BrewPlanner

Pros

BrewPlanner is easy to use, visually intuitive, and offers knowledgable & authentic support to its customers. Working with them has been a consistently positive experience, as they are always striving to improve and develop options to better serve their customers.

Cons

There isn't an app version, which has slowed adoption by production workers.

Pros

The ease of use, multiple teams can access and see it.

Cons

Moving beers around seems to get glitchy, when extending the residence times in tanks sometimes you have to scroll around a lot to find the point in which changing the tank time is allowable

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to BrewPlanner

Pros

With the free price tag this is tough to beat in regards to brewhouse production planning. Aesthetically pleasing and fairly intuitive layout. There is decent amount flexibility and expansion to adapt to most small-moderate size brewing operations. Once you get a hang of user interface workflow becomes increasingly easier.

Cons

Seems to still be in Beta phase. A few operation glitches (occasionally planned brewing cycles wont save). On the fly changes due to brewing snafus or irregularities seem cumbersome to accomodate. No integration with other management tools (that I can see)

Pros

Visually, brewplanner has been excellent. We have run Monday morning staff meetings, focusing on brewplanner dashboard for 3 years now. It's easy to forecast and plan brews and packaging runs. We use the notes sections to assign tasks to staff.

Cons

Some bugs now and then. Some staff found that their updates (especially notes) would disappear.

Pros

We love the timeline view rather than the Birds Eye tank view others implement. Brewing is never an exact schedule and being able to shift things around easily is very convenient and effective. We use it frequently in team meetings to forecast production and plan exact dates for product release. It’s amazing in that way!

Cons

We’ve had issue expressing our concerns with how the software functions and it being heard by the company. 3 years in and we’ve not seen any of our feedback implemented. We’ve also had many occurrences of batches disappearing or many edits not saved correctly. For the software team: we use icons A LOT and you’ve stated that it’s the corner stone of your UI and keeping it simple. To our point when we started using your system icons were easy in that when we extended or contracted the schedule the icons would adjust accordingly(mainly the packaging days at the end of brites or the transfer days at the end of fermentation), but an update was made a while back and now we find ourselves making A LOT of clicking to keep icons placed correctly. It has made things a lot less convenient. Also, PLEASE make the icon dropdowns alphabetical or customizable order. Thank you!