iPhone and Kindle Friendly BeerSmith Blog Themes

Have you ever wanted to access the BeerSmith blog on the go? We recently added an iphone/mobile friendly version of the blog. If you access the BeerSmith blog from your iphone, blackberry or many other mobile devices, you will now see that it has been formatted into a phone friendly theme.  If you want to access the blog from any web browser, you can use the new shortcut: blog.beersmith.com – recommend it to your friends!

If you prefer to use your kindle, we now have the BeerSmith blog available in that form as well.  You can subscribe to receive blog articles on your kindle from the Amazon store here.  As with all of Amazon’s kindle blog subscriptions, there is a $1.99 monthly fee (full disclosure – a very small cut comes back to support the blog) for delivery though a 20 day trial is free.

• New BeerSmith Apparel and Gear
• The BeerSmith Home Brewing Guide
• One Year of The BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog
• BeerSmith Blog Second Anniversary
• Ten Reasons to use Beer Brewing Software

New BeerSmith Apparel and Gear

Get BeerSmith brewing apparel and gear featuring the new BeerSmith logo!  Several years ago, a handful of you were fortunate enough to get our first run of BeerSmith shirts, and I’m happy to say we’ve now put together a store with various shirt styles, and even a few extras.

With the new gear, you can join the “BeerSmith Army” and also support the BeerSmith blog and other sites.  Our gear store is available through CafePress by clicking on the image or at the following link:

Order BeerSmith Shirts and Gear Here

• Cotton T-shirt with large BeerSmith logo
• Long sleeve shirt with small BeerSmith logo
• Baseball style shirt with small logo
• Beer Steins
• Apron for brewing in white or Khaki

If the response is strong, I can add additional designs, products or logos (leave a comment with your ideas below!).

For the thousands of you who regularly support this blog and our BeerSmith software, I thank you.  If you are not interested in a T-shirt or software, you can also show your appreciation with a direct donation using the ‘tip jar’ donate buttons in the left sidebar of the blog.

• Adventures in Homebrewing
• iPhone and Kindle Friendly BeerSmith Blog Themes
• One Year of The BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog
• An Interview with Dan Listermann (of Phil’s fame)
• New BeerSmith Retail CDs

BeerSmith Blog Second Anniversary

This week marks the end of the second year of the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog, and this is our 94th published article on home brewing.  It has been a great experience to date, giving me a chance to learn about and write on a huge number of brewing topics.  I’ve started a few more projects as well and may eventually publish a compilation from the BeerSmith blog once BeerSmith 2.0 is complete.

The blog has been much more popular than I had imagined.  We started with zero regular subscribers two years ago, reached about 1000 at the first anniversary and have expanded to over 3000 now.  We had 60,000 visitors to the blog last month, and over 470,000 visits to the blog over the last year.  Its approaching the circulation of a small magazine.

I’ve tried to keep the focus of the stories primarily on home brewing and also to focus on the techniques, styles, and equipment that an average homebrewer might need.  I’ve tried to stay away from too many “fluffy” articles and vary the level from beginner to more advanced techniques to keep it interesting.  Finally, I’ve organized all of our articles into an growing BeerSmith Home Brewing Guide to make it easier to find what you are looking for.  Hopefully you have enjoyed it.

In the next year, I’m going to try to feature additional interviews and articles by expert guests where appropriate, but keep the focus firmly on homebrewing.  I also added a new domain name blog.beersmith.com which may be easier to remember if you want to recommend us to a friend.

Here are a collection of some of my favorite articles from the last year for you to enjoy:

• Beer Recipe Design
• Three Part Series on Home Brewing Beer for Beginners
• Bock and Doppelbock Beer Recipes
• Brew in a Bag (BIAG) Method for All Grain Brewing
• Partial Mashing
• English Pale Ale Recipes
• Seasonal Beer Brewing
• Balancing Beer with the Bitterness Ratio
• Marzen and Oktoberfest Beer Recipes
• Grandmaster Beer Judge Gordon Strong

Thanks again for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  If you have not already done so, be sure to subscribe for weekly delivery – you will receive an email once a week as we publish new articles.  Your comments, bookmarks and donations are also welcome.

• One Year of The BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog
• Bock and Doppelbock Beer Recipes – Beer Styles
• BeerSmith Software Video Tutorials
• An Interview with Al from Hop Talk
• “Designing Great Beers” by Ray Daniels – A Book Review

BeerSmith Software Video Tutorials

We recently assembled a series of video tutorials for using our BeerSmith Home Brewing software.  There is an overview video as well as a series of 10 tutorials on using various features of the program.  You will need an Adobe flash viewer installed in your browser to watch the videos.   The videos cover many of the basic features, but I’m sure there are many other topics that could be covered.  I’m asking that you suggest topics you would like to see by adding a comment below.

Links to the Videos

• BeerSmith Overview (4:00)
• Creating a Recipe with BeerSmith (2:57)
• Making a Personal Equipment Profile (3:37)
• Scaling the Size of a Recipe (1:53)
• Adjusting the Gravity of a Recipe (1:16)
• Changing the Color of a Recipe (1:17)
• Importing Recipes from the Web (3:25)
• Using the Shopping List (2:18)
• Converting a Recipe from All Grain to Extract (1:41)
• Overview of Standalone Tools (3:27)
• Using English and Metric Units (2:50)

I have to say that putting together the videos was a fun experience for me.  Every aspect of the project from selecting basic sound equipment, finding good screencasting software, to editing and packaging the final videos was interesting and challenging.  Previously I had not spent much time with video editing software, audio recording or screencasting.  I hope you enjoy the result.

If you have suggestions for other tutorials you would like to see, please leave a comment below.  I plan to build additional videos as time allows.  Thank you for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  I’ll be back next week with more articles on homebrewing.

Happy New Year!!

• BeerSmith Blog Second Anniversary
• Ten Reasons to use Beer Brewing Software
• Homebrewing Holiday Season Gift Ideas 2009
• Welcome to the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog
• Home Brewing Social Sites: Beer and Web 2.0

BeerSmith Thanksgiving Day Sale – 25% off

For the first time ever, we’re offering a three day Thanksgiving weekend sale on our BeerSmith Home Brewing Software.  Purchase an electronic key to register your copy of BeerSmith for $16.49 (25% off the regular price which is $21.95) this weekend only if you order via paypal (all major credit cards accepted).  The sale runs from Thanksgiving evening through this Sunday 29 Nov 2009, but will close at 11pm Eastern time on Sunday.  You can download BeerSmith here, and if you don’t know much about BeerSmith, you can learn more here.

Happy Thanksgiving to all and have a great holiday season! — Brad

• So When is St Patrick’s Day Anyways?
• Adventures in Homebrewing
• Homebrewing Holiday Season Gift Ideas 2009
• Sam Adams offers 20,000 lbs of Hops to Microbrewers
• Seasonal Beer Brewing

Ten Reasons to use Beer Brewing Software

Many homebrewers are not aware of how brewing software can dramatically improve the quality and consistency of their home brew. Brewing without doing the math is kind of like shooting darts blindfolded, and software makes the math much easier.   This week, we take a look at some of the ways brewing software can make a difference in beer design and how it can improve your brewing day.

Now as a disclaimer, I obviously am affiliated with BeerSmith brewing software, but even if you don’t choose our package, I highly recommend you try the various beer brewing software programs available and select the one that suits you best.  Your beer will be better for it.

1. Design Great Beer in Minutes – Building a recipe with beer software is as simple as picking the ingredients you want from a list. A typical package has several hundred varieties of hops, grains, yeasts and more that are pre-entered for your use.   Picking from a list of ingredients is much easier than thumbing through a set of reference books.
2. Brew Consistently Good Beer – By tracking your ingredients, recipe used, original gravity and taste of your beer you can improve your brewing process and make more consistent, better tasting beer.  You can keep track of old recipes, see how changes affect your color, gravity and bitterness, and design better beers.
3. Brew the Style you Want – Brewing software lets you select a target beer style and match the color, bitterness and suggest ingredients as you build the recipe.  As you add ingredients, the software estimates each of these and lets you compare the current values to the style you selected.  This will help you come much closer to your target beer style the first time out.
4. Share Recipes – Brewing software that supports open standards like BeerXML give you access to thousands of recipes online that you can download, import and customize to your taste.  Many of the popular packages have dedicated recipe sites available.  You can also email recipes to your friends, post them on a web site or share them in a variety of formats.
5. Get Step by Step Instructions – Software like BeerSmith will generate step-by-step instructions customized for your recipe, equipment and methods. No fuss, no worries.  After you enter your recipe you can get specific brewing instructions generated by the program with a single click.
6. Stay Organized – Keep all of your brewing records in one place. Keep a brewing log of your past brewing sessions, schedule your next brew, record new ideas and manipulate recipes from the web.  Refine your favorite recipes to perfect your brewing technique.
7. Match your Brewing Equipment – The equipment you use to brew has a huge impact on the taste of your beer. With brewing software you can set up your equipment settings once and apply that to any recipe to get accurate calculations and estimates.
8. All Grain Made Easy – Modern equipment and ingredients have made all grain brewing more accessible than ever.  Infusion mashing for all-grain brewing involves a fairly complex set of calculations to determine the amount and temperature of water to be added at each step. In BeerSmith, you just pick the infusion profile you desire and the software provides detailed instructions that match your equipment and ingredients.
9. Manage Inventory, Track Prices and go Shopping – The best brewing software includes tools to manage your inventory of ingredients, determine the cost of each brew and even generate shopping lists for a particular recipe for your next trip to the store.  This makes it much easier to keep track of what you need and avoid those “extra trips”.
10. Software Costs Less than a Batch of Beer – Brewing software is cheap– typically from $20-25 for the top commercial packages. One bad tasting batch of beer costs more.

Want to try brewing software yourself?

• Learn More About Brewing Software
• BeerSmith Brewing Software – Download a free trial
• Other popular packages include Promash, BeerTools and Strangebrew

Thanks again for joining us on the BeerSmith Home Brewing Blog.  We appreciate your continued support, and will return to our regularly schedule beer brewing articles next week.

• Converting All Grain Recipes to Malt Extract
• All Grain Beer Brewing With An Infusion Mash Setup
• “Designing Great Beers” by Ray Daniels – A Book Review
• Brewing to Lose: 10 Tips for Making Bad Beer
• Ten Top Tips for Home Brewing Beer