I have been brewing my own beers from the raw ingredients (grain, hops, water and yeast etc.) for some years now. This process is essentially just what a commercial brewer does and the brewing process (mashing, sparging, boiling, cooling) now usually takes me around 5 hours so it is a bit more involved than just emptying a tin of extract into a bucket but is much more fun. I think that the results are usually well worth the effort and it is very satisfying to sup a fine ale that I have made from scratch. Details of my brewery are here and my latest brews are here.
I also make wine and plan to make mead too.
I am a member of the Craft Brewing Association, a life member of the Campaign for Real Ale and an honorary life member of Scottish Craft Brewers. I also have a virtual presence at Irish Craft Brewer and am a member of Shed Brewers of East Anglia.
After being introduced to this software by both Roddy Beveridge and Colin MacLean of Scottish Craft Brewers, I have installed BeerSmith™ and started using it as an aid to my brewing. There is a lot of good brewing software out there, much of which I checked out via free trial downloads, but, for the moment at least, BeerSmith™ does almost everything I want, provides some useful tools and is easy to use. I shall continue to use my 100% flexible pen and notebook but I am slowly updating my BeerSmith™ record with as much data as I can from my record books and will continue to learn more about it.
