Artist or technician?

I don't brew right now. But I only had about 30 batches under my belt when I stopped. I never got to the point where I felt like I was coloring too much out side the lines when I did experiment....

 

Both. IMHO a good brewer should strive to balance creativity and science. I do enjoy being artistic though. ;-)

Ps- I voted artistic.

Cheers!

 

Definitely both. Probably a 60/40 split towards the artistic side.

 

Hah-hah! Both-that's what I love about brewing. Walking the line between science and art.

 

Both. Maybe a little more Technical than Artistic, but very artistic as well. I like to play around and say screw the BJCP, this sounds good, but I also like to nail styles and numbers. I really try to hit OG spot on, even if I miss the volume a bit (still learning my new kettles), and I want to be w/in a few points of the FG. ButiI am kind of a control freak. And I am also a creative dreamer. When I draw, I love to imagine, but then have to get it right, kinda sucks actually.

 

I'm closer to the artist side. I saw this blog when I first started brewing and thought it was amusing.

http://www.jaysbrewing.com/2011/12/06/5-brewing-personalities/

 

Lazy technician.

 

BJCP style guidelines exist purely for competitions. They are not accurate or authoritative statements regarding what does or does not constitute a particular style.Unless you are entering one of their competitions it's best to ignore them.

 

What guidelines do you follow, just curious? If there is something better out there, I'd like to know.

 

Technician.

 

If only you could.

 

Styles are a recent concept and attempt to place some sort of regimentation on what was almost a free for all.It all began with names , brewers loosely describing their beers in such a way as to distinguish them.Often the same beer was called different things; Guinness could have been labelled as Porter or as Stout, Scotch Ale was labelled strong Ale in Scotland, Pale Ale, IPA and Bitter were basically three words for the same brews.The names remained but the beers they represented evolved.
Two examples ; IPA was originally a below average strength brew, highly attenuated (dry as sand), highly hopped but matured over months, probably Brett infected.It changed throughout the 19th century, domestic versions were introduced and by the 20th century was just another word for bitter.Now look at what people understand by IPA.
Mild was before WW1 brewed exclusively from pale malt, strong and fairly well hopped.It's now regarded as generally weak, dark and modestly hopped.
In other words, you can't firmly pin down a style as things keep on changing.What is a true IPA or Mild? And if you write down a definition, within a pretty short interval you'll need to revise it.Tastes change, styles evolve,new varieties of ingredients become available.
Worse still is when guidelines go into great detail because the more you restrict things the more examples don't fit.And the greater the scope for errors. Look at all the threads which argue about whether brew XXX is an APA or an IPA. Or a Stout or a Porter.
The Educational Director of the BJCP , Kristen England, posted this a while back;
"The BJCP is not in the market of getting into battles with people or organizations. The guidelines are for our own purposes and not meant to be the end all of anything or for any other purpose than our own. There are a lot of people out there that are abusing the guidelines in that they try to use them to tell people what 'styles' are supposed to be like/ have been like.

They try to use them as an arguing point. Some of the styles in the BJCP are a combination of a few different styles. Our nomenclature is not meant to be used to tell other people or other countries of what their beers are supposed to be like."

 

In other words, it's useless to use any style names. Or if that's not what you are saying, can you answer FeDUBBELFIST's question?

 

I didn't say that at all. Just that to try to tie down a style isn't cut and dried.Is it an Old Ale or a Barleywine? A Stout or a Porter? It doesn't really matter which because either in each case portrays the sort of beer to expect.People try to dig too deeply , beer doesn't fit into a neat set of boxes but along a spectrum ( or a set of spectra) where opinion plays a part in deciding what name to use.
I just don't think that anything other than a loose set of styles will work particularly well or else there will be interminable discussion and argument about what is precisely what.

 

So it's okay to use style names, but just don't assign attributes to those styles?

 

We do this all the time. When we say somebody is "tall" for example.
I'm just off to the pub. They will sell an IPA which has been brewed for decades. It's 3.6% ABV and under 30 IBU. Does it bother me that it doesn't fit in with most style guidelines? No, it was around long before that were written.

 

You may say that 'somebody' is tall. But would you go so far as to say that women from Zimbabwe are generally tall?

So how do you distinguish between that 3.6% IPA and a Bitter? Put another way, if you took a visitor to that pub and he asked you to recommend a good bitter, would you bypass the IPA you described because the brewer doesn't call it a bitter? Or if he asked you to recommend a good IPA, would you recommend that one, without warning him?

 

There is often discussion and argument about what a beer is when it's being judged in competition. That's part of the fun. The guidelines are a loose set, that's why they are called 'guidelines'. It's just a convenient notation; that doesn't mean someone else's notation is better or worse. Some seem to think otherwise though. The bottom line is that whether or not it hits all the numbers, it (hopefully) has to be good beer to take a ribbon.

Back to the original topic, 'both' is the obvious answer. It pays to be a technician until a certain level of proficiency is reached, then turn the artist loose.