I think we can brew as good or better beer than commercial brewers. It’s a matter of having your process down, having fresh ingredients, and having good sanitation with controlled fermentation temperatures.
I’m feeling like I’m brewing good beer right now, but my palate is messed up or something, beer in general just isn’t tasting that good to me right now. It’s weird. I think I need a break from drinking.
I know what you mean.
Even though I don’t drink an awful lot, I do feel sometimes that my palate just gets a bit tired and even the best beers can miss the mark for me. Over the years I’ve taken quite a few “breaks” from drinking beer and will enjoy a glass or two of a full bodied red wine instead…or I might go weeks and a few cases, months without drinking any alcohol at all.
I will say this though…after that ‘break’ period and the palate reset that results from it, the first celebratory pout of beer is pretty damned satisfying.
I’d have to say that I’ve found the opposite. The recipe is the easy part…the process is where it gets tricky.[/quote]
Huh? Maybe I just suck at recipes. Or maybe you are just really good, Denny 
Let’s take your RyePA for example, people love it for a reason. There are hundreds or thousands of other RyePA’s out there, many being brewed by capable brewers, but your’s is one of the best because the recipe is great, not because the process is well executed. Of course, if the process is poorly executed, no recipe will turn out well.
I’d have to say that I’ve found the opposite. The recipe is the easy part…the process is where it gets tricky.[/quote]
Huh? Maybe I just suck at recipes. Or maybe you are just really good, Denny
Let’s take your RyePA for example, people love it for a reason. There are hundreds or thousands of other RyePA’s out there, many being brewed by capable brewers, but your’s is one of the best because the recipe is great, not because the process is well executed. Of course, if the process is poorly executed, no recipe will turn out well.[/quote]
but you take 12 differen ryepa’s made by 12 different people and you are probably going to have 12 different beers.
I know what you mean.
Even though I don’t drink an awful lot, I do feel sometimes that my palate just gets a bit tired and even the best beers can miss the mark for me. Over the years I’ve taken quite a few “breaks” from drinking beer and will enjoy a glass or two of a full bodied red wine instead…or I might go weeks and a few cases, months without drinking any alcohol at all.
I will say this though…after that ‘break’ period and the palate reset that results from it, the first celebratory pout of beer is pretty damned satisfying.[/quote]
It sucks! It may just be hoppy beers too. Sucks because both the beers I have on tap are hoppy and they’re just tasting off. I think I may take this opportunity to brew more lagers. Having some Octoberfests, dunkels, schwarzbiers, german lagers on tap sounds kind of nice; a nice change from the typical American ales I usually brew.
When I brew, I don’t brew to out do a commercial representation of that style. I brew to my taste buds. For that reason, I do feel my beers are better because I brew to what I am specifically looking for. My tastes change so I tweak my recipes to suit my thirst.
Just like everyone that has brewed more than “a few” batches I have had some that I wouldn’t say were incredible but still mine and quite good. On the other hand I have had some batches that were FANTASTIC to my tastebuds and if it were made commercially I would seek it out and purchase it.
I find the fun challenge in going for that consistency of making that same fantastic batch again. That is not always that easy.
Brew On
VK
I’d have to say that I’ve found the opposite. The recipe is the easy part…the process is where it gets tricky.[/quote]
Huh? Maybe I just suck at recipes. Or maybe you are just really good, Denny
Let’s take your RyePA for example, people love it for a reason. There are hundreds or thousands of other RyePA’s out there, many being brewed by capable brewers, but your’s is one of the best because the recipe is great, not because the process is well executed. Of course, if the process is poorly executed, no recipe will turn out well.[/quote]
I’m with Denny on this one. It is true that you can’t brew a great beer with a lousy recipe, but you can’t brew a great beer with a lousy process either. The difference is that it is much more difficult to get your process under control than it is to find a great recipe.
absolutely! most of my beers I enjoy much more than any beer I can buy a local brewery
Great question by the OP.
+1 Same here. I like my beers (and so do my family and friends) much more than anything I buy.
Paul
Not many people go through the recipe development process I do. I brewed between 10-15 test batches to get that recipe to where it is. If more people did that, maybe things would be different (watch for my recipe formulation article in the May/June) Zymurgy. At the NHC in Orlando 6 years ago, I tasted maybe 6-8 versions of my Rye IPA recipe…not a single one of them tasted like mine (or like each other), despite the fact that everybody used the same recipe.
I’m often disappointed with commercial beers. Bums me out when I realize I just spent $16 for 12 beers and I’d rather be drinking my homebrew.
:cheers:
Love the post. As with most things, I tend to avoid absolutes. Even after doing this for the better part of nine years and somewhat knowing what the hell I’m doing there are still soooo many things I’m clueless on. And as such, there are many commercial brew styles that would kick the ass of my home brew. And I mean kick it out the door and keep on kickin it down the street.
But I digress. There are other styles where I feel I can add more creative ingredients and more patience to the process and end up with a better beer. I’ve made some wild brews just having fun, experimenting, and adding to the process (aging on oak, adding adjuncts, etc). There are still others that I simply haven’t found in the states. Take the bavarian weiss. So hard to find a US commercial brew that comes close to the real thing – and any imports have been double pasteurized and are both expensive and unpredictable.
I’ll say it is pretty easy to beat the commercial beers. I brewed the NB Dry Irish Stout last summer, didn’t worry too much about temperature etc and generally liked it. Friends who were stout lovers really liked it too. I took a bottle to a St. Patty’s party and someone brought a few bottles of Guinness. So a perfect chance to try them side-by-side. Homebrew won by a safe margin. The homebrew and the bottled Guinness tasted very similar, but the Guinness tasted watery and thin. They both had the same roasted/coffee flavor. Homebrew was slightly more bitter and had just a little more body to it.
And the NB Dry Irish Stout kit is one of the easiest ones in the catalog!
[quote=“twdjr1”]
And the NB Dry Irish Stout kit is one of the easiest ones in the catalog![/quote]
I’m going to have to try one of those. I have a Guinness Extra Stout clone that I bottled yesterday. Good chance to compare side by side.
Paul
I apologize for not reading this whole thing… too long. If it hasn’t been mentioned, I’ll say this: Your beers are fresher than some commercial beers. Your beers have been brewed with your tastebuds in mind. You do not have budgetary constraints that have to be striped across hundreds of gallons of beer which means your beer could be of higher quality but in less quantity. You can absolutely make beer that is better than commercial beer and you do not have to have the world’s most advanced gear either. I am very happy with the beer I’m churning out and I almost never buy commercial beer. I can hardly keep up with new breweries that pop up because I don’t pay attention. My brewing system is extremely simple. 10 gallon cooler with SS braid, vanilla 10-gallon brewpot with no spigot, sightglass, etc. Everything about my brewery is very basic and low-end. Some styles will be easier to make than others and I agree that if you found yourself at a German Biergarten drinking very fresh beer, you’d have a run for your money. But we have access to an unbelievable array of ingredients and even more important… a huge amount of information that has been assembled by experienced brewers. I put something to this effect on my site at the bottom of THIS
page. Cheers.
I started making lagers for the reason that I wanted to fine tune my process and get the set up dialed in. Making the same beers over and over helped greatly in that respect. Trying a triple decoction for something different is the hobby part. The fact that I always have craft brews taking up space in my refrigerators (because my friends feel obliged to bring something over once in a while to compensate for the homebrew they are drinking at my house) and I can’t keep up with the demand of my friends with respect to the homebrews on tap, tends to make me feel that there is something more to the homebrews than the craft beers that folks are depositing with me. Thanks to homebrewers who have honed their craft to a point that they are universally recognized, the recipe part is pretty easy to find (Just look up Denny’s recipes for award winning beers, Ken Lenard’s website for excellent beers, and Jamil’s Brewng Classic Styles book for the baseline standards for a particular style, not to mention Ninkasi level recipes).
There are no guarantees and every time I put a keg on the CO2, I anxiously await the outcome. Most of the time it is very rewarding and when it is not, I try to review the process and the recipe for what I can improve next time.
As I tell my friend who started me on this trip, “There is no better hobby in the world; my only regret is not getting into it sooner in my life!”
:cheers:
I like beer… check that… I love beer! My story is I quit smoking a few years ago and had a fair amont of extra spending money. I could now buy better beer than the yellow mellow P— water. But good stuff is 30 to 40 a case or more! Started with Mr. Beer and discovered I can make decent beer. Everyone liked Mr. Beer beer. Mr. Beer allows you to learn the basics and move up. Great learning and tasting tool. My neighbor started with a beer kit and now is all grain and wine. A co-worker has just started brewing after tasting a few samples. Bottom line is a home brewer can make great beer at much lower cost. I love IPA’s and bitters and mine don’t taste like commercial beers. I don’t want to make a clone. Mine are better. Even a Witbier I make has the orange slice built in. I give this one away and evryone says it has more flavor and body than the 35 a case stuff. I love my beer beacause each one is different. So many beers… so little time. Gotta go and grab another cold one.
40 bucks a case for a wit? :shock:
