Controversial Homebrewing Opinions

Anything below 5% abv is just silly. Lol

Come at me, bruh

 

https://media.giphy.com/media/iSxPmDWr97248/giphy.gif

Sorry, not 100% on how to work the interwebs.

 

I always want to just have a 3.5% beer around to drink, but my reptile brain and the economics of time spent brewing keeps me from doing it.

If I could actually buy a 3.5% beer that I liked that cost less than a 6% beer, I'd be stocking it. I understand that the cost of a beer is more than just the cost of ingredients, but come on.

 

I've gone as low as 3.8% and generally have an aversion to brewing anything below 4%. I routinely have beers that are about 4.5% on tap.

3.5% sounds nice but I'm in the same boat as you with this one.

 

The unfortunate thing about time is that it doesn't scale until you get really big, and the big craft brewers know where the money is at.

 

Removing labels from bottles is a waste of time.

 

Above where you compose your post click the "Image" icon and paste the link you originally put in your post.

 

My main controversial opinion is that the ideal target for a room temperature measured mash pH is 5.55-5.6. But to play this game one must also do a second acidification whereby to hit 5.1-5.2 wort pH (midpoint target 5.15, also room temperature measured) either just pre boil or about 2/3 of the way into the boil (based upon a sample drawn pre boil).

PS: Once the wort is at 5.1-5.2 pH it will not likely fall any further in pH across the boil.

 

My opinion: many details we worry about probably are not as important as we think; most homebrews are good enough regardless of hitting your numbers, getting the perfect ingredients for that clone,etc.

 

Permit me to suggest that expectations play a significant role here.

I will use an example brewer here to further discuss. My niece’s Father in Law is a homebrewer but he is not driven to increase his attention to detail. I have had a number (a dozen?) of the beers he has brewed and some of those beers were good, some were not so good (astringency is often an issue) and few were simply not good. While he will ask me what I think of the beers he seems to be OK with the beers he brews with no strong motivations to improve. I have on a few occasion suggested that paying heed to mash pH would be a good idea, that the shit ton of the various grains he has have a shelf life, etc. He just gives me an annoyed look.

We are all the head brewers of our homebreweries and we all get to choose what level of ‘concern’ we have as part of our homebrewing practice. As long as a homebrewer is satisfied with the quality of the beer they are brewing then “Life is Good”. But…

Cheers!

 

I also admit I don’t take gravity readings anymore on my system. I generally pitch my yeast on the higher end (75-80F) and never had an issue with off flavors. NEIPAs are a waste of hops (although I still brew them for my wife on occasion because she loves them), but losing 1.5 gal of beer due to hop sludge and a clogged dip tube is not worth it IMO.

I’ve stopped heating up my sparge water completely. I use room temperature water, stir it into the mash, recirculate a bit, and begin collecting into the kettle. Haven’t had any issues with flavor or efficiency whatsoever, and it’s been a huge time saver.

I don’t think oats add anything to beer, but I still thrown them into 90% of my beers for ‘good measure’.

There needs to be some sort of thread on BA as far as how to post photos. Maybe there is and I just don’t know it? Are there any good free sites out there that you all use to store/share your photos? Photo bucket is terrible and I don’t think my imgur posts are showing up.

 

I submit that extract CAN make great beer - there are a few pro, commercial breweries that use it.
However, it seems to be a bit more temperamental than all-grain, and using "advanced" boil and fermentation protocals can get rid of most of the issues that beginners have with it - the 1.020 stall, excess darkening, oxidation etc.

I absolutely agree. I don't bother taking the labels off. i'll half-heartedly rub at them when cleaning, and after a few uses, they'll usually come off, but I don't obsess about it. I keep the homebrew in certain boxes, and I mark the caps with what's inside (usually...) I've never had an issues mistaking a commercial for a homebrew, though I've occasionally opened one homebrew expecting a different batch. Nothing to do with the label though.

I don't worry about hitting my OG and FG on the mark, as long as I'm in the ballpark. I punch in the numbers on the website to get an approximate - I don't take those as gospel.
I'll re-enter the actual numbers later to get the actual specs, especially the ABV. I've also made a few supposed clones, but if I'm getting the recipe from online or a magazine, I have to substitute sometimes, and I often like my results better than the original.

 

Your examples sound like they are major flaws, and I definitely didn't mean to come across as saying beer can't be messed up. I simply believe that we often worry about things that are not going to have an impact. Because expectations are individualistic, I will leave it individuals to figure out what matters to them if they care to. I have dipped my toe in the Brulosophy Kool Aid, and it still didn't taste like feet.

 

1) There is little to no difference between 90% of the various lager yeast strains on the market.

2) Injecting pure O2 into lower gravity ales is a waste of time.

 

My big one is basically that we probably know a lot less about brewing than we think we do. The interaction of process and ingredients in a beer and their impact on the way that we perceive it seems incredibly complicated, even someone who brews good beer doesn't necessarily know which parts of their process and recipes matter and which don't, and any sort of description of sensory characteristics is incredibly loose and subjective and prone to suggestion, but so much our folk-wisdom as homebrewers is built on assuming that a thing is important because someone who brews good beer said it is, or on treating descriptions of sensory characteristics as gospel and as telling us a simple truth about a given process or ingredient. None of this seems entirely convincing to me.

FWIW, I don't take the Brulosophy Exbeeriments as being gospel, but I do think that if they make us think twice about some of the stuff that we've always believed without really testing it then there's a lot of value in that.

 

I've seen threads claiming that Lallemand Munich Classic is 3068. (I've never used the dry, so I have no opinion one way or the other.)

 

On the yeast family chart at the suregork website "Munich" is a related to WY3068:

http://beer.suregork.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Brewing_yeast_tree_Oct_2019.pdf

Cheers!