BeerSmith 2.2 Desktop Released

Happy Thanksgiving! I’ve just released BeerSmith 2.2, the latest version of BeerSmith for Mac, PC and Ubuntu Linux. BeerSmith 2.2 features a cleaned up interface, new brewing features, and makes it easy to search and use thousands of recipes available on our BeerSmithRecipes cloud site. I’ll be publishing videos on the new features shortly and also a mobile update to take advantage of the new features soon.

Download an Update or Free Trial Version of BeerSmith 2.2

Cleaner Interface

A lot of users said BeerSmith 2 looked too cluttered to them. So for 2.2 I’ve tried to simplify things by hiding the ribbon bar (though you can still turn it on from the view menu), and adding a simple list of views on the left side. The list of views can be customized to show your favorite views on top, and you can add or delete new favorites by right clicking on a view and using the add/delete popup menu there.

You can further customize items from the view menu – for example moving to small icons in the main icon bar to make it more compact or hiding the shortcut or preview windows.

New Equipment Wizard

Setting up an accurate equipment profile is very important when starting to use BeerSmith. I’ve added a new Equipment wizard to help people just starting out who want to create a good profile to match their equipment for use in their recipes. You can access the new wizard from the Equipment Wizard command on the Insert menu. Once you have your equipment set up you can simply choose it in recipe design view, or set it permanently in the Options->Brewing dialog so it will be used for all new recipes.

Search Cloud Recipes Within the Program

You no longer have to go to BeerSmithRecipes.com to do a web search for cool recipes, then try to download and open them. Like the mobile version of BeerSmith, our desktop version now has an integrated cloud search. Just open the new Cloud Search tool from the View menu and type in a few words to search nearly 10,000 recipes online.

If you find one you like you can preview it, and use the new Copy Local button to save a copy to your local recipe folder. Assuming you have a good equipment profile, you can then use the Scale Recipe tool to scale it to match your equipment and go straight to brewing it from there.

Enhanced Local Search

BeerSmith 1.4 had a nice tool for searching all of your local recipes at once for specific ingredients or combinations of keywords. BeerSmith 2.2 adds this feature back in, though it is simpler to use. The new Search All view on the View menu lets you find specific terms including ingredient names, styles or recipe names easily. To find all of the recipes using Hallertauer hops, just enter Hallertauer in the search box and it will list them.

You can also use multiple terms or ingredients such as “Hallertauer, Munich” to find all recipes using either Hallertauer or Munich malt, and there are tools to narrow it to recipes containing all or only some of the search terms.

Support for Steeped/Whirlpool Hop IBUs and Unfermentable Items

After quite a bit of research, I’ve finally added IBU contributions for steeped/whirlpool hops. If you mark a hop addition as steep/whirlpool it will now estimate the hop IBU contribution from that addition. The default is to add approximately half the IBU contribution of a similar boil time hops based on a steep/whirlpool temperature of 90 C, though you can alter that percentage in the Options->Bitterness tab.

I’ve also added a new checkbox in the fermentables/grain editor for unfermentable items such as maltodextrin and lactose. If checked, the item will still be used when calculating OG, but will not be attenuated when calculating final gravity. This should give a better final gravity estimate for recipes that use these ingredients.

These two items (whirlpool IBUs and unfermentables) are not yet implemented in the mobile version so your numbers may differ slightly, but I plan an update in a few weeks to the mobile versions to add these new features.

Styled Reports and Printing

Previous versions had limitations on report formatting and printing. The new version adds full HTML 5 with CSS styling to both the preloaded and custom reports as well as the “beer glass” display. This means that the recipe reports and brew steps sheets have a modern style to them now, and also those of you who create custom reports have all of the CSS styling options available.

I’ve also improved previewing of many items such as the “Brew steps” report which now appears in a separate tab instead of a hard to read popup window. Printing is also improved due to the additional styling and formatting options available.

A Recipe Archive for All Desktop Edits

People occasionally make mistakes such as editing a recipe they did not mean to change, or deleting some they meant to kept. So BeerSmith 2.2 adds a new recipe archive feature that actually stores every single edit, delete or move of a recipe made on the desktop version. It records the date of the change, action performed and a copy of the recipe at that point.

So now you can actually recover a recipe you may have altered or deleted very easily by going to View->Recipe Archive and finding the recipe you want to recover.

A New Gravity Adjust Tool

I’ve added a new tool to help you adjust your original gravtiy if you are off after brewing. It will calculate how much dry malt extract or water to add to a recipe if your original gravity is slightly above or below your target gravity.

And Much More…

This is just a partial list of all of the updates. In addition I’ve implemented a large number of bug fixes, easier cloud integration using the Copy Local and Copy Cloud commands, automatic checking and background download of updates, better proxy support and more.

Download an Update or Free Trial Version of BeerSmith 2.2

Thanks for all of your continued support of BeerSmith Desktop and BeerSmith Mobile. Have a great Thanksgiving and a happy Holiday Season!

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