You can calculate the actual alcohol percentage in a batch by using the Alcohol Percentage tool under the Tools menu. Enter in your measured original gravity and final gravity. The percentage of alchohol by volume and by weight will be calculated.

You can access the Hydrometer Correction tool under the Tools menu. This tool is useful for converting your actual hydrometer readings to the correct value. Enter in the temperature at which you took the sample, the temperature at which the hydrometer is calibrated (typically 60° or 68° Fahrenheit), and the actual hydrometer reading. The corrected reading will be calculated.

The data that QBrew uses is in the file qbrewdata, typically located under the install directory in Windows, as part of the application bundle under Macintosh OSX, and under /usr/local/share/qbrew under traditional Unix. If there exists a file in the user's home directory with the name of .qbrewdata, then this file will be used instead.

The Database Editor, under the Tools menu, may be used to edit the users's .qbrewdata file. The operation of the editor is similar to editing ingredients in a recipe. In addition there is a Style page for editing recipe styles.

US units of measurement are used by default in QBrew. This can be changed in the configuration dialog. Both US and Metric measurements are available.

Please note that converting from one system to another and back may result in round-off errors during the conversion.

QBrew will import BeerXML recipes, and export native recipes to HTML, PDF, BeerXML or plain text format. BeerXML is a new format designed for sharing recipes and other brewing data. QBrew supports version 1.0.

Importing or exporting a recipe will result in some loss of data. This is because brewing programs all have different underlying assumptions and models for the data. Because of this, QBrew recipes should be stored in the native QBrew format, and only exported for sharing or posting recipes.