calumscott
Regular.
- Joined
- Sep 12, 2011
- Messages
- 311
- Reaction score
- 32
Regardless of whether it is or isn't, I've just bought it and thought I'd share my first impressions...
And my first impression at the two and a half quid price tag was "How bl**dy much?". This I now consider to be very uncharitable indeed.
The headlines:
- can access your beersmith cloud recipes
- can access a massive (3000+ they say) user submitted recipe database
- can store recipes locally
- has loads of reference, tools, converters and stuff
- has a brewday timer
Now, this is where it becomes clear that this isn't a full-on critique just some thoughts on playing with the app because I don't have a beersmith cloud account (yet) and I haven't (yet) used it in anger...
The concept is that you would use your desktop beersmith to create your recipes, stick them on your cloud, then access them in your kitchen/shed/garage on your phone or tablet (or if you can't get online from there, download to your device first then go brewing).
The interface is nice and simple like a good functional app should be, it uses all the icons familiar from the desktop version too which is nice. Viewing recipes gives a view of the headline beer attributes, the list of ingredients in timing order from which you can tap through to their details page, just like the desktop version. Equipment, mash and fermentation profiles and user notes follow the ingredients at the bottom of the page.
The brewday timer is accessed from the recipe page and looks to my untrained eye, pretty comprehensive. Each step in the process is counted down individually giving you the time to the next step - you can amend them on the fly too. Alerts will sound when each timing step finishes. The timings are split into two pages, mash and boil, complete with detail of water volumes and temps as well as the timings. Following the crucial information are some panels containing Brewing Estimates of losses, top up volumes and such, Fermentation estimates and aging estimates.
The reference section is a local-to-the-device database of hops, styles, grains, yeasts etc just like you have in the desktop version, very useful in all circumstances I would say.
The tools include loads of useful stuff like ABV and attenuation calculators, hydrometer adjustments... again, you know the stuff you get on the desktop version? Most of it is here and looks and feels the same.
So that's what it does, and as far as I can tell without using it in anger, it promises to do it all pretty well.
It's the "what it doesn't do" that made me baulk at the price initially. It is, in effect, a recipe reader. You can't edit them on your mobile device - BeerSmith say there is a "full" mobile version in pipeline which will have the whole recipe building engine in it. You also can't add ingredients, styles, etc. In short the only way to add anything to your device is to download a recipe either from your personal cloud or the public recipe database.
The real problem I've found with it is that they seem to have made some weird implementation of the swipe interface. It isn't slow but there is this really horrid lag. You swipe, you wait, you wait, you wait, then the screen catches up with you. I've emailed them to ask if they will investigate for a future update.
Worth £2.49? Absolutely. For anyone brewing remotely from their PC, I think £2.50 is a bargain for something which is so feature rich at least where the brewday is concerned anyway. I think you've got everything you'd need at your fingertips to make your brewday run smoothly.
There are a couple of unanswered questions though. As the full version is due out "in a few months", are BeerSmith going to offer that as an in-app purchase from the existing "lite" app at a reduced rate? Again, I've asked the question. If not, I'd say hold off and see what price the full version gets offered at - it would make a brilliant distraction on the train to sit and construct the beers to take away the commuting blues. I do struggle, however, to see how they would be able to put the recipe engine onto a phone sized screen and keep it intuitive, perhaps this app is the thing for those who haven't joined the massive-mobile brigade... Also (and this might already be available through the beersmith cloud) it would be good to download your own hops, grains, profiles etc from your desktop version into the reference section. I'll maybe drop them another line...
So there you have it, BeerSmith Lite on the iPhone. Good reference, big recipe database, get your own recipes on your phone, all the tools you need for your brewday and all without lugging your desktop PC, monitor, keyboard and mouse out to the shed... :thumb:
And my first impression at the two and a half quid price tag was "How bl**dy much?". This I now consider to be very uncharitable indeed.
The headlines:
- can access your beersmith cloud recipes
- can access a massive (3000+ they say) user submitted recipe database
- can store recipes locally
- has loads of reference, tools, converters and stuff
- has a brewday timer
Now, this is where it becomes clear that this isn't a full-on critique just some thoughts on playing with the app because I don't have a beersmith cloud account (yet) and I haven't (yet) used it in anger...
The concept is that you would use your desktop beersmith to create your recipes, stick them on your cloud, then access them in your kitchen/shed/garage on your phone or tablet (or if you can't get online from there, download to your device first then go brewing).
The interface is nice and simple like a good functional app should be, it uses all the icons familiar from the desktop version too which is nice. Viewing recipes gives a view of the headline beer attributes, the list of ingredients in timing order from which you can tap through to their details page, just like the desktop version. Equipment, mash and fermentation profiles and user notes follow the ingredients at the bottom of the page.
The brewday timer is accessed from the recipe page and looks to my untrained eye, pretty comprehensive. Each step in the process is counted down individually giving you the time to the next step - you can amend them on the fly too. Alerts will sound when each timing step finishes. The timings are split into two pages, mash and boil, complete with detail of water volumes and temps as well as the timings. Following the crucial information are some panels containing Brewing Estimates of losses, top up volumes and such, Fermentation estimates and aging estimates.
The reference section is a local-to-the-device database of hops, styles, grains, yeasts etc just like you have in the desktop version, very useful in all circumstances I would say.
The tools include loads of useful stuff like ABV and attenuation calculators, hydrometer adjustments... again, you know the stuff you get on the desktop version? Most of it is here and looks and feels the same.
So that's what it does, and as far as I can tell without using it in anger, it promises to do it all pretty well.
It's the "what it doesn't do" that made me baulk at the price initially. It is, in effect, a recipe reader. You can't edit them on your mobile device - BeerSmith say there is a "full" mobile version in pipeline which will have the whole recipe building engine in it. You also can't add ingredients, styles, etc. In short the only way to add anything to your device is to download a recipe either from your personal cloud or the public recipe database.
The real problem I've found with it is that they seem to have made some weird implementation of the swipe interface. It isn't slow but there is this really horrid lag. You swipe, you wait, you wait, you wait, then the screen catches up with you. I've emailed them to ask if they will investigate for a future update.
Worth £2.49? Absolutely. For anyone brewing remotely from their PC, I think £2.50 is a bargain for something which is so feature rich at least where the brewday is concerned anyway. I think you've got everything you'd need at your fingertips to make your brewday run smoothly.
There are a couple of unanswered questions though. As the full version is due out "in a few months", are BeerSmith going to offer that as an in-app purchase from the existing "lite" app at a reduced rate? Again, I've asked the question. If not, I'd say hold off and see what price the full version gets offered at - it would make a brilliant distraction on the train to sit and construct the beers to take away the commuting blues. I do struggle, however, to see how they would be able to put the recipe engine onto a phone sized screen and keep it intuitive, perhaps this app is the thing for those who haven't joined the massive-mobile brigade... Also (and this might already be available through the beersmith cloud) it would be good to download your own hops, grains, profiles etc from your desktop version into the reference section. I'll maybe drop them another line...
So there you have it, BeerSmith Lite on the iPhone. Good reference, big recipe database, get your own recipes on your phone, all the tools you need for your brewday and all without lugging your desktop PC, monitor, keyboard and mouse out to the shed... :thumb:
