Admittedly there can be a lot of maths involved in home brewing and it’s good to know the maths behind say where abouts your bitterness is going to turn out or what the specific gravity is going to be from the malt you’ve got in the recipe. Having to do this by hand every time though just isn’t necessary in today’s Internet age because there are calculators and recipe construction tools online that cover pretty much everything you need to know when calculating and designing a recipe. Best of all they are all free!
TastyBrew
To begin with let’s take a look at the extensive range of calculators offered by TastyBrew.com. This was one of the first websites I came across when I started brewing and the home brew calculators they offer will cover pretty much all you need from complete recipe calculation that shows OG, FG, IBU, SRM, and ABV from a given recipe, to the calculators for bitterness, bottle priming, keg carbonation, mash infusion which helps calculate volumes and temperatures to hit your mash temperature and sparging.
These tools aren’t just the basic input a load of figures and it will do it for you, they are programmed so should you use the complete recipe tool it contains pretty much every grain, adjunct and sugar already so you don’t have to look up extract and colour figures for each malt.
Hopville – Beer Calculus
Next up is a tool called beer calculus from hopville which is a all in one recipe calculation tool. When I first come across this I was pretty impressed, it’s set out well and is easy to use plus once again all the details are pre-programmed saving you a ton of time.
This tool I would say as a recipe calculator is one of the best online in my view it beats the Tastybrew version simply because it allows metric units as well as U.S units and for me being a metric user it means I don’t have to convert to and from lbs to kg.
As well as this the recipe calculator is linked to the growing community at Hopville where once you have input your recipe you can save it and share it with others as well as browse their recipes. The community seems to be growing and are pretty active so it’s a good place to pick up tips and learn a thing or two.
Yeast Pitching Calculator
If anyone has ever listened to a the Brewing Network I’m sure you’ve heard of the Pitching Rate Calculator that’s been created by Jamil Zainasheff. Unlike the previous two calculators this has only one function which is to calculate your yeast pitching rate.
To be honest it’s not one I use all to often and I find it a bit over the top for my needs. I am happy as long as I know I’ve pitched enough yeast i.e make a starter. There are a few occasions where I have used it for liquid yeast strains that are past their expiry. The calculator let’s you know how much of a starter to build after putting the manufacture date in. It’s a fairly in depth tool but all the instructions are there to get you going.
BrewCalcs
The BrewCalcs site is great if you quickly want to do something like adjust for temperature on a hydrometer reading. It’s easy enough to just open up the page put in some figures and get a result. The list of calculators on the page are below, taken from the site:
The calculations include: hydrometer temperature correction, refractometer calculations (brix / plato to specific gravity), fermentation specifics (attenuation, alcohol by weight (abw), alcohol by volume (abv), calories), mash calculator (water temperature, water volume, single / multiple infusion, strike water), as well as a yeast pitching rate calculator for lagers and ales.
Plus once again both metric and US units so most should be covered.
All in all these online resources should cover pretty much all of what most home brewers are going to need and a lot of what you will get in software packages you have to pay for. Of course software is always going to win out compared to a online application but ultimately they are free to use and save a lot of time compared to doing things manually.
Do you know of any good online calculators or tools you find particularly useful? If you do then be sure to add them in the comments below.
