Free Brewing Program

I hate to pay for software.  I’m an engineer and a bit of a computer and beer geek.  So, it seemed like a natural eventuality that I would write my own beer program.  I wanted one that I could cater to my individual use.  I also saw various strengths and weaknesses with the commercially available software for purchase.  I wanted to combine the strengths and make a program that I think takes the best features of each one.

I have spent many hours pouring over beer books, equations, charts, formulas, and code to write this program.  I am offering it here for the use and enjoyment of all home brewers because I love home brewers, and so does God!

It is my hope that you will use this tool and pass it on to others.  Please feel free to let me know if you find anything incorrect or come across any bugs.  I can’t promise I will provide support, though. Remember, this is freeware. Be sure to read the system requirements at the end of the page.  The program is based in Microsoft Excel so you will have to have MS Office installed to run it.

Here are some of the powerful features:

• Easy, user-friendly interface.  Useful for brewers at every stage, beginner to expert.
• A place to enter your favorite beer recipes and save them to be used later.  Comes pre-loaded with 21 extract, 14 all grain, and 6 partial mash recipes.  Allows you to enter step-by-step directions for each stage of the brewing process.
• Includes a powerful recipe creation tool that allows you to select from hundreds of ingredients (including over 130 grains and sugars and 64 varieties of hops) and graphically plots how they affect the beer’s gravity, color, and bitterness.  Provides suggested ranges from the BJCP style guide for reference.  Match your favorite beer style.  Tool predicts the beers gravity and shows the beers final color pictorially.
• Includes a glossary 286 acronyms, beer terms, and brewing lingo with detailed explanation of each term.
• Allows you to enter brewing notes at every step of the brewing process (mash, boil, fermentation, carbonation, and tasting) and save them to help improve future beers.  Notes page summarizes all the important information for each beer and can be easily printed off or saved electronically to be accessed later.
• Provides a customizable brewing calendar that allows you to plan out your brewing activity for the year and manage your resources (such as fermentors and kegs).
• Provides an all grain-to-extract recipe conversion tool.  Automatically converts the all grain recipes you create using the recipe tool to extract recipes, and allows you to choose which one you want to brew.
• Includes a calculator to calculate amount of hops needed if you substitute different hops to maintain the same bitterness level.  Also converts between whole, pellet, and plug hops.
• Provides a tool to help plan an all grain mash.  Allows you to pick number of mash steps and rest temperatures.  Calculates the amount of boiling water needed to raise wort to next temperature step.  Automatically generates directions based on your inputs.
• A useful tool to predict boiling temperature based on local elevation and current atmospheric conditions (requires internet connection).
• Calculates the amount of mash water needed in order to achieve a desired final volume of beer.
• Allows you to select water profile based on city or beer style and tells you how much of each mineral additive to add to match the water profile.
• Includes timers to time your mash and boil.  Timer will count down and tell you when to make additions of hot water, hops or additives.
• Corrects your gravity measurements for beer temperature.
• Provides a helpful unit conversion calculator of frequently encountered units.
• Includes a tool that calculates the amount of yeast needed to ferment the beer.  Allows you to select from over a hundred different yeast strains (including dry and liquid yeast) and provides the properties of that yeast (attenuation, fermentation temp range, and flocculation).
• Tells you if a yeast starter is needed and what amount of water and DME needed to reach needed yeast cell count.
• Calculates how many bottles are needed to bottle a volume of beer.  Calculates the amount of beer remaining after a given amount of bottles are filled.
• Calculates the residual CO2 in the fermented beer and determines the amount of corn sugar or DME needed to reach desired volume of CO2 for natural carbonation.
• Computes what pressure your kegged beer needs to be stored at in order to achieve desired level of CO2 (accounting for residual CO2) using forced carbonation.
• Calculates beer characteristics (final gravity, alcohol content, calories and carbs per 12 oz bottle, brewer efficiency, attenuation, etc.).
• Allows you to enter beer labels and save them in a database.  Labels can be selected, retrieved, and easily printed out.
• Allows you access to data tables so you can change or modify any data you desire.
• Customizable front page that lets you place a picture of your Brewery, or whatever you want.
• Helps you to “Relax, Don’t Worry and Have a Homebrew!”  I’ve done the grunt work for you.

Here are some screen shots of the program:

System Requirements:

• Computer running Microsoft XP or later
• At least 520 MB computer memory
• Intel Pentium 4 or faster
• Microsoft Office 2000, XP, or 2003 (newer versions may work but have not been tested)

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM

The first link below is to a file stored on an external server.  You will have to clink the link, then follow the instructions to download the file.  It is somewhat of a hassle but WordPress wouldn’t let me host the file on their server.  For some reason they did allow me to place the second link on their server, though.

MS Office 2003 or later: beer_program-v1-1-3b

MS Office 2000 or XP: Beer_Program v1.1.1B