What's Your Brewing Style?

Other: WING IT!!!!

 

Derivative. And I mean that in a good way. I consider recipes for classic styles and recreate them, tweaking something here and and something there, based on curiosity and available ingredients.

 

an approximation to my approach...

recipe 20% of the result

a few basic brewing procedures (sanitation, temperature control, yeast pitching rate and temp, etc), 60% of the result

details of the process, 20% of the result.

You could probably take some off each end and put it in the middle, and still make tasty beer. As for recipes, they are the most fun, but perhaps the least important thing about brewing. Any halfway decent recipe will make tasty beer if all your ducks are in a row. But the greatest recipe ever won't help you if your basics are lacking.

 

I didn't read the complete post before voting. I am an even split. I stress on numbers, temps, volumes, OG, etc. I envision what I want to drink and build it. The recipe is more artistic. The execution is more scientific. I really like to geek out on making equipment, and culturing wild yeast. I am not overly stressed on water (not gonna get the book).

 

Combo of both. My day job is as a biochemist, so I've taken a lot of the quantitative and somewhat obsessive aspects of my career choice into my brewing. I measure everything (pH, temperature, OG, FG) throughout the brewing process and take copious notes, sanitize everything, purge all vessels with Co2 while transferring beers, store hops in mason jars purged with nitrogen, design beers on beersmith (Although I don't pay attention to several parameters such as the BU to GU ratio, etc. as I feel they're outdated and not very useful) and use RO water with mineral additions (Thanks Bru'n water), etc..

However in terms of actually thinking about how ingredients go together in recipes and updating/improving previously brewed beers its all about feel and experience with your ingredients. Learning how ingredients taste, react to different treatments, how they interact as a whole, and thinking about the overall balance of the beer and its desired characteristics is way more important than making sure you hit IBU, FG and OG numbers listed in the style guidelines. Great example of the latter are my milk stouts which have a 95% medaling rate, and actually finish out around 1.040-1.045, starting at around 1.080, not quite style guideline material.

 

more art. Do simple recipes I make up myself, kinda just as inchrisin said, wing it but then that hits me at the other vote. oh well.. gut feeling. I just make sure I get my water amounts, and temp right and they turn out wonderful. I write down everything just for fun. I always know my beer will turn out awesome no matter how much the numbers don't match up perfectly. I love brewing imperfectly. I always make a better beer that way

 

One day, when I have both the space and can afford the equipment that I'd need to key it in, I'll concentrate a bit more on process. But for now, when I'm using two pots for my boil and fermenting in a swamp cooler with a fan pointed at it, I'll just mess around with getting some good base recipes.

 

that's thick! sounds delicious tho. sounds like how thick I WANT my oatmeal stouts to be.

 

Well its evolving that is for sure as one gets more experreince and frankly better gear. I started tweeking more.

mainly its the drinking pat I enjoy, making the beer, not so much. Now saying i made that beer is nice thing, but its just beer.

 

Science FTW!

☼ Risk-adverse...left-brain homebrewer
☼ Operations research approach

- Measure and record just about everything​

- Correlation and regression-based modeling​

- Statistical process control​

- Scatter plots...cross-tabs...conditional formating​

If you have to bring your work home...it might as well be for a good cause.

 

Very science and process focused for beers brewed to style for competitions.

For beers that are not to style, much more relaxed.

 

I think ´A balance of art and science´ is the best option, the problem is I have no talent for art and no brain for science, but I will always keep on homebrewing !!!!!

 

I guess my process is changing pretty quickly since I'm going to brewing school next year, so I've definitely been keeping better notes and focusing on repeatability. At the same time, I don't like to stress too much and lose that creative edge, so I'm pretty prone to tweaking things at the last minute. I also have to have good music to listen to while I brew to keep me inspired!

 

As a working chemist who still dreams of becoming a chef, I've always seen homebrewing as the perfect balance between science and artistic intuition. For recipes, I do extensive background research but I also kinda know what something's going to taste like by just looking at the ingredients. Brewday is very scientific, but once the wort hits the carboy, I sacrifice a black rooster at the crossroads and then leave it in the hands of the Beer Gods.

 

It's more an artistic endeavor for me. That is to say, I'm pretty loose with precision. Mash with about 1.5 qt/lb. Add about .33 ounces of hops at 15 minutes. Pitch at about 68. Or what have you. When it comes to sanitation though, I am thorough. My feeling is that as long as you remove infection possibilities, have some basic process aspects down (ferm temp and pitching quantities) and are using reasonably fresh ingredients, you'll get good beer. Sure, I could button up and hit every step perfectly, but it won't necessarily yield a perfect beer. Worrying about the extra tenths of pints that may end up in the mash or the extra pellet or two in the late additions would decrease my enjoyment of the hobby inversely to the gains that might be won in the finished product.

For recipe creation, however, I'm very specific about seeking out the flavors I desire. Granted, I'm only on my 5th AG batch, but reading a lot helps and at least gets me pointed in the right direction.

 

I like "derivative" submitted by pweis909 above. With a classic in mind (usually UK-driven), we mess with minor parts of it and see what happens. Though for the purposes of the poll I suppose a balance of art and science would be the answer: started as a fine arts major years ago and now a biologist by trade.

Although sometimes I just want to chunk an entire pumpkin pie in something. What does that make me?

 

A misunderstood genius. You won't be truly appreciated until after your death.