If you’re not creating or tweaking recipes, a paper notebook is fantastic. It gives you something to do while you’re waiting on the boil.

I have a notebook with a page for every brew session: date, full recipe, steps, observations, and things I fucked up. Update it until the beer is done and there’s tasting notes. It’s fun to reread in later years. I have a few early brews that I noted got “infected” - and after some experience I had a good laugh because the “infection” was the shitty recipe I designed.

If you’re building a recipe you really need to use software (unless you don’t care about calculating estimated alcohol or IBU up front). The alternative is a level of referencing tables and doing arithmetic that exceeds what I want to see in my hobbies.

But if you aren’t trying to be scientific or you’re just following a basic kit? The only technology that should be involved is your phone playing music!