Spoiled by Homebrew?

I think I've been spoiled. At the end of the day, more often than not, I find myself looking forward to my own brew and not a commercial brew. I live in a fairly good beer market, most any beer is available and you can by singles, so I don't have to commit to an entire sixer of a mystery beer.

I'd say about ever other week I pick up a sixer of singles for some R&D work, and I'm rarely impressed by them. But I write it off to it being a bigger market, which means there are more so-so and bad beers out there than before. It also means there are more good beers but the top 1% grows much more slowly.

I also have about a dozen new breweries in the area (20 mile radius) and IMO I'd say only about 2 of them produce stellar beers. But that is still better than 6 years ago when there were only 4 in the area and none made a decent beer.

Oh and I have dish pan hands as well. Can anyone recommend a good remedy for dish pan hands? I've been automating my cleaning process as much as I can over the years to avoid that drudgery. I have CIP balls for cleaning most tanks and I've build a keg cleaner for the kegs. The keg cleaner doubles as a bottle washer too, but I only use that feature a few times a year. I have a big commercial multi bay sink with sprayer. I figure if I'm going to spend so much time hunched over a sink I might as well have the proper equipment.

 

is it possible that is changed color due to aging like a heady Topper?

 

I am starting to get spoiled due to the ease of drinking my homebrew. I think it is on par, if not better than, most breweries in LA. BUT you have to go to the breweries to get these beers. the ones at the store that arent a special release arent that good. I used to love Two Hearted and now I wouldnt think about it because my hop forward beers blow it out of the water. they are trying to make a buck and the beers reflect that. I am trying to make the best beer I can and my beers are reflecting that.

 

If I had more time to brew I'd rarely drink commercial beer. The beer I like is expensive and I can come damn close in terms of quality on a fraction of the budget. A few months back I had a few beers on tap and I didn't buy beer for like 6 weeks, that was pretty cool and I'd like to bang out a couple batches in the near future

 

Ha! I use those occasionally. But I'm not very careful with the hose and they end up getting wet inside.

 

The quality of my beer isn't consistent enough yet for me to abandon commercial beer. My best brews are comparable to good commercial examples and better than bad ones, but I still haven't nailed an IPA that can compete with my favorite store bought ones. And I still get batches that are duds - usually drinkable, but definitely disappointing, and I don't always know why. With a bit more experience, I can see myself getting to the point where I consistently make beer that is better than most of the microbrewed stuff you can get on shelves here, but even then I probably won't have time to brew everything that I'd want to drink. Especially if I want to drink a large variety of styles over the course of a week.

But in my defense, the cost of buying beer that I consider better than my homebrew is getting higher. I picked up four bottles at the store the other day and paid about $20. I can make 5 gallons of DIPA for about $50, so the commercial stuff that I actually like is costing me 4x the price per ounce as my homebrew! The one exception is La Fin du Monde, which is so good and so cheap that I might never brew a tripel again.

 

After 5 or 6 years of brewing, I'm still a casual brewer. I know I can make good beer 75% of the time. Great beer and drinkable beer are the other 25% of the time. More great beer than barely drinkable.

I know I need to get into water profile and actually start taking gravity readings again to up my game.

There are certainly still beers out there that I take a sip of and say, "Damn, I wish I could do this." Deschutes Mirror Pond is a good example of a simple recipe that would be very difficult to replicate. A Cascade APA that is among the best I've had. For the price, I typically don't try to replicate 2 Hearted, Fitzgerald, or Mirror Pond, and as @Brew_Betty said, I go back to the dozen beers that I really love. I gladly pay the money to support them and my local booze shed.

 

Looks like you need to use this on the open end of the glove and tape it to your arms?

 

Large hands?
Double-fisted-action?

Too easy.

 

I couldn't agree more! I've definitely been spoiled by homebrew in a good way. While I haven't kept track, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that eight of my top ten favorite beers ever were homebrews. The occasional dog aside, I'm consistently blown away by what I'm tasting at my monthly brew club meetings and at competitions. Freshness is, no doubt, a huge factor, but there are styles that the commercial brewers just have never impressed me with. RIS is a good example. The best commercial RIS I've tasted, while very nice, doesn't even come close to an 'average' homebrewed version of that style, at least in my experience.

Betty, you should make it a habit to get lit before you post. You're actually making sense!

 

Yes. It's finally something we can agree on.

 

I'm most definitely spoiled by homebrew, and have been for quite some time. The local small brewers here aren't really doing anything better or especially noteworthy, and my commercial beer purchases in general (from brewers big or small) are down to less than 5% nowadays.
And I have no regrets about it. It is certainly nice however to have more good beer options these days when dining out or at a bar with friends.

 

As I'm limited to a single one gallon batch a month I can't really afford to be too spoiled by homebrew. That said, I worry more about keeping my ego in check than the day I can no longer palate commercial. My batch to batch variation and inconsistent processes aren't anything to be proud of yet, but it's hard not to get a fat head when you still compare favorably to the big boys.

 

I dont do any sours or barrel aging so those are typically the only beers I look for commercially.

 

Yep, I'm pretty spoiled by homebrew except when it comes to sours. If I can ever make something like Rodenbach I will really be self sufficient.

 

Slightly off topic, but you mentioned Todd the Axeman and come to think of it I've never tried a Surly beer. I've been telling the guy at my local beer store to start getting it but I don't think Surly distributes in Ohio... it's a shame because I've heard good things.