Are you looking for a way to organize and keep your most treasured recipes? There are plenty of recipe programs that can be downloaded online, and each program features unique tools in organizing recipes.
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The following are just some of the best recipe software for Windows that you can use in keeping your recipes organized for future use:
(Caveat: The generic recipes that come with these programs lack the provenance and confidence factor of your favorite cookbooks and magazines.) In addition to sorting recipes, these programs do other tricks: adjusting for different numbers of servings; offering nutritional information; creating menu plans; and, in the case of Cook’n. 100's of the best recipes that are simple and nutritious with lots of photographs to help you cook. Delicious, healthy and Air Fryer Recipes too! How we use your email address America's Test Kitchen will not sell, rent, or disclose your email address to third parties unless otherwise notified. Your email address is required to identify you for free access to content on the site. Recipe Keeper is the easy to use, all-in-one recipe organizer, shopping list and meal planner available across all of your devices. ADD RECIPES QUICKLY AND EASILY Enter your recipes with as much or as little information as you like. Copy and paste recipes from your existing documents or apps. Categorize your recipes by course and category. Use free recipe organizer software to ensure the easy access to your best recipes. Busy cooks with recipes written on paper slips, card or store on computer hard drives find.
10. The Computer Cookbook
One of the earliest recipe software ever released, The Computer Cookbook is still available for download till now for those who are looking for the simplest recipe software. The program is composed of colorful tabs where you can add and organize your own recipes. The program allows downsizing recipe ingredients so you can control the number of servings you want for each recipe.
Pros: Simple user interface, comes with 14 pre-installed recipes, allows downsizing of recipe ingredients.
Cons: Costs $34.95 to download, interface looks outdated.
9. Cookbook Wizard Recipe
The Cookbook Wizard Recipe software is an easy to manage application made for Windows. With this software, you can easily add your recipe, build shopping list and import recipes from online resources. You can also export recipes from the software for printing and sharing.
Pros: Simple user interface, with shopping list builder, supports recipe website builder.
Cons: Costs $17.95 to download, old-school program format.
8. SoftCuisine
The SoftCuisine software is a recipe manager helpful in organizing recipes and meal plans. It can also generate shopping lists from the ingredients in your cookbook’s recipes. The software also allows search filters based on ingredients, calorie count and other categories.
Pros: Simple user interface, allows search filters, support exporting of recipes to other recipe software.
Cons: Costs $20 to download, lack of other specific cooking tools.
7. AZZ Cardfile
AZZ Cardfile is a simple Windows program useful in keeping recipes in a card-like format. You can easily copy and paste your favorite recipes to each customizable AZZ card. You can also download recipes from over 7,000 recipe files from AZZ website.
Pros: Simple to use, doesn’t consume much of your hard disk space, cards are customizable.
Cons: Costs $29.95 to download, user interface looks outdated.
6. CalcMenu Pro
The CalcMenu Pro is an interactive program where you can store your favorite recipes and do many other useful features like calculating nutritional value, resizing serving portions and many more. You can also printout recipes from the database.
Pros: Supports menu planning, nutrient calculation and recipe costing, best for foodservice professionals.
Cons: User interface lacks design, pricing of software available upon request.
5. One Million Recipes
The One Millions Recipes software offers an organized way of cataloging recipes. It allows recipe searching by name, by ingredient or by category. It also features calendar style of meal plans. There are over 1,000,000 recipes pre-installed in the software’s CD-ROM so you can have a good start in collecting recipes.
Pros: Pre-installed with 1,000,000 recipes, with calendar-style meal plans, with nutritional information for usual ingredients.
Cons: Costs $7.97 to download, doesn’t run on Windows 7.
4. Matilda’s Fantastic Cookbook Software 4
The Matilda’s Fantastic Cookbook Software 4 is an amazing application where you can keep recipes and produce cookbook printouts. The layout is automatically responsive – all you need to do is type your recipe and choose a design. Afterwards, you can print it right away as the recipe is already fully formatted.
Pros: Comes with 27 design layouts, allows organization of recipes into several cookbooks, fully responsive layout.
Cons: Costs $29.99 to download, software doesn’t allow editing of recipe name.
3. MasterCook
MasterCook is an easy to navigate recipe software where you can keep all of your recipes securely. The software helps in meal planning by generating suggestions from its database. You can also create shopping lists with the help of this software so you will not forget anything when following a recorded recipe from its database.
Pros: Can import recipes, comes with partner web account and smart phone applications.
Cons: Costs $14.99 to download, will not let you choose cookbook cover when creating cookbooks.
2. Cook’n Recipe Organizer
The Cook’n Recipe Organizer is packed with useful features that will simplify recipe collection. The most notable key feature of this software is the Capture Tool which you can use to import recipes through a single click. You can also easily create meal plans with the help of this software.
Pros: Easy to search recipe database, with 550 pre-installed software, comes with Capture Tool, allows synchronization across different platforms.
Cons: Costs $69.95 to download, extra cookbooks must be purchased as well.
1. The Recipe Manager
The Recipe Manager is ideal for keeping tabs of your favorite recipes. It can even import recipes directly from online resources. The software also contains 1,000 pre-installed recipes that will help you start with your recipe collection. The recipes are arranged alphabetically so it will be easy to search by recipe name.
Pros: Allows importing of recipe content, supports creation of menu planner, with drag and drop tool for recipe collection.
Cons: Costs $20 for a single copy, with additional fees for family packs.
For many brewers, long gone are the days of doing recipe calculations on pen and paper. Save for the nostalgic, most homebrewers use some kind of software to figure out their numbers.
Though many out there have relied on the “ole’ standby” Beersmith2, there are a plethora of choices.
But its the 21st century now, and we want connectivity, we want syncing across devices, we want brewing software that integrates with out current, modern devices.
My goal here is not to tell you which one is best, but rather to give you a high-level overview and to point out some of the key features between the most popular options.
Using this information should help you in making a somewhat enlightened choice when choosing your brewing software.
BrewFather Brewing SoftwareBrewFather runs on any modern browser and/or mobile devices. You can work offlineand connect automatic synchronizationwhen you get back online. Recipe designer, intuitive batch tracking, inventory management, and integratedwith many popular devices. All to make your brew-day easier.
Compatibility
First let’s look at compatibility. One of your foremost deciding factors when it comes to the type of software you will choose will be the format in which you can use it.
- Do you want to use it from your phone or tablet (web-based or app)? Do you have an IOS or Android based device?
- Do you want to run it from your computer (web-based or desktop app)? Do you have a Mac, PC, or Linux?
- Do you want open-source where you could potentially change the source code or do you just want it to work out of the box?
Hopefully I can answer a few of these questions, but let’s just start with trying to make it compatible with your setup.
Cost
One of the most limiting factors for most homebrewers is the cost of their tools.
Although not all of these software packages are exactly apples to apples, the difference in cost between them might be a “make it or break it” factor for you.
Below are the prices associated with each piece of software reviewed. Some of the packages are subscription based, and in that case, the monthly or yearly price is listed.
Potential Popularity
It might not be a fair comparison when looking at the user base of certain products.
In some cases, the user base might not be public information. Also, when trying to analyse social media and forums, it should be noted that this is just an attempt to show the representation of the active users. I looked at Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and forums to get an idea of the user base for each home brewing software.
Though social media and forum activity do not necessarily portray exact numbers of user base, I think they do paint a pretty good picture as to how many people are talking about the software and using it.
Brewing Software Reviews
Lastly, I would like to give a brief description of each package. I have not used every package listed here, but reading reviews and browsing through free trials I have come up with the following.
Brewtarget
Ability to export/import Beer XML: Yes
Brewtarget is an open-source software with a great set of tools. It gives you a lot of control when it comes to designing your recipe.
The software automatically calculates the color, bitterness, gravity, and ABV. It does priming calculations, OG corrections, pitch rates, refractometer calculations, brew day timers, and much more. Best of all it is completely free.
Beersmith 2
Ability to export/import Beer XML: Yes
BeerSmith is by far one of the most used pieces of software in the homebrewing community.
Its tool set is very robust and once it is set up for your brewing style and equipment, its calculations are very accurate.
It was very hard not to compare all of the other options to BeerSmith as it is what I use every brew day.
Brewtoad
Ability to export/import Beer XML: Export only
Brewtoad is an online service that gives you the ability to build recipies, set up equipment profiles, and even helps with mash calculations.
You can create variants of your recipes. One really cool feature of this website is that once you have built your recipe you can buy beer ingredients right from the site. It is like building your own personalized beer kit.
Brewer’s Friend
Ability to export/import Beer XML: Yes
Brewer’s Friend is web service that has an app for both IOS and Android. It also has a windows desktop app.
Brewer’s Friend has a Free version in which you can store up to five recipes.
With this software comes your typical recipe builder, however, they also have a pretty good set of tools including a nice library of forms and templates. They have a great tool for water chemistry as well as a great reference for water reports.
Like Brew Toad, you can also buy the beer kit for created recipes from them. I have never used this software, however, that is only because I started using Beersmith before I found out about them.
They have both a free version and a paid version. The paid version allows you to delete recipes and sync with the apps. Paying for the service also gets rid of the advertising.
Brewcipher
This software is really just a spreadsheet. The link is to the google drive folder where all of the relevant files can be downloaded.
Ability to export/import Beer XML: No
Brewcipher is a free workbook that can be ran with Excel. You can customize your equipment profiles, create grain bills, and hop profiles. It is modeled after most of the other popular software but it does everything using formulas in Excel.
If you are spreadsheet savvy, this might be a pretty good fit for you. It has many features that you find in some of the other software packages, however, everything is put in specific cells on different sheets.
It would be a little scary at first glance, especially for someone that does not use Excel. However, if you are good with Excel, Brewcipher could give you a better idea of the math behind all of the outputs, if that’s your thing.
Bru’n Water
Ability to export/import Beer XML: NA
Bru’n water does not really compare to the rest of these, however, I wanted to list it because it seems popular.
It is a calculator specifically for the water chemistry of your mash.
I had not heard of it before researching for this post,but I will start using it from now on.
Bru’n uses Excel or Open Office and it does have a free version. Their website also has a lot of information on it for those looking to get into brewing water chemistry.
Mr. Malty
Ability to export/import Beer XML: NA
Mr. Malty is a yeast pitch rate calculator and much like Bru’n water does not really compare to the tools offered in the other packages, however, I would not write it off.
It is recommended by many when it comes to calculating the pitch rate of your yeast.
The web version is free. It does have an app available on the Apple App Store ($2.99) and the Google Play store (4.99).
BrewPal
Ability to export/import Beer XML: Yes
BrewPal is an app based recipe formulation software for IOS. It allows you to take your recipes with you.
It syncs between all of your iCloud devices. Though somewhat limited when comparing it to the others, when it comes to an IOS app based software, BrewPal is still a nice tool to have.
If you are looking to only use your iPhone or iPad for brew calculations, this might be just the tool you are looking for.
Beer Tools Pro
Ability to export/import Beer XML: Yes
Beertools is a recipe formulation and management software.
It has many tools for adjusting alcohol, color, bitterness, and much more.
This software, to me, feels much like Beersmith, though, not as many options. However, It’s tools seem much more streamlined and to the point. Overall the user interface is clean and navigation through all the available options is very straightforward.
I would have liked to have seen more reporting from such a feature rich product. (e.g. brew steps).
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They have a web-based version that the desktop app will sync with so that you can use it on a mobile device as well.
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BeerAlchemy
Ability to export/import Beer XML: Yes
BeerAlchemy is a Mac only software with a desktop version and an App version which only runs on IOS.
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It has a recipe creator and tools for inventory management.
One cool feature I noticed was that if you are a brewer that keeps on top of their inventory, this software can recommend brews based on the ingredients you have in stock.
The desktop version will sync with the app version which will help with shopping lists and brewday schedules.
Final Notes
Once again, I have not personally used every software listed here and this post just scratches the surface when it comes to the different options available for brewing software. They change and the good ones frequently update to keep with modern devices and new platforms. My current favorite does an excellent job with staying up-to-date.
BrewFather Brewing SoftwareBrewFather runs on any modern browser and/or mobile devices. You can work offlineand connect automatic synchronizationwhen you get back online. Recipe designer, intuitive batch tracking, inventory management, and integratedwith many popular devices. All to make your brew-day easier.
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Hopefully it can be used to help you make a knowledgeable decision when you decide to look into using software for your brewing needs.