[coonmanxdog]

Frankly I consider myself to be more of a chef than anything else. I use technical knowledge but I don't get hung up on it. Knowledge is just one more tool on your way to making that delicious brew. But I try not to overthink it. Hence when I went to the brew shop and the guy tried to convince me to not put Special B in a red ale recipe. So I had to do it. Now that red ale turned out to be more of a golden ale but I made that recipe again and included the Special B. Although I only did use one ounce in a 5 gallon batch. Don't be afraid to experiment because that may just get you that award winning beer.

[HabeasCorpus]

I think it's more universally applicable, in a global sense, than you imagine.

I understand what you're saying - most people stereotype beer as being made with barley, hops, yeast, water and when other ingredients are used they may not associate that with beer.  I agree with that premise, however, it's that stereotype that might limit different avenues of creativity.

[coonmanxdog]

I think it's more universally applicable, in a global sense, than you imagine.

I understand what you're saying - most people stereotype beer as being made with barley, hops, yeast, water and when other ingredients are used they may not associate that with beer.  I agree with that premise, however, it's that stereotype that might limit different avenues of creativity.

And yet someone else's creativity may not be a good thing at all. Kind of like years ago when a certain friend tried to make a weed beer. LOL. Or when I dumped a six pack of Sam Adams Cherry Wheat down the drain because it tasted like cough syrup. My rule is that any beer should rely on a good base recipe and then anything that gets added should only make it better and not worse. Frankly, a 5 IBU Peaches N' Cream Ale is not really beer any more....

People can be plenty creative on their way to making bad beer.

[denny]

Another thing to mention is that there has been quite a bit of "right and wrong" in homebrewing for a lot of years.  Some of this may have been assumed and then passed on like gospel to more and more people.  Recently some people have been looking into some of these things and have determined that many are not true.  The web has made it easier for all of us to communicate but it has also perpetuated a lot of nonsense as well and after some amount of time you begin to know whose information to trust.  There are a lot of smart people out there who research and experiment and share that information with us, thank Jeebus.  There are also a lot of cowboys out there who like to sling information around that may or may not be true.  They may just be trying to 'give back' to the community and not intentionally trying to deceive but it's there either way.  It was just mentioned that sometimes you have to try things out for yourself and I agree 100%.  If it's good, nice work.  If it's bad, either rework it or forget it.  If it comes out REALLY bad, I bet it never happens again! 

 I see a lot of brewers now saying not to do a secondary fementation but I disagree with that. If done right it should introduce no ill effects into the beer at all and should clear it quite a bit. And at that point I like to leave the carboy alone for as long as needed until I keg that batch. Did this last year in an apartment with temps approcahing 80 degrees. The carboy was in the closet for about 3 months time until I finally primed a keg with it and threw the keg in my firend's basement for 2 weeks time. We enjoyed it at my birthday poker party where the buy in is my age. So last year that buy in was $59. Seven people almost drained the entire 5 gallons and I think one person wasn't really drinking on it either.

I'll say don't do a secondary, but ultimately its up to you.  I find no value in it 99% of the time, but it's homebrewing...we all get to make our own decisions about our hobby.

I find quite a bit of value in doing a secondary. For one it allows the beer to settle and clear and then I know that I basically have exactly 5 gallons of beer for my keg. I don't want a bunch of sediment in the keg. And I can store the beer in secondary for a long time until I transfer into the keg. If done correctly I do see a big advantage to transferring to secondary. But it needs to be done as soon as primary has crashed.

And since I can do al that without a secondary, I skip it.  To each their own.

[denny]

I also had to learn for myself how to use DME for priming when bottling. Nobody even mentioned it before I started doing it. I figured out how much to use by comparing the fermentabilty of DME to corn sugar and then doing the math. That came out to using 1 and 1/4 cup per 5 gallon batch.

That info is out there in many places.  I wonder why you had to figure it out yourself? I assume you looked,  so I wonder why it's so hard to find it.

All I ever saw or heard was to use corn sugar. That advice is everywhere. So I had to figure it out on my own and I did. This of course happened many years ago.

Dunno how many years you've been brewing.  I started in 1998.  Priming with DME was all the rage then, and had been for at several years.  It was in Mosher's "Brewer's Companion" (my first book) as well as Papazian's NCJOHB

[raf]

Seems like right-brained brewers would just naturally approach the hobby differently from left-brained brewers. I've learned a lot from both viewpoints. In the end, it's part of what makes this pursuit so great.

[HabeasCorpus]

And yet someone else's creativity may not be a good thing at all. Kind of like years ago when a certain friend tried to make a weed beer. LOL. Or when I dumped a six pack of Sam Adams Cherry Wheat down the drain because it tasted like cough syrup. My rule is that any beer should rely on a good base recipe and then anything that gets added should only make it better and not worse. Frankly, a 5 IBU Peaches N' Cream Ale is not really beer any more....

People can be plenty creative on their way to making bad beer.

Those are your stereotypes for beers you've labeled as bad, yet 1000's of reviews on beer review sites give Cherry Wheat good reviews.  Your stereotype would have cost you in the marketplace as you would not have pursued that beer.

Now if Cherry Wheat is not something you enjoy, then that's personal preference but definitely doesn't make it bad.

[ynotbrusum]

I know that I had developed a bias against extract brews...until at a club meeting a few short years ago, I had a sublime RIS that a club member brought.  I asked him about his recipe and my jaw just dropped when he said it was an all extract and steeping grains brew.  Later I found out that due to mash tun limitations, one of my club's most prolific national award winners added extract to his all grain base, because he didn't have a big enough mash tun to get to the ABV he sought (and taste profile he achieved).  And his RIS is extraordinary.  I don't brew often with extract, but every once in a great while it is fun to do a batch with super fresh extract and see if anyone even questions it....

[Village Taphouse]

Yeah, personal preference and "bad beer" should be separate.  I don't care for most Belgian beers (I'm an exception, I know) but that hardly makes them bad, experimental or overly creative.  We all know people who make creative beers... For the love of man, Denny makes Wee Shroomy!!  I knew a guy who carbed his bottled beers by dissolving Atomic Fireballs in boiling water and using that solution to prime.  That may be more 'resourceful' than creative but I feel like homebrewers are a resourceful and creative bunch.  Homebrewers are tinkerers at heart.  They like to build stuff, they usually like to cook and do other creative things.

[Lazy Ant Brewing]

I think it all depends on your attitude toward the "rules and restrictions."  I view them as guidelines within which to express my creativity in ingredients and recipe design. I don't have the knowledge or inclination to expand the technical boundaries of the chemistry and physics of brewing, but within those parameters anything goes.

In other words, I don't want a beer that "fails" because my sanitation was bad or I had bottles that became grenades because I didn't let the brew ferment long enough or used too much priming sugar, or any of numerous other mistakes that can result in bad beer.  I modify most recipes to suit my particular "tastes" and I am not afraid to try novel (at least for me) ingredients.  Black saison with lots of rye, wild rice brown, etc.  The major reasons I brew are to be able to tailor recipes to my preferences, make an out-of-season beer that liquor stores wouldn't have in stock for months, and to try new combinations. 

If you think it and can drink it after you made it, celebrate!  That is what homebrewing is about.

[coonmanxdog]

I also had to learn for myself how to use DME for priming when bottling. Nobody even mentioned it before I started doing it. I figured out how much to use by comparing the fermentabilty of DME to corn sugar and then doing the math. That came out to using 1 and 1/4 cup per 5 gallon batch.

That info is out there in many places.  I wonder why you had to figure it out yourself? I assume you looked,  so I wonder why it's so hard to find it.

All I ever saw or heard was to use corn sugar. That advice is everywhere. So I had to figure it out on my own and I did. This of course happened many years ago.

Dunno how many years you've been brewing.  I started in 1998.  Priming with DME was all the rage then, and had been for at several years.  It was in Mosher's "Brewer's Companion" (my first book) as well as Papazian's NCJOHB

I have you by a few years. I started in 1987. LOL. I never remember priming with DME being "all the rage". It was always use "3/4 C. of corn sugar". Never had anyone at a homebrew shop mention DME to me. And the only Papazian book I read was his CJOHB...

[coonmanxdog]

I don't like styles. Styles are artificial lines that we draw that say this beer has to be X or this beer has to be Y. Well, what if my beer is neither X nor Y. What if my beer is X/Y + Z? What if I take X, and then add some honey and/or something else to it? This is where the creativity kicks in. And as long as you have a good base of basic brewing knowledge then the beer will most likely be good. It might not always be exactly the way you pictured it turning out but that is how we learn, by doing.

[BrewBama]

I don't like styles. Styles are artificial lines that we draw that say this beer has to be X or this beer has to be Y. Well, what if my beer is neither X nor Y. What if my beer is X/Y + Z? What if I take X, and then add some honey and/or something else to it? This is where the creativity kicks in. And as long as you have a good base of basic brewing knowledge then the beer will most likely be good. It might not always be exactly the way you pictured it turning out but that is how we learn, by doing.

The guidelines are simply a common language the judges and contestants learn to communicate an example entered. They’re a way to compartmentalize beer into categories and a set of rules that a judge can use to knock off points for a contestant’s beer in a competition. You end up with the least worst beer as the winner of the competition. It might not be the best beer on the table but it fits the guidelines best.

However, some brewers use them as strict lines never to be crossed and if a beer falls outside those lines they cannot be labeled that style of beer. I mean as long as we’re not saying a Stout is a Helles and as long as we’re not entering a competition who cares. Close enough is good enough.

The little dots in my brewing software rarely all end up within the range fan of the style I’ve selected to place my beer in. In nearly all my beers at least one of those dots is left or right of the limit — just a point or two higher in OG or .1 or .2 too dark.  ...but you have to put something down so I select the best I can get and still be reasonably close to style. A recipe perfect for my taste might not be a recipe that does well in competition. C'est la vie.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[tommymorris]

I like classic styles. I often get turned off in the beer store by the wild creativity when I am just looking for a good lager or pale ale.

[coonmanxdog]

And yet someone else's creativity may not be a good thing at all. Kind of like years ago when a certain friend tried to make a weed beer. LOL. Or when I dumped a six pack of Sam Adams Cherry Wheat down the drain because it tasted like cough syrup. My rule is that any beer should rely on a good base recipe and then anything that gets added should only make it better and not worse. Frankly, a 5 IBU Peaches N' Cream Ale is not really beer any more....

People can be plenty creative on their way to making bad beer.

Those are your stereotypes for beers you've labeled as bad, yet 1000's of reviews on beer review sites give Cherry Wheat good reviews.  Your stereotype would have cost you in the marketplace as you would not have pursued that beer.

Now if Cherry Wheat is not something you enjoy, then that's personal preference but definitely doesn't make it bad.

LOL. Well, there are apparently many people who have bad taste in beer. I wouldn't even call that crap "beer". It was more like cough syrup.

Also I am not in the "marketplace" at this point in time. I make good beer and that is verified by a lot of people who have very different tastes in beer. I don't do IPAs at all but my beers are lapped up by those who enjoy IPAs. I even have women drinking my beer. Even people who say they don't like beer enjoy what I brew. I have a pretty good palate. Maybe you should buy some of that swill and report back....

That beer was also the exact opposite of what I would consider a good fruit beer. In fact many years ago New Belgium made a beer that they called "Old Cherry Ale". It was a dark ale with a cherry flavor in the background. Absolutely wonderful but they discontinued it and I was sad. From that point on I realized that any good fruit beer had to be a good beer first that could stand on its own and then the fruit should come in as a balanced background flavor. The Sam Adams Cherry Wheat was not that at all. It was cherry first and beer second. I have experimented with Blueberry, Raspberry, Blackberry, Strawberry, Apricot and Mango.... Some were better than others but all were better than the Sam Adams. People buy wine coolers for a reason and I suspect that anyone who gave that Sam Adams a thumbs up was from the wine cooler crowd....

This year I have brewed an Apricot Honey Ale (came out really good), a Mango Honey Ale (a bit subdued on the mango flavor but delicious nonetheless) and now I have 5 gallons of Strawberry ESB in secondary in the closet. Can't wait to get the Strawberry ESB into the keg, prime it and tap it off....

Sorry but you won't convince me that the Sam Adams Cherry Wheat was anything but bad.