Has anyone used Beer Smith in their recipes?

Question

http://beersmith.com/

My brother-in-law and his dad have been using and swear by it, but (not to be conceited) I think my beer's better.

Answer 1

I'd never heard of it before, but it doesn't look like something I'd really enjoy.

Their product tag says "take the guesswork out of brewing." That's one of the things I kind of like -- trying new things and seeing what comes out. Sure, it's nice to have an idea of what ingredients will do what as far as body, color, and flavor, but I don't know... maybe I'm just old fashioned.  

Answer 2

I haven't used it for any of my brews, but my good brewing buddy has it on his computer and uses it.  It isn't necessary to making good beer, but it does have some fun features on it, like calculating caloric content, ABVs, IBUs, SRMs, and all that other fun stuff beer calculators that cost $30 are supposed to do.  It seems to be a pretty powerful program full of all kinds of features.  I personally stick with the Beer Recipator ( http://www.eidosinteractive.com/jsf/jsf.... ) because it does what I need it to do, and I don't have to pay money to use it.  Plus, if I'm lazy, drunk, or just plain forget to measure my gravity, at least by using a calculator program, I have a fairly decent idea of what things are going to be.  

However, as far as I know, no computer beer calculator can tell you if you're going to make a good beer or not.  That comes from good technique, knowledge, experience, and creativity.

Answer 3

I have to say that is pretty funny. You can go to www.beertools.com and generate a recipe and see how it fits in to a particular category. Unless you plan to enter your brew into a competition and want to get it close to a specific category who cares what the color or IBU's your brew is.