What’s Brewing? 27 Apps for Homebrewers, Winemakers and Kombucha Fanatics
The flavor notes, the taste, the texture: You know plenty about your favorite beverages, enough to have a collection of local breweries and wine producers at the ready. You’ve even attempted making your own drinks in your garage, making the most of your newly assembled workspace garage cabinets! Smartphone and tablet apps can actually make the job easier for first-timers and those that want to perfect their brews.
These 27 apps that we’ve found fully explain the process of preparing kombucha tea, wine or beer. Whether you need thermometers, ingredients lists, how-tos or informative videos, make sure to grab your smartphone stat and start downloading these great apps.
Additionally, don't forget that an organized garage will only increase production of your new brewing set-up!
Brewing Beer
BeerSmith Mobile Home Brewing by BeerSmith
By far the most popular and widely-used brewing app there is, BeerSmith connects to your device’s cloud so that you can seamlessly move a recipe on your laptop to your mobile device, which is handier for brewing in the garage. Convert and calculate ingredients, and definitely try to recreate some of BeerSmith’s most beloved recipes.
Home Brew Calculators by Ghost Chili Software
This free app calls itself “the perfect companion for the home brewed beer maker.” Dive deep into the technical side of beer-making with Home Brew Calculators: It lets you convert ingredient amounts into metric units, shows you how to properly pitch yeast, teaches you all about how bitter hops can be, helps you find the perfect strike temperature, and figures out beer carbonation and attenuation. Save your hops schedules, set up a handy boil timer and even send your homemade recipes to yourself or a friend through email.
Homebrewers Toolkit by Belgian Brewer
If you want an alternative to BeerSmith or just a collection of beer-related apps, download Homebrewers Toolkit. You can try the app free for a month before paying for it. Spend that time exploring classic recipes your own customized recipes. The app will display values for each brew such as bitterness, alcohol content, color, original and final gravity, and batch size.
iBrewMaster by iBrewMaster, Inc.
Windows, Android and Apple users should have iBrewMaster in their arsenal, as well. For $6.99, you get access to nearly 300 recipes, most from Northern Brewer and a few general ones, too. Manage your beer as you make it, and instead of calculating calories, final gravity and hops manually, iBrewMaster does it all for you. An inventory section lets you manage the batches that you’ve created and, if you want, you can even share these online.
Beer Color Camera by Belgian Brewer
Another Belgian Brewer app, Beer Color Camera is useful for beginners who aren’t sure whether their beer is supposed to be that weird hue once it’s brewed. Just snap a picture of your beverage and upload it to this app. You’ll then get feedback about the color based on data from the Beer Judge Certification Program, the European Brewing Convention and the Standard Reference Method. Even better, this app is totally free.
Introduction to All-Grain Brewing by Ten Ton Design Labs
The American Homebrewers Association provides this fun app for Windows Phone users; it also works for PCs. Introduction to All-Grain Brewing is loaded with a series of instructional video tutorials from professional brewers that introduce all-grain beers and let you know what equipment and tools that you’ll need to prepare your own. If you’ve never heard of the batch sparge mash method, this app will teach you all you need to know.
BeerAlchemy Touch by Kent Place Software
Although it’s not free, BeerAlchemy Touch is a worthwhile investment for those with an iPhone, Android or Windows Phone. Originally a Mac-exclusive app, you can now connect any computer to your phone and upload your beer recipes. Adjust the amount of hops and malts in each preset recipe to your own preferences, and if you start to run low of ingredients, BeerAlchemy will let you know so you’re never completely out of stock.
Home Brew Journal by Lund Software
Paper journals are completely unnecessary now that you have Home Brew Journal on your Apple, Windows or Android device. This free app lets you take down notes so you can improve your beer-making process, whether that’s fine-tuning the quality of your recipes or the ingredients that go into them. Even better, if you’re trying out a lot of beers, whether your own or from a recipe that you snagged from the app, you can rate the drink by its taste so you can keep track of your favorites.
Brewing Assistant by brewology101.com
Brewology101.com is a great website that beginning brewers should bookmark; also, download its Brewing Assistant app, which is free for all Android devices. If you register with Brewology101 and experiment on its website, you can connect to your account and transfer all of the recipes you’ve enjoyed right to your smartphone or tablet. First-timers will feel comfortable with the beer-making process because Brewing Assistant lets you know when you need to pour more ingredients into your pot, how long to boil these and how often you should mash the hops.
Basic Brewing by Wizzard Media
Basic Brewing is a paid app ($1.99) produced through Basic Brewing Video and Basic Brewing Radio, both great information sources for first-time brewers. Get your favorite podcasts, video and text posts from Basic Brewing on the go with this app for Android, Apple and Windows smartphones and tablets. As soon as the team at Basic Brewing uploads new content, you can instantly watch or listen to it.
My Brew by Zuke Technologies
For a couple of dollars, My Brew lets you snap pictures of yourself making beer, record information about your latest and greatest recipes, post your favorite homemade beers to social media, and set up timers for boiling. Best of all, My Brew lets you know how much it costs to make your own beer from your recipes so you can review this information and buy cheaper ingredients if you want.
iBrew Beer by Josh Berry
If you’re brewing a ton of different recipes, you could lose track of your expiration dates. iBrew Beer can let you know how long your brew should sit after it’s brewed and bottled. You can also upload pictures of your own creations and add notes.
BrewR by Weekend Coders
The recipe manager app BrewR starts you out with a series of the most popular beers, then lets you tweak their ingredients for your own take on a recipe. If you need to set a timer, do it through the app and not your Android smartphone; BrewR can run in the background while you continue using your phone.
ExpertVideo: Home Brewing by Interave Media
You can get ExpertVideo: Home Brewing, iOS only, for less than a dollar.Beginners and experts alike can pick up a thing or two from these quality video tutorials. If you’ve ever wanted to get into planting hops or bottling your own beer, you need this app. Whenever you have a burning question about a beer topic, the app features a chat function that connects you with knowledgeable brewers.
Making Wine
WineMaker Pro by SharpeTech
Priding itself on being created by winemakers for winemakers, the WineMaker Pro app for iOS may cost a bit more than most ($9.99), but for that price you get record-keeping tools, calculators and a virtual journal. The app will also suggest whether you should include additives in your recipe to improve the taste; and with the Room View, you can manage the amount of carboys or tanks you have left. Use SO2 Management so you never include too much potassium metabisulfite in your drinks, and, once you’ve got the basics down, impress everyone with gorgeous PDFs of your favorite homemade wine recipes.
Wine Making by Cultured Media
Android users should tune into the lively discussions on the Wine Making app. Here, you can ask all sorts of questions about planting your own grapes, storing your wine in cellars, how winemaking can be a cleaner experience, which corks are best to use, and how to make your own bottle labels. You can also check out tutorials, videos and pictures of impressive vineyards that will make you want your own.
Oenotools by Oenotools
Based in Montpellier, France, Oenotools has been updating its free app since 2011. Available in multiple languages for Android and iOS users, the complicated parts of winemaking won’t be a mystery to you any longer. There is a calculator to determine nitrogen stripping decarbonization and deoxygenation, and the app will suggest when you should add tannins, enzymes or gum arabic.
Winemaker’s Tools by Piotr Halas
Android users don’t have to pay a cent for Winemaker’s Tools, another cool app that will be your best friend if you need to calculate ingredients. Always know the alcohol content, gravity, volume, mass and mead amount in each batch of wine that you create from the comforts of your garage (or wherever you make your wine). An advanced mode gets even more detailed if you feel comfortable delving into it.
Wine Making Guide by GAP Web Agency Ltd
Yet another great Android app, Wine Making Guide gives you a lot for just a few bucks. If you’re embarking on your winemaking quest, start by reading the insanely detailed guide, which fills you in on the various types of wine, how to grow your own grapes, and which tools and ingredients you need to get started today. The app also offers oaking and blending tips. Eventually, you’ll move on to the part of the guide where you can use your own homemade ingredients for making wine.
Winemaker’s Toolbox by CL Enterprise
Winemaking can get quite technical, which is why you may rely heavily on Winemaker’s Toolbox (for Android devices) as you try your hand at winemaking. The app converts units of measurement and helps you manage the fermentation process.
HomeWine Premium by homewine.eu
Homewine.eu produces both HomeWine Basic and HomeWine Premium. The premium version of the Android app has six different features:
- batch-planning, which predicts the cost, even if you use multiple fruits for your wine;
- the wine cellar,which includes recipes and news;
- a series of sticky notes for tasting notes;
- a dictionary of terms;
- a calculator for converting units, calculating alcohol concentration and figure out the sugar content;
- and a help area for any questions that you may have.
Wine Dictionary by Wine Apps
If terms such as chaptalization (making wine more alcoholic through the inclusion of sugar with the grapes), hydrometer, oaking and tannins make you scratch your head, check out the Wine Dictionary for Android devices. It’s absolutely free and features more than 900 different terms and definitions. There’s even a section about different wine-making regions for your reading pleasure.
Gravity by MobileBrewing
A good tool for any type of brewing, including beer, Gravity predicts alcohol by weight and alcohol by volume correctly every single time. It can read temperatures and use this to calculate the specific gravity of wine. Even if your hydrometer doesn’t give the same reading, this app can make up for the difference.
Preparing Kombucha
Easy Kombucha Tea by Alex Baik
Kombucha can be alcoholic, which the iOS app Easy Kombucha Tea explains. Vibrant pictures accompany each chunk of information, which outlines what kombucha is, the varieties of it and how you can even make your own.
Make Kombucha Tea by AppMarketing360
The Make Kombucha Tea app calls itself the best thing “since the invention of kombucha tea itself.” This Android app links to resources that sell kombucha ingredients so you can shop online. You can also look through the recipe database and contribute your own concoctions.
Kombucha Calculator by Appsgeyser
The Kombucha Calculator (for Windows, Apple and Android devices) manages your ingredients and lets you know how much of each you’ll need so every batch of kombucha you make will taste just right.
Tea by Samuel Iglesias
Tea features an encyclopedia, a number of tea recommendations, social media sharing and brew suggestions. Especially helpful for kombucha brewers are an inventory tracker and automatic unit conversion.
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