Whiskey Systems vs. DISTILL x 5

[jocko]

Two options from the same company.  Curious who uses which and why you selected one vs. the other?

I'm inclined to go with Whiskey Systems, my operations director likes DISTILL x 5. 

Thoughts?  We are a brand new distillery, been using TTB Tamer for a few months and don't like it. 

[CTcraft]

I've used both systems and as I get ready to open my distillery I was looking into TTB tamer to help due to the cost compared to DX5 and Whiskey Systems. What's the main reason you don't like TTB tamer? Would love to hear your thoughts.

As for DX5 and Whiskey Systems, yes they do the same thing, distill x 5 is a bit more "pretty" and it guides you through the process fairly easy. There are some quirks you have to deal with but, no system is perfect. I did enjoy being able to look at the main screen and see what tanks were filled, what was in fermentation and what was ready for processing. For Whiskey Systems it doesn't have the graphics that distill x 5 does but it gets the job done just as good. If you have a lot of barreling, I feel that whiskey systems did a better job at organizing, filling and dumping of barrels and distill x 5 wasn't as easy. I went from distill x 5 to whiskey systems and if I were to use one when I open I would go with Whiskey Systems. Again, this is just my personal opinion, I feel as if it really depends on who is going to be using the software the most and what they like.

[jocko]

Thanks!  We've used TTB tamer at our brewery side and know it well.  My operations director can easily do his brewery reports using it.  But, the same guy is pulling his hair out trying to use it for the distillery side.  It's just a light level of data entry automation entirely driven by the TTB forms.  Lots of duplicate entry, no inventory management at all, really nothing but minimum data required, soley for filing TTB forms.  The user experience is terrible in my opinion. I spent many years in software development and I think I could do better than TTB tamer in a couple of months time if I had the cycles.

While $345/month is a lot to bite off without revenue (since we are just now putting barrels away and won't have any other product to sell for a few months), having all of our history and data in one place will make it much easier to ramp and start packaging the stuff we are producing now. 

The TTB Tamer experience leaves us fearful that we are even filing correct TTB reports.