BeerSmith 3 – A First Look

I’m pl eased to announce the upcoming release of BeerSmith 3, which has been in development for almost two years. It has been in beta test for several months now and I’m planning to release the desktop version prior to Homebrewcon (this month). The mobile version 3 for your phone or tablet will follow in late July.

While I’m certain many of you have questions about release date, upgrades, and pricing this post will only take a look at some of the key features. I will follow up this weekend with a detailed feature post and announcement on upgrades, preorder, pricing and the final release date.



Mead, Wine and Cider Support

BeerSmith 3 now supports mead, wine and cider recipe types, just as it now supports extract, all grain or partial mash beers. This means you can open a recipe, set the type to mead and start adding your honey, fruit and yeast and it will help you predict original gravity, final gravity, and even estimate yeast nutrient requirements.

The program has complete style guides for mead, wine and ciders as well as a ton of new ingredients, tools and add-ons to support them. It also adds native support for honey, juice and fruit – features that carry over to beer recipe development as well for those fond of fruit beers.

Water Profiles and Mash pH Adjustment Integrated with Recipe

For beer brewers, the recipe builder now includes both the water profile tool and mash pH estimation fully integrated with the recipe builder. So you can add your water salts as ingredients and see what the adjusted water profile is. Match a target water profile on the new water tab and it will add the salts for both mash and sparge directly to your recipe. You can even “blend” base water profiles by picking different waters in your recipe builder.

The mash pH estimation has also been revamped and now reflect both water salt ingredients (i.e. the adjusted water profile) and lactic, phosphoric or acid malt adjusments. It shows you both an unadjusted and adjusted mash pH based on your acid additions in the recipe, and you can even take a pH and calculate a final water adjustment. These changes make it easier than ever to adjust your mash pH up front based on the estimates, and then make a final adjustment on brew day.

More Cool Beer Features…Whirlpool Hops and High Altitude Brewing

With the explosion in IPA brewing, I could not ignore whirlpool hops. BeerSmith now has a proper model for the utilization of steeped/whirlpool hops vs temperature, and lets you specify both temperature and time for each whirlpool addition. It also has an enhanced model for carrying forward unused boil bitterness into the whirlpool enabled from the equipment profile for easy reuse.

Similarly, BeerSmith 3 supports a new boil elevation setting in the equipment profile that estimates the boiling point and reduced hop utilization you will see when brewing at altitude. The difference in hop utilization can be significant if you are brewing well above sea level.

Two Stage Yeast Starters and Dry Yeast Hydration

For the frugal brewer, the yeast starter tab now supports two stage starters for liquid yeast which can save you a few dollars on a second batch or new pack of yeast. Instead you can create a yeast starter, ferment it, decant it and create a second starter to reach your target for yeast cells. For those using dry yeast, including most mead, wine and cider makers the yeast tab now calculates dry yeast hydration for you and shows optional Goferm amounts to use on hydration. For mead makers the program calculates the mead nutrients needed for both the TONSA-2 and TiONSA nutrient schedules.

A Revised Look and Feel

While not a complete rewrite, I have abandoned the 1990’s blue in favor of a cleaner grey look and feel. The menus, ribbon bar and many of the dialogs were revised to make features more accessible and relevant to the task at hand. For example you can install add-ons right from the “add ingredient” dialogs or even create a new hop or fermentable on the fly instead of having to leave your recipe, go to the ingredients view and try to add a new hop variety or add-on.

The dialogs, reports and displays are now smarter as well. The program no longer shows stuff that is not relevant to the task at hand. So if you are making an extract recipe it won’t show a ton of all grain brewing data on your session page or brewday report. Instead it will show relevant data like the total volume of extract you are adding and how much water you need for your boil. This is done throughout the program to great effect – add a new “juice” fermentable and you’ll be prompted for the brix value (or specific gravity) instead of having to enter the “find grain dry yield”. Each dialog adapts to what you are doing to make the program more approachable and easier to use.

Cloud Folders and Sharing Features

Sometimes the little things matter – like having folders to store your cloud recipes in! While the old cloud features let you store your recipes between devices,there was no way to organize them other than one long list. Now have my brew log folder, mead, wine, cider and beer folders available online so I can access data on the go. This will be available in the mobile version as well in July.

Because you wanted cloud space, most of the new BeerSmith 3 license options will include cloud space. In addition you can now rate recipes within the software and there is a new “unlisted” sharing option that lets you share a link or id with a friend without having that recipe show up in the public search results.

Finally the cloud connections are all encrypted and secure now (SSL/TLS 1.2), including both mobile and desktop.

New Data

BeerSmith 3 includes a ton of new data to support beer, mead, wine and cider. Here’s just a partial list: updated hops, cryo-hops, hop extracts, honey varietals, juice for cider making, common fruit juices, fruits, dozens of new misc ingredients, new yeast varieties, the BJCP mead and cider style guide, a complete wine style guide, fruit purees, water profiles by beer style and more. The new add-on manager makes it much easier to track which add-ons you have install and which are available for each data type.

Backwards Compatibility

BeerSmith 3 runs from a separate directory, so you can run BeerSmith 3 side by side with your existing BeerSmith 2 install. It also gives you an option to import your data and settings from BeerSmith 2 quickly on your first startup.

And Many More New Features…

This post only scratches the surface on the new features for beer brewers as well as mead, wine and cider makers. Need to backsweeten your mead? There’s a tool for that. Sulfite calculator for wine/mead? Sure. Refractometer popups for easier entry of gravity measurements? Check. Mash profiles for RIMS/HERMS systems – got you covered. Calculate separate sparge and mash water profiles? Absolutely. Yeast alcohol tolerance for high gravity beers/meads/wines? Yep.



This weekend I will post a detailed list of features, release notes and also open the preorder for those looking to upgrade. Watch the BeerSmith blog for the latest updates.

Thanks for your continued support!

Brad Smith – BeerSmith LLC

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