I figure it's probably easier to demonstrate the features of the program rather than try to explain every single concept. So, here we will create a nice American Amber Ale, trying to touch on as many features as possible.
Brewtarget's options are in Tools->Options. Here you should set your preferences for the unit system you wish to use, and which formulae you want to use in creating your recipes.
Click on either File->"New Recipe", or click the green plus in the toolbar at the top of the main window. Now, title your recipe in the box that pops up, and click "OK".
Having an equipment record for your recipe is very important in Brewtarget. It contains a lot of information about your particular setup, and helps Brewtarget better estimate your results. Click on View->Equipments to bring up the Equipment Editor. At the bottom, press the green plus and enter the name you wish to give it. Check "calculate pre-boil volume", and enter as many of these fields as you can.
Now that you're back at the main window, open the Style drop-down list and choose "American Amber Ale". From the Equipment drop-down list, choose "Ideal" (which assumes 5 gallon batches, 0.75 gal/hr evap. rate, and no losses) which is already provided by Brewtarget, just for the sake of demonstration. For now, leave the efficiency at 70% for the same reason.
First, go to the Fermentables tab on the main window, and click the green plus sign on the right. This brings up the database of fermentables that Brewtarget has. Scroll down to "Pale Malt (2 row) US", single-click the name (or anywhere in the row) and press "Add to Recipe". Repeat for "Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L", and close the fermentable database window.
Back at the main window, you will see those two malts in your recipe. Click on the Crystal 40's "Mashed" checkbox to tell it that we want to have this in the mash.
Here's a cool feature about Brewtarget: you can enter amounts of stuff in pretty much any units you want. Let's see what I mean. Double-click the 2-row's "amount" cell and enter "3.175 kg". You will see that it immediately gets converted into "7.000 lb" if you're using US units. For the crystal 40, tell it "32 oz" and watch it get converted into "2.000 lb". You can change US/English/SI preferences in Tools->Options. Please see the section called "Supported Units" in this document to see the correct abbreviation for each unit.
Now you should notice something different about the OG, FG, etc., displayed in the main window. First, the two smaller LCDs on each side of these displays are the lower and upper limits of the style we have selected. The OG now reads 1.045, and it is green which indicates "to style" as dictated by the amber ale style we chose. However, the FG is red, which means it's too high, and the ABV is blue which means it is too low. The glass of beer to the right of that represents the approximate color of your beer, and the thing right below that which reads "Cloying" is a maltiness indicator (based on OG vs. IBUs).
Now, go to the Hops tab and add 1 oz Cascade at 1 hr, 1.5 oz Cascade at 15 min, and 1 oz Cascade at 5 min. The IBUs should be at 32, and in the green. Add Wyeast American Ale yeast to the recipe. Now everything should be in the green except for the ABV which is at 4.4%, but that's ok (you can correct this if you want by adding a little more fermentable stuff).
Let's do a 2-step mash with a protein rest at 121 F and a conversion rest at 152 F. Go to the mash tab and click the green plus. Name it "Protein" and click "OK". Double click its "Temp" cell and change to "121 F", and change the "Time" to "20 min". Do the same for a "Conversion" step at "152 F" and for "1 hr".
I should mention something here. Until now, Brewtarget has been lying to you. Underneath the target batch size, it says your calculated batch size is 5.000 gal. A similar thing occurs with the calculated boil size. These are estimates based on your mash and equipment what the actual volumes will be. Now, since there are no water additions in the "Ideal" equipment and since we're not actually adding any water for the mash yet, the displayed volumes should both be 0. However, Brewtarget uses these numbers in the calculation of the OG, IBUs, et cetera. So, it's convenient when you haven't set up the mash and everything just to be able to start adding the ingredients and get an approximate answer.
Click on "Edit Mash" and give it a name. Notice that you can enter the initial grain temp, sparge temp and initial tun temp here. Entering these as accurately as possible will give you the best chance to nail your temperatures. To set tun mass and specific heat, you would click "From Equipment". Now, click on the "Mash wiz" button, and give it a mash thickness (for example 1.25 qt/lb if you're in US units). The mash wizard just did 3 things for you: calculated infusion volumes, infusion temps., and gave you a sparge step that will make you hit your pre-boil volume. Now Brewtarget is not lying anymore about the calculated boil volume and batch size. Pretty cool? You can see any of the infusion temperatures by selecting the name of the mash step in the table and pressing the edit button to the right (looks like a pencil and paper). You can save this mash profile by pressing "Save Mash" at the bottom of the mash tab. You can recall a mash profile by selecting in the appropriate drop down box. Since your equipment and recipe might change, you should always do the mash wizard after recalling a saved mash profile.
Now that your recipe is all planned, wouldn't it be good to have some instructions on your brewday? Click the "Brewday mode" button in the toolbar at the top, and answer "yes". It has made all instructions for you and listed them on the left in order. There is a timer available for each step if you click "show timer". There are also 3 timers for general purpose use if you click the clock button in the toolbar. They are in HH:MM:SS format, and the text box above each one is what you use to set it. Just enter "1:00:00" and press "set" to set the timer for 1 hour, for example.
You can remove, shift up/down, insert, change steps as you see fit to help you be organized on your brew day.
Before you close Brewtarget, be sure to press the diskette at the top in the toolbar, or you will lose any changes you have made in this session!
Brewtarget maintains an internal BeerXML database of recipes, ingredients, etc. At program startup, it reads these files into memory, and all the editing you do occurs in memory until such time that you decide to press "save" on the main window. At this point, all your changes will be committed to the BeerXML database on disk.
You can import other BeerXML recipes (such as, from Beersmith) by using File->Import Recipes. However, you need to be aware that Beersmith does not strictly adhere to XML standards or even BeerXML itself (!), so you may have some trouble importing recipes from time to time. Brewtarget tries to maintain strict compatability with both.
I bet you can figure this one out.
For many reasons, you may want to back up all your recipes and ingredients and everything. To do this, go to File->"Backup Database" and select an empty directory. Restoring the database is just as simple. However, be aware that when you restore a database, anything in your current one will be wiped out.
A common problem is that you under or over estimate your efficiency and get a different OG than you planned for. To correct this in the boil, choose Tools->"OG Correction Help". Please note that this tool makes some assumptions, the biggest being that you are not going to add any water post boil. Just enter the SG, temp of sample, and calibration temp of the hydrometer OR the degrees Plato of the wort as you read it pre-boil. Then enter the pre-boil volume. Now, click "Calculate" and 3 fields will populate on the output half of the window. The first shows you the post-boil OG if you do nothing. The next shows you how much water to add (or boil off if negative) in order to achieve the right OG. The last shows how much wort you will end up with.
This tool is used to make a text version of the recipe so that you may print it out, post it online, or whatever else you can do with a text version. To print, click this button, open up a text editor, click paste in the text editor, and then print.
Brewtarget supports SI, Imperial, and US customary units. To switch between these modes, go to tools->options, and check/uncheck the appropriate box. It also supports a cool feature I call auto-conversion. For example, if you are in US mode, and you enter "0.50 gal" into a text field, it will appear as "2.000 qt". You may also enter units from the other unit system if you like. However, if you enter an unsupported unit, Brewtarget will assume the quantity you entered has the same units as the BeerXML entry for that field (which is usuall SI). For example, if you enter "20 asdf" into a volume field while in US mode, you will see "5.283 gal" because Brewtarget assumed you meant "20 L" and then converted to US units.
With US and Imperial units, people have a tendency to sometimes put a trailing "s" or a period at the end (hrs, hrs., etc.). Brewtarget only supports singular no-period units. This will probably be a common error among users since the habit is so ingrained. The reason for this lack of support for such spellings should be obvious...it would mean the program has to guess what you mean. The units supported, and the exact unit abbreviation you should use are given below.