In the past, I kept a folder with many papers containing hand written recipes and lots of chicken scratch I call notes as I kept perfecting my perfect brew. Over time, my recipes became unreadable due to water, beer, and various ingredients being spilled on the paper. My Brew Collection is a great piece of software that is the perfect solution for this problem.

The program allows the user to manage a handy database of your home brew beer recipes. In the demo, you get one preloaded recipe and a tutorial on how to become a brewer if you're new. Adding your own recipes is very easy and the database allows for a limitless amount of storage. Within your database, each recipe can be sorted by, the color of the beer, name or style of beer, and a user rating.

When you expand a recipe to look at the details, you get all the information you need to recreate your concoction including the details of the recipe with the quantity of each ingredient, notes on specific brewing instructions, original and final gravity, alcohol percentage and a description of the beers unique qualities. The program also allows you to create labels for each brew.

Taking the extra steps to convert your paper recipes to digitized form can be tedious, but for any brewer, it will be worth the extra time to ensure the integrity and consistency of each beer you make.

The demo version is available at no charge; the full version of the software costs a one-time fee of $25. The demo has the exact same interface and options as the full version, but in the demo you can not save your list of recipes that you have created. To save your items, you must buy the full version.
--Greg Adler