Free Beer. It’s What Your Mac Is All About.

As often as Mac360 finds great Mac applications, I don’t know how our value vixens missed this one.

It’s free. It’s about beer. What else do you need to know?

What is it they say? Necessity is the mother of invention. Check out this invention.

Two guys by the name of John Tull and Ken Nussear had a need regarding beer. They designed HomeBrew Formulator.

No, it’s not a way to turn your Mac into a mico-brewery, though I would give that idea more than passing consideration.

HomeBrew Formulator is a Mac application, a FileMaker database application, that lets you create and manage beer recipes on your Mac.

What? You’re not doing that already? Me neither, and the time has come and it is now.

If the Mac is the center of our digial iLife, our digital hub for all things electronic and gadgetry, add some beer to make it a good thing better.

There’s beer, and there’s beer, and there’s good beer. If you’re into beer, then you’ve probably tried your hand at your own brewery.

A brewery requires recipes, and recipes require organization, and Macs are good at organizing, and guys are good at beer.

Seriously. What else do you need to know?

HomeBrew Formulator is loaded with features. Beer styles come from the BJCP Style Guidelines, so there’s an excellent reference point to start.

If you know your beer, then you’ll know, understand, and applaud things like full mash, partial mash, or the benefits of using a mash calculator for creating custom infusion, step, or decoction mashes.

You’re drooling right now, aren’t you? Water and ingredients are important for consistent home brews and HomeBrew Formulator tracks both.

There’s separate databases for hops, fermentables, yeasts, and other additives. There’s even a brewing water calculator, and a hydrometer correction calculator.

No database is complete without a final recipe page which can be printed out before you head off to buy ingredients.

It isn’t often that a free Mac application gets by our reviewers without comment, but I’m going to cut Alexis some slack on this one.

Until about April she was pregnant and probably not quaffing down much of the golden suds. Since then she’s been nursing and drunk babies are probably not much fun. Drunk babes are different.

As with any Mac application with a highly specific solution, your mileage may vary. Just make sure to have a designated spell checker when working out your recipes on HomeBrew Formulator.

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