BeerSmith 2 Lite

★★★★★ Perfect brew day mini version of BeerSmith Love this app. I've been using it for about a month, was lucky to be a beta tester. I've brewed with it 3 times and it's exactly what I needed. I don't want my laptop out when I'm brewing, the phone app is all I need. Someone said the timer would be better if it told you when to add hops. It does. Automagically. Set your times in your recipe in the cloud and download it to your phone. You'll get notifications at every step you set. No manual timer settings needed if your recipe is set. I love that I can tweak the heck out of my recipes at my computer, then download it to my phone for reference at my homebrew store or when I'm brewing. Lot's of handy tools too. This isn't a great stand-alone app, you really need to already be using BeerSmith. If you're already a BeerSmith user, this is so worth $4. The perfect, mobile add on to a great desktop app. Brad did a great job and this is a brand new app. It's only going to get better. As someone who has some time invested in using & testing this app, I find it ridiculous it's getting low ratings from folks who admittedly haven't even used it yet.

★★☆☆☆ Purchased with the hope of updates For $4, and only useful if you purchased the desktop version, it needs serious work. For these entry costs, Brad, speed improvements and a native android interface (not an ios port with ios graphics and style) are expected. I look forward to future versions.

★★☆☆☆ It's not great. It allows me to see my recipes so I don't have to run back to my computer or waste paper printing them, but there are 3 major things wrong with this app: 1. It never gets updates 2. There should be a better system than this lite/pro setup. I already own the full fledged beersmith application on desktop, why force me to go back to my computer and re-cloud upload my recipe any time I need to make a tweak? Perhaps email address or key validation in-app could show who owns the desktop app and the "full" app features could be available for us. After paying for the desktop program, I feel cheater paying for a lite version on mobile. If I have to pay then at least give me the full functionality 3. Bugs bugs bugs. The timers don't work properly is all I can remember off the top of my head. 4. Know the ecosystem you're developing an app for. The UI is *terrible*. Nothing in this app would pass for Android Design Guidelines even on Android Gingerbread. The UI is incredibly infuriating. If this thing was updated to material design that would be a *huge* improvement. All in all I see this app as a money grab. It's kind of like paying almost $4 for a PDF viewer.