brewing session. ... I shouldn't have to keep a separate recipe around for every brewing session if I want to record my numbers in BS.

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BeerSmith gives you the opportunity to create a beer log. This is how it tracks sessions. Once you create a recipe, click the Copy to Log File button. BeerSmith will create the log folder, if one does not already exist. On brewday, there is the recipe ready for tracking your activities, while the master copy remains unchanged.

- There should be a way to set version numbers on a recipe *and* keep all prior versions of the recipe accessible.

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This one is causes the most frustration for brewers. Versioning is cumbersome. Recipe versions let you change recipe names or add the version number to the file name. They are separate, but not nested. This may get addressed in future updates. I just save the older versions to an archive folder where ascending dates tell me which is which. I'm with you, though. Recipes versions should nest and be scrollable.

In the meantime, I change recipes as needed in the log folder to reflect what was actually brewed.

- Making changes to my equipment profile doesn't change existing recipes. 

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I go back and forth on this one. If BeerSmith changed everything globally, then it's hard to have and accurate history. Efficiency and yields would change, as well. I like seeing how equipment changes the process moving forward without rewriting past recipes. This is another place where the brew log is handy.

- There should be a way to turn off everything style-related. ... I shouldn't have a bunch of red flags thrown in my face when looking at a recipe.

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To each, his own. You’re correct that you can’t turn off styles, but you can do as R. Gibson suggested or just create a style profile that is so wide that the ranges become meaningless. I'm not sure you're going to escape a comparison tool in any program. Even in Promash, the style is right there, front and center. That’s never stopped anyone from being creative, though.

- Can you please make the carbonation and fermentation fields part of a profile that I can set? Every single time I enter a recipe, I have to change the carboation method to "keg" and the fermentation to "single stage".

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Create a default recipe. I have one that holds my equipment profile, nominal ingredients and finings, as well as my standard fermentation and carbonation profiles. Every time I add a new recipe, all the tedious stuff is in there.

Thanks,
  I'm working on pieces of all of these...but here are some additional thoughts:

  - I'm working on ways to version/save old versions of recipes automatically.  I'm thinking about the "session" data - and may revisit it in the future.

  - I really think the recipe has to contain the equipment profile - otherwise making a small change to an equipment profile would change every recipe I already brewed which could be a real disaster if I'm trying to match color, OG or any other parameter.  What if I upgrade from a 5 gal setup to 10 gal setup? 

  - You can move everything from one PC to another if you like - copy the entire Documents/BeerSmith2 directory over.  This will, however, overwrite the data on the destination PC, but it is a good way to start on another machine.  However once you do this you can use the cloud to keep things synched up. I am adding buttons to allow saving of profiles from a recipe in the next version.

  - As pointed out setting a "default" recipe will solve the other issues.

I appreciate the feedback!

Brad

BeerSmith said:

- I really think the recipe has to contain the equipment profile - otherwise making a small change to an equipment profile would change every recipe I already brewed which could be a real disaster if I'm trying to match color, OG or any other parameter.  What if I upgrade from a 5 gal setup to 10 gal setup?

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I think this is where differentiating the recipe from the session would factor in. Let's say the equipment profile applies to all recipes; i.e. when you create or edit a recipe, it should calculate the gravities, efficiency, water volumes, etc. based on your current equipment profile. However, if you are looking at a previous brewing session, you are looking at it using whatever profile you had at that time. It would be fixed. Ideally there would also be a function to create a recipe from a brewing session so you could see how the equipment changes affect your numbers.

I understand what you're saying, but how is that vastly different from just having multiples recipes?  APA v1, APA v2, APA v3, etc.? 

When I want to re-brew something, I usually copy the previous attempt for the ingredients, and then grab the Equipment Profile again just to ensure I'm using the latest of that.    And then I could make ingredients changes as well. 

MaltLicker said:

I understand what you're saying, but how is that vastly different from just having multiples recipes?  APA v1, APA v2, APA v3, etc.?

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I never claimed vastly different, but I can certainly argue less cumbersome.

When I want to re-brew something, I usually copy the previous attempt for the ingredients, and then grab the Equipment Profile again just to ensure I'm using the latest of that.    And then I could make ingredients changes as well.

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Using the current equipment profile should be automatic. I shouldn't have to explicitly tell the software that I'm using all my standard equipment today.

You can copy a recipe and make ingredient changes, but if I'm out of Magnum and want to use Warrior for bittering, is that change deserving of its own recipe?

I think I need to use the "copy to log" feature some more to get familiar with it. I wish I'd known about it earlier. It seems to address a lot of my points. I just wish it was a a little more intuitive.

LovesIPA said:

..................but if I'm out of Magnum and want to use Warrior for bittering, is that change deserving of its own recipe?

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I would say Yes, it is.  One "fear" of many homebrewers is the 'snowflake' wonder beer that cannot be repeated.  Especially if that hop switch is the only change, and the batch turns out fantastic, then how else to possibly repeat it exactly if every detail of the day is not captured?  At least as it is currently designed, the Recipe file seems to be the common currency. 

I think I agree with both of you...but I believe a session should be an "instance" of a recipe. To use a slightly different analogy, when I am cooking, I prefer to print out a hard copy of a recipe (laptops on the counter when I'm cooking are a bad idea... In any case, this is the fundamental guideline for how I will make the meal. However, while cooking, I realize that I am missing an ingredient...say the recipe calls for skim milk, but I only have whole milk. So I jot a note on the instance of that recipe, (aka session) indicating that I made a deviation from what the recipe actually called for.

Now I have a snapshot of an instant in time where the base recipe was modified, and that "snowflake" session can then be repeated. That meal may turn out to be fantastic, and I may want to turn that session into a new recipe...but perhaps the food tasted like crap, and I want to just stick with the tried-and-true recipe next time...well, I still have both the original recipe, as well as a prime example of what NOT to do, that is saved in the session.

Without this distinction between recipes and sessions, we are required to either make these changes to the original recipe "on the fly," which IMHO is just inviting disaster...or the alternative, forces us to create copies of recipes and then modify that copy...which is essentially what a session is. You can think of it circularly...a recipe becomes a session when you actually brew it. Then, if you tweak the recipe, and like the result better than the original recipe, you then turn that session back into a new recipe. If not, it just gets filed under "what not to do," and you go back to the original recipe next time.

Funny, that is exactly what I do with BS2; print out the "intended" recipe sheet, takes notes of what I hit or missed, and any "on-the-fly" changes I made, and then once all is done, I return to BS2 and enter exactly what really happened.  On the process/equipment side, this is the easy way to verify you've got your set-up dialed in well enough to hit your targets.    On the recipe side, you can capture that hop quantity that is less than inventory showed, etc.  Or that you forgot to add the cane sugar....

In my mind, the intended or planned recipe is just that, the intention for the day.  The final edited recipe is what really happened, and the official record of what got made. 

Could you not just use the notes tab to enter changes you made and then adjust later?
One thing I would love to see is a split screen to see 2 versions of the same recipe. I use a family tree software with this function and it handy as hell.

I found another minor issue with BeerSmith.

When you add dextrose to a recipe, it includes the sugar in the mash efficiency calculations. So it thinks I suddenly suffered a 20% drop in efficiency yesterday because I included a pound of dextrose in the ingredients.

I don't think it should do this - valid or no?

LovesIPA said:

When you add dextrose to a recipe, it includes the sugar in the mash efficiency calculations.

I don't think it should do this - valid or no?

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There are other threads on this very subject. Brad has said that there needs to be a better way of addressing brewing sugars, overall.

The same issue exists if the recipe has sugars added to the fermenter. BeerSmith totals all sugars to get the OG for the abv% calculation. So, on the one hand, it messes with your mash efficiency number a little, but it does represent the actual OG target of the recipe.