Book Review- Brewing Better Beer- Ben Phelps

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Sep 192012
 

Ok. How do I do this review? Do I do the right thing and tell you exactly how it is? Or do I try to make it sound like something you need to read? Crap, I guess I just told you how this review is going to go.

Brewing Better Beer by Ben Phelps is a book that should be AVOIDED at all costs. Please note that this is NOT the book by the same title that was written by Gordon Strong. I am only doing this review to warn people, so they won’t get the wrong book from Amazon. Lucky for me this one was FREE for today instead of it’s normal $8.97 price (if I paid for this book I would demand a refund)

The book starts off by giving a very very basic run down of equipment needed and a VERY basic ingredients list for a VERY basic extract beer. It does include specialty grains in that basic recipe but what it tells you to do with them is wrong on so many levels. He mentions that capping beer bottles can take a few tries so make sure you have extra caps ready. Wait, what? Capping is the EASY part of the entire brewing process. The capper makes it pretty much fool proof.

During his brewing process explanation he suggests that you get a pot of water boiling and then add the grains in a cheese cloth sack for 20-30 minutes. Wait, What??? Noooooooooooo you STEEP the grains in hot water (150-154F not boiling) and then remove them before bringing to a boil. But according to this idiot, you can leave them in until it’s time to add the finishing hops?  He even went as far to say that if you don’t have cheese cloth, just add them to the kettle since you’ll be straining later anyways! What is this guy making? It certainly isn’t good beer!

When it came to ingredients he vaguely suggested get what ever type of yeast you want. ale, lager or WINE implying that it doesn’t make a difference. I’ll tell you flat out. Yeast makes ALL the difference in the final outcome of the beer. He also implies that pellet hops are some how inferior to “fresher hops”. Pellet hops are great ti use and you can get more extraction of flavor and bittering oils from pellet hops. Maybe he thinks that pellet hops are made from old stale hops, their not.

He next suggests that you transfer this boiling hot liquid to your fermentor after passing through a strainer. He suggests using a 5 gallon bucket or 5 gallon GLASS carboy for primary fermentation (which according to him takes a month or longer) and THEN cooling it down to pitching temps. OK, back that whole thing up and cool it BEFORE transferring to the primary. While you’re at it, use one that will hold at least 6-6.5 gallons to allow for the krausen (foam caused during rapid fermentation). Pouring a boiling hot liquid into a glass carboy will cause it to shatter due to temperature shocking the glass. The result will be boiling hot sugary liquid going all over the place and all over YOU. be safe people. Chill then transfer.

No he says that once chilled to 70-80F you can pitch the yeast. Sure, go ahead, if you like off flavors! He mentions that ale fermenting temps are higher than lager temp but does mention that the lager temps are in the 50-55F range while ale is in the 60-68F range (except Belgians that ferment hotter up to 80F!). The important thing is, temperature control is crucial to making better beer. A beer fermented at 70F+ using a lager yeast will taste like crap.

After fermentation he goes into bottling. He tells you to add priming sugar and transfer to a bottling bucket (he calls it a bucket with a nozzle). The fill the bottles and cap them. He does mention that a bottle filler is a good investment but says it’s not mandatory and doesn’t explain WHY it’s needed. He then tells you to cap the bottles. He completely skipped the part of waiting 2-3 weeks for the bottles to condition and then chill for 24-48 hours in order for the CO2 to be absorbed into solution. Instead he says to take a bottle and stick in the fridge for a couple hours and test it. if it isn’t ready, try again a  few days later.

He mentions early in the book that All Grain brewing adds 12-36 hours to your brew day.  I brew All Grain and my brew day is just 4 hours long (gotta love BIAB). I’m not sure how he figures that it adds that much time, but he’s wrong.

There is one thing that he completely skipped in the entire book. It’s the MOST important thing in brewing anything (beer, cider, mead or wine). SANITATION! You have to clean and sanitize everything that comes into contact with the beer/cider/mead/wine to prevent contamination ruining the entire batch (and possibly future batches if you don’t locate the source)

In closing, avoid this book at all costs. If you have never brewed beer before, stop by your local homebrew store. they’ll be happy to assist you. If you don’t have one near you. Ask here and I’ll be happy to help. You can also find more information that you thought possible at Home Brew Talk. I don’t own that site or get paid by them to promote the site. I’m just a regular member there who like many love to help people learn to brew.

til next time….

Prost!!
MM

Hops Harvest 2012

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Aug 282012
 

Well that time of year has come and gone for the hops I was growing. I harvested all of them and for their first year I was amazed at not only the height they reached (Ultra and Cascade reached 18ft, Galena reached 12ft) but at the amount of hops I was able to harvest. I had always been told that first year would result in no useable harvest. I’m here to tell you that isn’t always the case. Here are the harvest weights for my 2012 growing season.

Ultra: 9.7 ounces wet weight. 3.7ounce dry weight.
Cascade: 10 ounces wet weight 3 ounces dry weight
Galena: 2.2 ounces wet weight and .8 ounces dry weight.

Total: 29.1 ounces wet weight and 7.7 ounces dry weight.

Almost a half pound of hops, for FREE. Next year I hope to have a lot more hops since the root system is established already. Growing your own hops is fun and rewarding. Next up is a harvest ale using my home grown hops!

Hops update July 13 2012

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Jul 132012
 

Here’s a quick update. After looking at the hops garden yesterday. I think I might break out the ladder and start harvesting some of the Ultra hops. There’s a lot of large cones present yet it seems to be setting a second (and more prolific) round of cones. Not that I’m complaining!

The Cascade hops are looking good and I’ll be harvesting them in a couple of weeks. Here’s one of the Cascade cones that I split open.

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Look at that lupulin! The aroma is that of freshly cut grapefruit. Mmmm.

The Galena hops are growing, albeit slowly. They are over 6 feet talk now and are starting to grow burrs.  If they don’t do better next year them I’ll replace then with Cascades.

Prost!
MM

July 4th Hop update

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Jul 042012
 

Happy 4th of July to everyone here in the USA! Instead of being outside cooking on the grill or brewing beer, I decide to give an update on how my hops are doing. OK… I’ll be cooking later today and will be brewing in a couple weeks (that’ll be a special beer with a full blog post covering it.) so don’t worry that I may have lost my mind.

Ultra Hops:
WOW! These hops have gone above and beyond my expectations for a first year hop. Everything I had read 2012-06-24 10.22.27on growing hops said that for the first year there wouldn’t be that much growth and to expect little if ANY harvest. My experience in gardening over the years has taught me a few things when it comes to plants. Normally doesn’t always apply if you do everything you can to provide a good environment for the plant.2012-06-26 12.13.52 In this case I tilled the earth and added some sand  as well as cow manure to the soil to add nutrients and improve drainage. I also tilled in some spent grains to add more organic nutrients. I did everything I could up front to have a healthy soil. The results were the rhizomes sending up shoots within 2 weeks.  Those bines continued growing at a rapid rate and I watered daily and added Miracle-Gro once a week. The bines are now 22-25 feet long and covered in either burrs or hop cones. They are amazing 2012-06-14 16.33.22plants!

Seeing the burs grow into hop cones knowing that in another month or so I can harvest them and start brewing beer with hops that I grew makes it all worth the work that went into getting them to this stage. Just to check I pulled one cone and rubbed it in my hand. Its starting to smell like a hop should smell! I then cut it open and could see the lupulin glands starting to fill with that yummy yellow goodness.

Cascade and Galena Hops:2012-07-01 11.38.21
The Cascade hops have gone ballistic in the last couple weeks. They hit the top of the 25 foot twine and kept growing another 12 inches! It not only grew extremely tall but its’ loaded and I mean LOADED with hop cones and burrs. Again, it has gone way past my expectations for the first year!

The Galena hops were growing at an extremely slow rate. While the Cascade hops were hitting 20+ feet the Galena was only hitting 3 feet. I was at a loss on why they were growing so slowly compared to the rest of the hops. I chalked it up to being the first year. Then I got out my hoe and fashioned a couple places for water to pool up and then soak into the ground. My thinking was that MAYBE the water and Miracle-Gro was running off and not having time to soak into the ground. Well it seems that might have been the case. shortly after doing that, the Cascade hops hit 25+ feet and the Galena are now passing 5 feet. It isn’t showing any signs of slowing down or setting burrs yet so that tells me it isn’t done growing yet. Since we have a LONG growing season here in Georgia I’m not worried that the weather will turn cold and kill the Galena before I get a harvest, it just means it’ll happen later in the year. Not a problem!

If I get a couple ounces of dried hops off each plant I’ll be excited even more for nest year when they should do even better! Of course if they grown even more next year I’ll have to re-think my trellis setup to accommodate the extra growth!

I’ll post an update at the end of July as I start preparing for harvest.

PROST!
MM

Hops Update June 11th 2012

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Jun 112012
 

Its been well over a month since my last update. Sorry it took so long but life (or in this case death) sometimes gets in the way. My hops are all doing great with the exception of the Galena. That one seems to be taking its sweet time in growing. That’s OK though, I have a LOT of Galena in the freezer from a bulk buy I did earlier this year. Also since it’s a first year hop, I really shouldn’t expect massive growth as it establishes it’s root system. Of course if I shouldn’t see massive growth until the second or third year, then I’m almost afraid of how much growth I’ll get from the Cascade and the Ultra hops since for a first year hop they’re doing GREAT!.

These pictures were taken on May 23rd. They were taken with the intention of making a post showing how much they had grown since the last update at the end of April. Sadly it never happened and now they’re being dumped into here. As you can see in the pics below, they grew a good bit since the end of April and have started climbing the line nicely. Please note, I didn’t train these at all, they all just sort of fell over onto the lines and started climbing like good little hop plants :)

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The Ultra hops have grown up the line by May 23 2012 to a height of about 100_21144 feet from the ground. The top of the lines are attached to the overhang of my roof and accessible from the upper porch/deck (will make it EASY to harvest).  The Cascade and Galena went into the ground about 2-3 weeks after the Ultra and are of course growing a little slower as seen in the picture of the Galena shown to the left.

Now we’ll fast forward from May 23 2012 to June 9 2012 and you can 2012-06-09 10.25.20see that the hops are growing much faster now. The Ultra’s are still in the lead not only in the number of bines but the height of the bines. They are also starting to establish laterals and some burs are seen forming as well.  These pics were taken looking down from the upper 2012-06-09 10.25.36 deck and can be a little deceiving in the height of the plants. Currently they are about 15 feet from tip to ground.

The Cascade bines are also doing great and are currently about 9-10 feet in length with multiple bines running up the line. The Galena like I said earlier are growing 2012-06-09 10.26.00sloooooowly and are currently only  about 3 feet in length and almost not noticeable at all in the pic (left side follow the string down to the ground). There’s still plenty of time left in the growing season and I’m sure they’ll start to take off sooner or later. If they don’t there’s always next year to look forward too.

There’s the update albeit long over due. I’ll start thinking of how I plan to dry the hops once I harvest them and get that in place while I wait for the harvest. I’ll update again at the end of the month if I can, if not then I’ll update again in July!

Prost!
MM

Book review – Drinkable History

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May 292012
 

OK.. I normally wouldn’t be doing a book review unless I thought the book was incredibly informative and a must have on any brewers bookshelf OR unless the book was so horrible that I felt it was my duty to warn others about this book. Unfortunately the book I’m reviewing falls into the category of horrible.

The book is titled Drinkable History: Easy Techniques for 3000 Year Old Hard Cider, 1500 Year Old Mead, and 1000 Year Old Ale and is “written by” Cassandra Cookson. The ONLY reason I ordered this book from amazon was because it was free for a day so it cost me nothing and I feel like that was paying to much.  it is obvious that the author doesn’t know the first thing about brewing or even the history of brewing mead or beer. The following will be some examples:

Viking Mead: here are the steps listed in the book and my comments on them

Step 1: Get a ginormous stockpot. Add your spring water and heat until it boils. (The book says not to use distilled water although even that is fine of you add minerals back into it which is fairly easy)  WTF is a ginormous stockpot? To me that would be one used in a commercial kitchen. You know, the kind that holds about 200 gallons of liquid. However, the size really needed is MUCH smaller than ginormous. a 5 gallon pot works great. You also don’t need to boil the water. Just heat it to about 175F.

Step 2: Stir in your honey and all spices. This will get a little messy. Keep stirring until the honey completely melts into the water. No shit this is gonna get messy, in fact it’s going to get ruined. If it doesn’t boil over right off the bat, it will in a couple minutes so be prepared. also, it never said to cut the heat so a LOT of that honey will burn on the bottom of the pot causing nasty off flavors. Another thing, the honey doesn’t “melt” in water, it dissolves.

Step 3, 4 and 5: Once the honey melts , boil for 15 minutes so the flavors have a chance to get to know one another. OMG, seriously? DO NOT BOIL THE HONEY. Boiling will drive off a LOT of the honey aroma and flavor. Plus, WTF is flavors get to know one another?  First of all, the spices called for in the recipe are NOT authentic. Ancient Vikings didn’t have cinnamon, fresh ginger root, nutmeg, Irish Moss, and most likely rosemary. Not to mention strawberries. Secondly, 15 minutes is not nearly enough time to extract flavors. Let the honey pasteurize at 170F for 30 minutes IF you feel the need. Add the spices to the mead while in secondary so the alcohol will extract flavors.  I couldn’t go on listing the steps because they are completely worthless. The “recipe” is not authentic, it would make a subpar mead and I wouldn’t serve that crap to a dog much less a human being.

The author keeps referring to doing things more authentic like using a ceramic or clay jar for fermentation. But warns that it cause a skunkier mead. Obviously she has no understanding of the term skunky which is normally used in referring to a beer that has been light struck and the hops oils have produced an off flavor that smells like …well.. a skunk. What will happen if you use her authentic methods will produce an INFECTED mead which will taste like ass and possible make you SICK.

Farmwives Ale: Where do I begin with this section. How about at the beginning where the author states that Ale and Beer are different because of a couple reasons. First Ale had no hops added but Beer had them. Also that beer could only be brewed by men and that Ale and beer couldn’t be brewed in the same place according to law. BS. beer is beer is beer is beer. There two basic types of beer. Ale and lager. in ANCIENT times (this book is about ancient brewing right?) there was only Ale. the difference between Ale and Lager was the type of yeast and fermentation temperatures. Ale was a top cropping yeast and fermented at warmer temps that lagers. Lagers were fermented cool with a bottom fermenting yeast.

The use of hops came along much later in the history of beer which has a history as being one of the oldest fermented beverages dating back to ancient Egypt. Before hops were discovered and used other things were used. mostly flowers and spices. In ancient Scotland they used heather tips instead of hops and even after hops were known Scotland still used heather tips for quiet a while. One thing for certain is that it was called beer. Brewing was in fact mostly a task left to the women of the house and each house produced their own ale/beer.  Later some houses or taverns started selling their beer to go in buckets and breweries grew from there. It wasn’t according to some law that only allowed men to brew beer.

The book also going into malting your own grain. The steps included are crap and wouldn’t produce a grain that was modified enough to convert the starches into useable sugars. The author then tells you to put the grains into a food processor and turn into powder. No no no… The grain needs to be crushed. Exposing the endosperm of the kernel is enough and it keeps the husk intact to aid in draining after you mash the grains.

There are much better books out there. If you see the book available for free and want to read it (it’s only a couple hundred pages) go for it. just keep in mind that the time spent reading it is time you’ll never get back. It’s time better spent reading a much better book or brewing something that won’t completely suck like the recipes in this book. I know this review is extremely harsh but that’s how it needs to be. Anything less might give the impression that it’s worth at least a casual glance. it’s not.

MM

Hops Update 30 April 2012

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Apr 302012
 

Just an update to my hops gardening for April 30th 2012. My cascade hops rhizome has produced one 100_2086shoot so far and it is growing FAST. within 3 days time it has gone from just barely breaking the surface to almost 2 inches tall.  This one should be a fast grower! I can’t wait til I can harvest some Cascade hops off this plant. If I get a couple ounces of dried Cascade hops it’ll go nicely in a Harvest ale at the end of the growing season.

The Galena hops rhizome had me a little worried at first. It was taking 100_2085 it’s sweet time sending a shoot up to break the surface. However once it did it sent not one, not two but THREE shoots up. Hopefully this one will grow quickly as well. It needs to catch up to the rest of the hops. Galena normally has a fairly strong citrus aroma and I love using it for dry hopping my IPA. This along with the Cascade will make an awesome Harvest ale in early Fall.

The Ultra (decided to stop calling them Ultra/Crystal and just claim100_2087 them to be Ultra until I’m told otherwise) have been on a growth spurt. Two out of the four bines reached 18-19 inches in length and then fell over onto the support line and wrapped themselves. I had always read that you had to train them to the string because they wouldn’t 100_2089 wrap naturally. These are proving that to be wrong! That’s ok by me, maybe they’re just smart hops and will make the worlds first smart beer!

The remaining Ultra hop bine is growing a bit slower but still growing at a rate of about 1.5-2 inches a day. It should be on the string within100_2091 the next couple days. At least I hope it is since I’ll be going camping for a few days at the end of the week and I would like it on the string by then.  Right now it’s about 10.5 inches tall and I just gave them all a good  feeding yesterday of Miracle-Gro.

There you go, my update for the end of April. I’ll take more pics and do another update early next week after I come back from camping.

 

Prost!
MM

Vendor Review – Midwest Supplies

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Apr 252012
 

Ok, here’s my review for an online ordering experience for homebrew supplies from Midwest Supplies. It might seem harsh but read the entire review for my overall impression (yes I’m picky as hell when it comes to MY expectations when spending MY money). Normally I pickup all my homebrew supplies/ingredients  from my LHBS (Local Home Brew Store). I’m very lucky to have Brewmasters Warehouse as my LHBS and rarely need to order online. However there are times when they are simply out of something and have no ETA for getting it back in. This was the case when I inquired about some hops needed for an upcoming brew day.  What was needed that my LHBS didn’t have? Sorachi Ace and Motueka hops. After searching the internet for online stores that carried them AND had them in stock I finally found Midwest Supplies had both of the elusive hops in stock! I quickly added them to my shopping cart and proceeded to checkout. Everything up this point went very smoothly.

During checkout I was given the option to create an account with Midwest. I chose that option and filled out the form and proceeded with my checkout.  $5 worth of hops with a $6.35 shipping fee. OUCH!  I did opt to get their FREE Brewing DVD and catalog so that might have bumped the price on shipping but I doubt it. For simplicity and buyer protection I opted to use PayPal to make my payment. Everything went smooth right? Not really. The account I created during checkout never got created. I had to go back after the fact and create a new account using the same info I used before. Sadly my order was NOT connected to my account and there was NO WAY to check on my order status.

I did receive an email (to the address used for PayPal and not the one I thought was being used in the account I thought was created) confirming my order, complete with an order number. The email confirmed I had paid through PayPal and said I would get an email in 24-48 hours with a tracking number. That was the ONLY communication I had from them. Since my order was placed on a Friday afternoon, I waiting until Tuesday afternoon to even start to contact them. I sent them a PM on Homebrew Talk since they are fairly active there. No reply.

Wednesday morning my mail carrier pulled up outside my house and brought a package to my door. It was the hops I had ordered from Midwest. Thankful to have my hops I quickly took them out of the box and stuck them in the freezer. I checked my email, nada from Midwest. Not that it would matter at this point to get a tracking number but I’m wondering how long it’ll take or IF they’ll ever contact me about the order.

The following are MY feelings about the DVD. I do applauded Midwest for even making it and offering it for FREE to their customers.
I popped the DVD into my computer and well, it didn’t want to play right (I use Linux and the DVD didn’t like the player I was using) so I took it into the other room and played in my DVD player. The video is a simple video that gives the basics. It has Extract brewing covered, All Grain Brewing covered, making Wine from juice and making wine from fruits. It also has a brief section on soda and liquor. There were a few things in the brewing DVD that kind of hit me wrong. In the extract version,  when talking about water. They use the old standard of if it tastes good it’ll make good beer. That’s not bad info but to say that if you use well water that you’d be better off using store bought water is just flat out WRONG. At least well water doesn’t have CHLORINE or CHLOROMINE in it. They didn’t mention that at all. Again it was a basic explanation of how to brew.
The All Grain section of the DVD really needs to understand that a mashout isn’t to prevent a stuck sparge but to make the sugars’ more fluid and more easily rinsed. It would have been nice if they included a little acknowledgement about BIAB brewing but that’s just nit picking. Another thing that they should have mentioned is.. you don’t need to collect exactly 6 or 6.5 gallons of water. You might need to collect MORE if your boil off rate is higher. there is no set in stone number for boil off. it WILL be different for each setup.

The wine sections are pretty straight forward on wine making showing the different equipment needed if you want to press your own grapes. They also cover a recfratometer in this section. They do mention a hydrometer in both brewing sections and both wine sections. They however only say it’s used to determine how much alcohol is present. It’s really used to record the Starting Gravity and Final Gravity (SG and FG). I understand that their main goal here is to give the BASICS and to hopefully increase sales. Maybe one day I’ll do an in-depth brewing video just to cover as many bases in brewing as I can and then I’ll do it my way and open myself up for criticism like this.

Pros and Cons for shopping with Midwest Supplies:

Pros: If it’s in stock it says so on their website. Prices are about average. They offer several shipping options. They use a 3 person QC on the order. one for the picker, one for the auditor and one for the packer. They were quick to get the order packed and shipped. My order was accurate and complete. They offer a FREE DVD on the BASICS of brewing. It might not be the greatest but at least they do offer it. Big thumbs up to them for that.

Cons: Complete lack of communication. In this day and age there is no excuse for poor communication. The checkout option to create an account obviously didn’t work. With no account I was unable to see status updates for my order. If they are going to drop the ball on communication at least provide a way for a customer to enter an order number and get an update without needing an account. If you offer an option to make an account, make sure it works. Shipping rates are a little steep.

Overall impression: Overall I’d recommend them to others. I would tell them to create and account BEFORE ordering that way they can check on order statuses in the event that they don’t get any emails. If I need to order online in the future I’ll consider ordering from Midwest again.  I know my comments above may have seemed like I was unhappy with my shopping experience and I truly wasn’t. I was just unhappy with the lack of communication that probably would have been avoided if the account creation during checkout had worked. Thanks Midwest for having the hops I was looking for in stock and getting them to me in time to brew this weekend.

Prost!
MM

Hops 2012–Update 23 April

 Growing Hops at Home  No Responses »
Apr 232012
 

Just a quick update on how my hops are doing. I was able to pick up my last 2 hops rhizomes and got them into the ground last week. Hopefully they’ll be breaking the surface in another week. Now I have 3 ultra/crystal plants going and have planted 1 cascade and 1 galena. I’m not expecting a lot of hops the first year so any that I get will be a welcome bonus.

The Ultra/Crystal hops are taking off. my last update had mentioned that they were alive and had broken ground. as of today they are 6-7.5 inches in height and growing rapidly. IF the weather makes up its mind on if it’s late winter, early spring or early summer I’m sure the plants would be much happier. Here are a few pics to show how they’re growing. I’ll update again as they continue to grow.

Prost
MM

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BrewAide–Software Review

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Apr 232012
 

I’ve done reviews in the past of brewing software that I felt was worth looking at. I tried t make sure that I reviewed programs that were available to multiple platforms. However, this time around I’m reviewing an app for the Android family of phones and tablets for Android 2.3 and higher. The app is called BrewAide and is written by D-Ring Apps.

There are other apps out there available for the Android OS and I have used a lot of2012-04-23 14.11.52 them. Some of the apps out there allow for complete creation of recipes from your Android device. BrewAide isn’t one of those apps. It is however, the ONLY app currently available that will read BeerSmith2 files (bsmx format). While BrewAide doesn’t allow you to create or modify recipes, it does have some features that are more than worth not including that ability.

When you launch the application you are at the main menu. From the main menu you have several options. Before you can load a recipe you need to tell BrewAide where it can look for the recipe files. This is accomplished by tapping on settings and then going through the menu options to specify a folder on the SD card, or to allow a 2012-04-23 14.11.52-10Drop Box connection. (drop box folder needs to be dropboxAppsBrew BuddyRecipes or it will fail to locate the recipes). Once this is set there is no need to go back in there and set it again. The SD card location can be ANY folder on your SD card.  With the location set, now you have to copy the BSMX files for EACH recipe to either the2012-04-23 14.11.52-1 SD card location or the Drop Box folder and they’ll be available in Brew Aide.

With the locations set and recipes loaded into the appropriate locations, you can tap the folder button on the main screen and choose the location of choice. For me I choose to use a Drop Box folder.  Now you may notice there’s a third option. Beersmith Cloud. This has been added because Beersmith will be adding cloud storage for recipes very soon (currently in beta test) A cloud storage option will make using Beersmith on more than one computer/tablet/phone MUCH easier.

2012-04-23 14.11.52-2Once you select a folder to open you are presented with a list of the recipes you have loaded into the folder of choice. From here you simply scroll to and tap the recipe you wish to view. I have started saving all my recipes into individual bsmx files on my drop box just to have them available at any given time in BrewAide. Once you get used to doing that simple step you don’t even notice it being an extra step anymore. While it would be nice if you could export ALL recipes in a single recipes.bsmx and import them all at once, I do understand the decision to not do it that way. Since you can’t edit the recipes, any changes must be done in Beersmith and then exported again.

With a recipe selected and opened you have a familiar view that would be seen in2012-04-23 14.11.52-3 Beersmith. The pint glass with a estimation of the color of the final beer is there. The visual bars indication where in the style guidelines the beer could potentially be is shown. It all looks very nice and clean and familiar to those that use Beersmith. The important information is also there like the recipe itself. The Beer style, brew’s name, beer name, it’s all there just like you entered in Beersmith. At the top of the screen there are five buttons. View (what you are currently in) Brew Steps, Timers, Tools and main.

2012-04-23 14.11.52-4Tapping the Brew Steps button will open a screen that has all of the brewing steps that would be found in Beersmith is you clicked on the brew steps button.  (notice that I have included portrait and landscape images throughout this review to show that it works in both orientations).

Clicking on the Timers button takes you to a timers screen. This to 2012-04-23 14.11.52-7me is one of the most important screens. Based on the information you put into the recipe in Beersmith, the timers are automatically set for the Mash and Boil. If you had multiple steps in your mash design, those steps are listed and an alarm will go off for each one. The same goes for additions to the boil. Each one will have an alert set and will sound based on the times in the recipe. The only addition that doesn’t get an alarm is any hops additions that are in for the entire boil. Which of course makes perfect sense as they go in before you start the timer.  A future release of the app will also allow editing the timers if needed.

The Tools button takes you to another very useful portion of the app. In here you will find buttons for Refractometer, Dilution, Boil Off, Temp, Convertor, Volume Convertor, Weight Convertor, and Pressure Convertor. Out of these tools the pressure convertor is one that I just don’t see as that important, but it’s still there if needed.

2012-04-23 14.11.52-8The refractometer tool is you standard refractometer tool, It can be useful for those with a refractometer and wanting to determine if fermentation is complete. Once alcohol is introduced, a refractometer becomes less accurate. that is unless you use some available math formulas to correct for it. Or unless you use a tool like this one.

The Dilution tool is a great way to determine the FG of a beer that you intend to dilute. There are several reasons to do exactly that such as pressure fermenting a 5 gallon batch in a 5 gallon Corny keg. This would allow you to ferment a 4 gallon batch and then dilute the end product to 5 gallons. Boil off is of course there to help you determine your boil off rate. Which is something every brewer should know. The convertors are jus that, they convert from one set of measurements to another. Always a useful tool when looking at a recipe from someone in a country that uses a different measurement system.

That leaves us with the Main button which takes us back to the beginning. Here’s a link to the BrewAide app in the Android Market If you brew, If you use Beersmith and if you have an Android phone or tablet, then GET THIS APP. If you don’t use Beersmith but have a program that uses BeerXML format, that’s a planned update so GET IT now and you’ll be ahead of the curve.  The developer is very active and updates as soon as bug is found and fixed. He is also active on Homebrewtalk.com just go there and search for BrewAide and you’ll find his thread.

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