There are loads of great online tools and apps to help you inspire, create and measure your next best brew. We take a look at a few of our favourites.
Websites
Brewgr
Features we love: Homebrew recipe calculator, recipes, a load of other calculators such as mash sparge water infusion, hydrometer temperature correction and mash tun capacity.
Captain Brew
Features we love: Free unlimited recipes. Hop substitution charts, malt extract chart and White Labs & Wyeast yeast strain charts. Priming sugar calculator, washed yeast calculator and keg carbonation calculator.
The HomeBrew Forum
Features we love: Not just a great community! Build and read recipes, home brew talk, market place, and a load of calculators including SRM colour calculator.
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/
Dark Farm Homebrew Savings Calculator
We’ve created our very own homebrew savings calculator so you can see just how much you can save by brewing your own beer.
Features we love: Great justification to your other half that your homebrewing actually saves money!
Cost: FREE
Calculate your savings here
Brewer’s Friend IBU Calculator
“I find Brewer’s Friend really helpful, in particular, the IBU calculator to gauge how much hops to prepare, and what timings to use to achieve your desired bitterness/aroma.”– Robert Poulson
www.brewersfriend.com/ibu-calculator/
Beer Smith
Features we love: Home brewing software, recipes, forum, podcast and more.
Cost: from $14.95 per year http://beersmith.com/
APPS
Brewfather
Cost: Free limited account gives you 10 recipes/batches
Premium: $1.99 USD per month or $19.99 USD annually. Integrations including Plaato Airlock/Keg and Tilt; cost tracking, unlimited recipes & loads more
“Brewfather all the way! It’s easy to use and great value for money, I can even see my kegs on it from my Plaato scales.” – Daniel Ennis
“I swear by Brewfather. I find it amazingly simple to use and the user interface is crisp and modern. I started out with the free version but soon upgraded to the premium subscription. The product is constantly evolving and the recent iOS app was a massive leap from a web based product. The associated Facebook group offers a really useful support community and you often get a direct reply from the software developer, Thomas. I mean, where else do you get such insights and support?
Brewfather allows me to plan recipes, save them, edit them, and, with the newly released “library”, search and import other people’s recipes. These can then be scaled to match my own brewing set up. I’ve been using it for the last 12 months and can honestly say that I cannot think of any niggles” – Damian Roebuck
BJCP Styles – Your Beer Judging Companion
for iPhone/iPad
Cost: Free
The full copy of the BJCP (Beer Judge Certification Program) Style Guidelines is now available as a free app. Handy for whenever you want to look up a style description.
dev.bjcp.org
Brewer’s Friend
Windows only Cost: Free
www.brewersfriend.com/windows
“All my brews have been timed with Brewer’s Friend through my mobile phone. I build the recipe on there and then they have a handy “brew” button that sets out all of the steps based on the information you added in the recipe and times everything so you can wander away from the brewing. My phone will alert me at the correct time to add hops or increase the temperature or to let me know that it’s time to chill etc. As someone who doesn’t track time that much, and as a new brewer, this function has been super handy for me and has, no doubt, averted a few disasters.” – Christopher Annandale
BeerSmith™ Mobile Home Brewing App
for iPhone/iPad, Android and Kindle
Cost: $7.99
Integrated with their recipe cloud service and desktop, BeerSmith program makes it easy to create and recipes from your desktop computer or mobile device. http://beersmith.com/mobile/
DARK FARM MINI KEGS
The dark art of craft brewing
Title image: Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels