I took my lunch time today and just browsed through the malts available at NB. There are so many! It’s like I want to brew with all of them but I just don’t even have the time and money to brew that much. I want to try so many malts, and then there are so many hops, and yeasts! It’s like I entered this hobby a year ago and it looks like I don’t have any hope of coming close to exhausting all of the options for creating new and interesting flavors.
I do have to say though, I made a rye ale recently and offered one to a friend yesterday. We had just finished drinking a Stone IPA, and he tasted my rye ale and said “Dude, you should be selling this. I would take this over a Stone IPA any day”. Really made my day.
I know the feeling! I have 5 samples from cascadecandisyrup.com to test! Fortunately, I was also just sent a Picobrew Zymatic to test so I’ll be using that to crank out test batches for the syrup.
Well now Denny, that’s when you know you’ve made it! When people are sending you stuff for your opinion and you get to have fun with what you were sent, that’s just the ultimate.
Funny, I was in the opposite boat from the OP. When I moved to Finland, I suddenly had very limited selection and I had to learn to brew good beer using just the small variety of ingredients I could source. It was actually very good for me, and I realized that the best beer is generally very simple recipe wise - perfecting the process is what leads to great beer. But I am glad things have changed here and I now can get more stuff. There are some beers that you just can’t get right without that one particular malt or hop.
