[thelastdamnbatch]

To me, the inability for us to choose the best of the malts and hop crops explains why it's so hard to duplicate at home. Fun trying to duplicate anyway !

I'm curious, do you find the ingredients you get to be inferior in some way? Or the variety available lacking? The supplies available twenty years ago pale in comparison to what is out there today. I can't remember the last time I couldn't get a particular malt or hop variety (as long as you order your hops when they hit the market) nor have I received supplies that were stale or unusable. I've been to malting facilities as I have a friend in the biz and also to hop farms (none in Europe, yet) and while the contracted brewers may get first pick, that doesn't mean the balance of the malt or hops are somehow lacking.

We have access to good ingredients of course, but we don't get to pick the very best lot of noble hops from a farm or the freshest, highest quality lots of malts from maltsters. Homebrewers get what's left over. Some German brewers have malts made to their own specs. I'm just saying that while we have access to often very good ingredients, there is a pecking order on ingredients and we're not at the top.

Grow your own hops/grain and malt your own grain.  It's not difficult but it is work and it does take time.  Those who say you can't do those things as well as commercial operations have never tried or are too lazy.

[coolman26]

personally, I don't think we get bad or subpar, or lack of variety of brewing ingredients.

I just think fresh is best-not so different from baking and cooking. I'd love to grab a freshly malted sack of pils, some just processed hops, and give it whirl and see if that freshness carries through or not to the finished product.

I have a few brews on the schedule.  I have several old unopened sacks.  I'm going to brew a couple side by side Kolsch brews to see what fresh vs old actually is like.  It may give some feedback as this question is asked frequently. 

[HoosierBrew]

To me, the inability for us to choose the best of the malts and hop crops explains why it's so hard to duplicate at home. Fun trying to duplicate anyway !

I'm curious, do you find the ingredients you get to be inferior in some way? Or the variety available lacking? The supplies available twenty years ago pale in comparison to what is out there today. I can't remember the last time I couldn't get a particular malt or hop variety (as long as you order your hops when they hit the market) nor have I received supplies that were stale or unusable. I've been to malting facilities as I have a friend in the biz and also to hop farms (none in Europe, yet) and while the contracted brewers may get first pick, that doesn't mean the balance of the malt or hops are somehow lacking.

We have access to good ingredients of course, but we don't get to pick the very best lot of noble hops from a farm or the freshest, highest quality lots of malts from maltsters. Homebrewers get what's left over. Some German brewers have malts made to their own specs. I'm just saying that while we have access to often very good ingredients, there is a pecking order on ingredients and we're not at the top.

Grow your own hops/grain and malt your own grain.  It's not difficult but it is work and it does take time.  Those who say you can't do those things as well as commercial operations have never tried or are too lazy.

And for the record, I'm not saying that being able to brew with Weyermann or Best pils and Mittelfrueh hops is suddenly a bad thing - it's great. Just saying that when trying to isolate something as elusive as an 'it' factor, there's gotta be a slight difference between very good ingredients and the absolute cream of the crop ingredients.

[Wort-H.O.G.]

To me, the inability for us to choose the best of the malts and hop crops explains why it's so hard to duplicate at home. Fun trying to duplicate anyway !

I'm curious, do you find the ingredients you get to be inferior in some way? Or the variety available lacking? The supplies available twenty years ago pale in comparison to what is out there today. I can't remember the last time I couldn't get a particular malt or hop variety (as long as you order your hops when they hit the market) nor have I received supplies that were stale or unusable. I've been to malting facilities as I have a friend in the biz and also to hop farms (none in Europe, yet) and while the contracted brewers may get first pick, that doesn't mean the balance of the malt or hops are somehow lacking.

We have access to good ingredients of course, but we don't get to pick the very best lot of noble hops from a farm or the freshest, highest quality lots of malts from maltsters. Homebrewers get what's left over. Some German brewers have malts made to their own specs. I'm just saying that while we have access to often very good ingredients, there is a pecking order on ingredients and we're not at the top.

Grow your own hops/grain and malt your own grain.  It's not difficult but it is work and it does take time.  Those who say you can't do those things as well as commercial operations have never tried or are too lazy.

I'm sure my wife would love me turning our back yard into a barley field   

[HoosierBrew]

I'm sure my wife would love me turning our back yard into a barley field   

Yeah, mine is pretty tolerant and supportive of my brewing, but that might be a deal breaker. 

[denny]

Grow your own hops/grain and malt your own grain.  It's not difficult but it is work and it does take time.  Those who say you can't do those things as well as commercial operations have never tried or are too lazy.

Have you tried this?  Making malt isn't too hard.  Growing and making good malt is very hard.

I buy the same malt in the same lots as a major local brewery.  There's no difference between what they use and what I use.  It's not the "leftovers".  And I can tel you that when a wholesaler buys malt to distribute to breweries and homebrew shops, it's the same malt from the same lots.  The idea that homebrewers are getting the leftovers just doesn't hold true.

[mabrungard]

Gordon won Ninkasi more times, and more recently than JZ. I trust Gordon's cred as a brewer as much as I trust JZ's.

While Gordon is a very good brewer, you need to remember that he back-doored his way into the Ninkasi, in my opinion. Each one of his Ninkasi's was pushed by Mead wins. While that is still a crap-load better than my results, I believe that JZ won his Nindasi's with beer only. In a way, that may place more cred on Jamil's expertise.

[Wort-H.O.G.]

I'm not saying we get leftovers. Just what I said before-would love hot off the press ingredients just to see if there's something there is all.

[thelastdamnbatch]

Grow your own hops/grain and malt your own grain.  It's not difficult but it is work and it does take time.  Those who say you can't do those things as well as commercial operations have never tried or are too lazy.

Have you tried this?  Making malt isn't too hard.  Growing and making good malt is very hard.

Making good malt takes practice but I wouldn't term it "very hard".  Making a lager/pilsner/pale malt is relatively easy.  Making a Vienna or Munich malt is a little more complex but nothing to lose sleep over.

The temperature profiles and times for steeping, drying and curing are all contained in "The Textbook of Brewing" Volume 1 and "Malts and Malting".  Not cheap books but well worth the investment.

Growing barley is very easy, but growing up on a farm, I did these things as a kid so perhaps I just have a green thumb.  (I'm not suggesting you try to grow it in your back yard, but it is fun and something the whole family can participate in!)

You'll need some equipment like buckets, a kitchen stove, a dehydrator and also a grain moisture meter (again, not cheap!) but well worth investment.  It will tell you when your done steeping and when to go from drying stage to curing and when to raise the temperature, etc...

I could talk for hours about this stuff but order yourself a bag of unhulled barley from these guys and try it yourself (they normally carry the Conlon variety):

http://www.naturalwaymills.com/products.htm

[klickitat jim]

Gordon won Ninkasi more times, and more recently than JZ. I trust Gordon's cred as a brewer as much as I trust JZ's.

While Gordon is a very good brewer, you need to remember that he back-doored his way into the Ninkasi, in my opinion. Each one of his Ninkasi's was pushed by Mead wins. While that is still a crap-load better than my results, I believe that JZ won his Nindasi's with beer only. In a way, that may place more cred on Jamil's expertise.

Caveat, they really know their stuff and most of us gained from their sharing.

However, when you know your stuff AND most of your entries are custom blended to meet style guidelines and trending desired qualities AND you enter 40-60 different beers... thats a completely different thing than a current Ninkasi. I'm just as impressed by an unblended single gold medal winner under recent NHC rules, as I am by a repeat Ninkasi winning from 60 blended entries under the old rules.

[mabrungard]

Probably not, Dave.   Having won a medal or two that surprised me on beers that I thought were 'pretty good', and having really good beers come up short just reinforces (to me anyway) that comps are unpredictable. Judges have varying experience, knowledge of a given style, and palate fatigue within a style. Judges - please understand that I mean no disrespect. 90% of the time I am harder on my own beers than any judge ever. The other 10% I chalk up to a tough category, and occasionally 'they missed a good one'. Stuff happens.

Agreed! I place no credence on anyone's medal in a competition. That just means your beer was better than the others. In some competitions, that is not saying much. The only thing that counts to me is the score of a highly ranked BJCP judge or a pro-brewer that is known for producing outstanding beers.

This is not to say that un-ranked or lesser ranked judges can't be good...it may just mean that they haven't had the opportunity to advance their rank...yet! However, I am loath to give any credence to a pro-brewer as a beer judge. As most of you know, there is a huge amount of poor 'craft' beer out there. Its piss-poor brewers that decided that they want to brew for a living, that drag down the craft industry. Learning to recognize beer faults and knowing how to correct them, is a critical factor in a brewer's skill set. Being able to add hot water to grain and get paid for it, does not make you capable of judging beer effectively.

With over 15 years of judging, I too am pretty hard on judging my beers before competition. Having had to taste so many poor beers in competition, I wish more brewers had the skills to decipher their beer's faults prior to entering. But I do have to remind myself that this is also how brewers learn to recognize their beer's faults and add that data point to their skill set. Hopefully, my liver sacrifice goes to someone else's benefit.

Here is to those of you that enter and those that judge...just make sure that you take your results with a grain of salt...in some cases!

[denny]

I'm not saying we get leftovers. Just what I said before-would love hot off the press ingredients just to see if there's something there is all.

And what I'm saying is that's basically what you get from a good LHBS.

[denny]

Making good malt takes practice but I wouldn't term it "very hard".  Making a lager/pilsner/pale malt is relatively easy.  Making a Vienna or Munich malt is a little more complex but nothing to lose sleep over.

The temperature profiles and times for steeping, drying and curing are all contained in "The Textbook of Brewing" Volume 1 and "Malts and Malting".  Not cheap books but well worth the investment.

Growing barley is very easy, but growing up on a farm, I did these things as a kid so perhaps I just have a green thumb.  (I'm not suggesting you try to grow it in your back yard, but it is fun and something the whole family can participate in!)

You'll need some equipment like buckets, a kitchen stove, a dehydrator and also a grain moisture meter (again, not cheap!) but well worth investment.  It will tell you when your done steeping and when to go from drying stage to curing and when to raise the temperature, etc...

I could talk for hours about this stuff but order yourself a bag of unhulled barley from these guys and try it yourself (they normally carry the Conlon variety):

http://www.naturalwaymills.com/products.htm

so you've done it?

[Wort-H.O.G.]

I'm not saying we get leftovers. Just what I said before-would love hot off the press ingredients just to see if there's something there is all.

And what I'm saying is that's basically what you get from a good LHBS.

let me say it a different way- just harvested,processed, kilned, cooled and into my grain bin for brewing right away...that's what I mean I would like to try Denny. just my curiosity.

[denny]

I'm not saying we get leftovers. Just what I said before-would love hot off the press ingredients just to see if there's something there is all.

And what I'm saying is that's basically what you get from a good LHBS.

let me say it a different way- just harvested,processed, kilned, cooled and into my grain bin for brewing right away...that's what I mean I would like to try Denny. just my curiosity.

Got it.