Poll: Which Beer is more difficult to brew?

My vote goes to barrel aged beers. Yes I know this is a huge range of beers, but it is adding another variable to the equation which makes consistency that much harder to achieve. There is also a higher rate of infection due to the nature of the barrels.

 

Barrel Aged. Session beers aren't that hard to brew, it's quite easy to manipulate color and flavor without adding to gravity. That's what specialty malts and hops are for! High gravity is certainly difficult as well, but there's just so many variables with barrel aging.

 

The most difficult beers to brew are American Adjunct Lagers. Since those beers are so light in flavor (some folks would claim they are flavorless) there is nothing to hide the potential for off-flavors that can be produced during the brewing process.

BMC type beers get very little love on BA but they are very difficult beers to brew. You have to give Kudos to AB InBev, MillerCoors and others in their ability to consistently brew AALs.

Cheers!

 

Good way of looking at it (and you probably just changed my vote).

 

Session beers show faults in the finished product whereas a heavy barrel aged beer hides things like diacetyl and other off flavors. If both styles contain the same amount of an "off flavor," it will be greatly exaggerated in the session compared to a heavier beer.

 

They're all equally hard to brew - the techniques don't really change, and the variable of barrel aging isn't difficult, as long as you're again careful about sanitation.
Difficult to brew well? I vote for the session beers, though that really doesn't answer it either. There are session beers ranging from Light lagers and pale ales to Hefeweizen to roasty stouts and porters. IN my opinoin, the hardest to do well are the pale, light beers. As others have said, there is far less there to hide any flaws behind. You can throw lots of hops in there and it can mask all kinds of things, but a light malk bill can allow that stuff to show through.

 

I bet some people are better skilled at different styles and ways of brewing so I say it just depends on the person.

 

light, crisp, clean beer styles are by far the hardest to master. You can't hide your mistakes, whether they be mash temps, water quality, water composition, fermenting issues, or quality control. It is much easier to cover simple (and rather common) problems with heavier gravity beers, especially barrel aged. Something goes wrong the easiest blame is ON the barrel itself. With heavily hopped beers, you can cover up quite a bit with hops itself, just add more or more upfront flavor profiles. Saying that, high gravity and especially barrel aged (and sours for that matter) are a much, much bigger gamble for any brewer. You can mess up a session, find your problem, correct it, and get another batch going and ready to drink within a few weeks. So while they're all "easy" they're also all "hard" on a commercial scale.