PistolPatch
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EDIT: The idea below is not as great as I thought at time of writing 
I didn't realise that so many guys could knock out 2 brews so quickly on their traditional set-ups. Oh well.]
This post will be a long one so If you like my long posts then grab a beer. If not, get out now
Speeding Up the Brewing Learning Curve
Those who have been AG brewing for a while know that...
1. Some beers can be very hard to repeat week to week. Others are easy.
2. We sometimes make impulsive decisions. Being human, we may make a slight change to our brewing process and depending on the resulting beer often decide just on those two brews (often done days or weeks apart) that this one change was either good or not good. When we stop and think we know that this is not a great idea given 1. above.
3. There is a wealth of conflicting advice on the best ways to brew. This is often due to either 2. above or someone reading an article or hearing 'just one sentence' from an authority and taking it as gospel. Often it is out of context and often the myth is gladly perpetuated by others for a variety of human but not scientific reasons. Sometimes the 'authorities,' like economists, totally disagree. For brewers, especially new ones, it is very hard to work out who talks sense and, if they do make sense, at what 'level' they are talking to. (One example is the use of dried versus liquid yeasts. Personally I think a beginner should not even consider using liquid yeasts for quite some time. I've got 12 in my fridge and haven't used them yet as there are so many other things to explore first!)
4. Everyone has different set-ups and so a beer on my system may not give the same results as on your system.
5. Many things are obvious improvements but some are not so obvious mainly due to bad advice. I'll use an extreme example here. We allknow that the makers of kits (an 'authority') say you can brew your beers at 25 degrees. Those of us who have been here a little while know that this is not necessarily true and 18-20 degrees will give you a better beer. This constant incorrect advice flows through the chain. I'm sure that I have given bad advice on occassion here but I do take the time to try and correct it later should I discover it's false. Most people, of course, do not have the time to do this.
Given all the above, I think that the ideal for all brewers to be able to come up with their own answers, would be to brew variations of the same beer simultaneously. Just imagine what you could do if you had an exact duplicate of your own brewery...
Imagine if you could brew 23 litres on the left hand brewery and 23 on the right with either a major or subtle change between the two. It means that you could taste a week or a month later, two beers 'born' on the same day with the same procedure and ingredients.
Brad_G and I did it one day with two brews. We BIABed one and batch-sparged the other and came up with two pretty identical beers. (For the nit-pickers out there, only one of many experienced brewers could taste a difference and this was a very subtle difference.) May people said it couldn't be done as they had read one article on a trial in Adelaide and mis-interpreted it (see 3. above.)
Being able to use the same thermometers, add water to acheive the same pre-boil and final gravity, ferment at the same temps and then being able to taste the beers, in triangular testing, was a treat for both of us - a great experience.
Personally, I think that there are a lot of things in brewing that you can only teach yourself as even 'authorities' make errors. In fact, come to think of it, how much documentation is out there on side by side brewing? How many 'authorities' quote results from a simultaneous brew? SFA. I think there is way too much subjective information out there or information that makes such a small difference to most people's brews that it is not worth considering.
The best way of teaching yourself that I can see is being able to side-by-side or 'simultaneous brew' on your own. That way you have total control over the whole brewing process and the variation/s you wish to trial. No one that I know of does this.
How to Side-By-Side or Simultaneous Brew Using a Traditional Brewery.
Hopefully you agree with me that simultaneous brewing has tremendous benefits the least being that you can also brew a double-batch!
For a start, when I say side-by-side or simultaneous brews I think we can give ourselves a lee-way of a few hours. We don't have to mash, boil and chill at exactly the same time for most of the tests that any of us would like to do. Far more important to fill your MLT/s with the same water and use the same thermometer. Brewing within a day I think is good enough in most cases but for traditional brewers, this is going to take a lot of time.
Here's the good bit for a lot of traditional brewers but not all unfortunately.
A lot of traditional brewers already have two kettles and two burners. One kettle usually acts as an HLT but why not use this as a kettle? Hopefully the kettles are of similiar size and shape but even if not, the test that Brad and I did prove that these issues are not as large as they are made out to be.
The above tests and experience shows that batch-sparging and brewing in a bag (BIAB) produce virtually identical results. I thin this opens up a huge world of possibility for traditional brewers who have the above equipment. Just add either one bag or two BIAB bags and you now have two breweries! Alternatively, you could do some 'full-volume' mashing (which once again seems to produce equivalent results to batch-sparging) in your esky, split the wort and off you go! (This would be alittle more inaccurate but good enough for a lot of testing.)
I better go and add some more hops to my beer but I hope that the above might trigger some thoughts and possibilities for better brewing.
Someone criticised BIAB this morning in an uninformed and illogical manner. We talk about a heap of interesting stuff in the BIAB thread. We don't talk illogically (for long) and a lot of questions get answered that are relveant to all AG'ers no matter whether they BIAB, batch or fly. It's a really good thread, very constructive, very educational and rarely sees negativity.
Rarely does anyone talk about BIAB outside of that thread. I do from time to time, like now but I think given the huge advantages for not only new AG'ers but the possibilities that full-volume mashing can give to traditional brewers, then we should all be talking about brewing in a bag a lot more.
My pet hate is seeing guys post here saying they have their kettle and are saving up for a mash tun and HLT. If those guys were advised correctly, they could be brewing beautifully tomorrow.
Spot ya.
Pat
I didn't realise that so many guys could knock out 2 brews so quickly on their traditional set-ups. Oh well.]This post will be a long one so If you like my long posts then grab a beer. If not, get out now
Speeding Up the Brewing Learning Curve
Those who have been AG brewing for a while know that...
1. Some beers can be very hard to repeat week to week. Others are easy.
2. We sometimes make impulsive decisions. Being human, we may make a slight change to our brewing process and depending on the resulting beer often decide just on those two brews (often done days or weeks apart) that this one change was either good or not good. When we stop and think we know that this is not a great idea given 1. above.
3. There is a wealth of conflicting advice on the best ways to brew. This is often due to either 2. above or someone reading an article or hearing 'just one sentence' from an authority and taking it as gospel. Often it is out of context and often the myth is gladly perpetuated by others for a variety of human but not scientific reasons. Sometimes the 'authorities,' like economists, totally disagree. For brewers, especially new ones, it is very hard to work out who talks sense and, if they do make sense, at what 'level' they are talking to. (One example is the use of dried versus liquid yeasts. Personally I think a beginner should not even consider using liquid yeasts for quite some time. I've got 12 in my fridge and haven't used them yet as there are so many other things to explore first!)
4. Everyone has different set-ups and so a beer on my system may not give the same results as on your system.
5. Many things are obvious improvements but some are not so obvious mainly due to bad advice. I'll use an extreme example here. We allknow that the makers of kits (an 'authority') say you can brew your beers at 25 degrees. Those of us who have been here a little while know that this is not necessarily true and 18-20 degrees will give you a better beer. This constant incorrect advice flows through the chain. I'm sure that I have given bad advice on occassion here but I do take the time to try and correct it later should I discover it's false. Most people, of course, do not have the time to do this.
Given all the above, I think that the ideal for all brewers to be able to come up with their own answers, would be to brew variations of the same beer simultaneously. Just imagine what you could do if you had an exact duplicate of your own brewery...
Imagine if you could brew 23 litres on the left hand brewery and 23 on the right with either a major or subtle change between the two. It means that you could taste a week or a month later, two beers 'born' on the same day with the same procedure and ingredients.
Brad_G and I did it one day with two brews. We BIABed one and batch-sparged the other and came up with two pretty identical beers. (For the nit-pickers out there, only one of many experienced brewers could taste a difference and this was a very subtle difference.) May people said it couldn't be done as they had read one article on a trial in Adelaide and mis-interpreted it (see 3. above.)
Being able to use the same thermometers, add water to acheive the same pre-boil and final gravity, ferment at the same temps and then being able to taste the beers, in triangular testing, was a treat for both of us - a great experience.
Personally, I think that there are a lot of things in brewing that you can only teach yourself as even 'authorities' make errors. In fact, come to think of it, how much documentation is out there on side by side brewing? How many 'authorities' quote results from a simultaneous brew? SFA. I think there is way too much subjective information out there or information that makes such a small difference to most people's brews that it is not worth considering.
The best way of teaching yourself that I can see is being able to side-by-side or 'simultaneous brew' on your own. That way you have total control over the whole brewing process and the variation/s you wish to trial. No one that I know of does this.
How to Side-By-Side or Simultaneous Brew Using a Traditional Brewery.
Hopefully you agree with me that simultaneous brewing has tremendous benefits the least being that you can also brew a double-batch!
For a start, when I say side-by-side or simultaneous brews I think we can give ourselves a lee-way of a few hours. We don't have to mash, boil and chill at exactly the same time for most of the tests that any of us would like to do. Far more important to fill your MLT/s with the same water and use the same thermometer. Brewing within a day I think is good enough in most cases but for traditional brewers, this is going to take a lot of time.
Here's the good bit for a lot of traditional brewers but not all unfortunately.
A lot of traditional brewers already have two kettles and two burners. One kettle usually acts as an HLT but why not use this as a kettle? Hopefully the kettles are of similiar size and shape but even if not, the test that Brad and I did prove that these issues are not as large as they are made out to be.
The above tests and experience shows that batch-sparging and brewing in a bag (BIAB) produce virtually identical results. I thin this opens up a huge world of possibility for traditional brewers who have the above equipment. Just add either one bag or two BIAB bags and you now have two breweries! Alternatively, you could do some 'full-volume' mashing (which once again seems to produce equivalent results to batch-sparging) in your esky, split the wort and off you go! (This would be alittle more inaccurate but good enough for a lot of testing.)
I better go and add some more hops to my beer but I hope that the above might trigger some thoughts and possibilities for better brewing.
Someone criticised BIAB this morning in an uninformed and illogical manner. We talk about a heap of interesting stuff in the BIAB thread. We don't talk illogically (for long) and a lot of questions get answered that are relveant to all AG'ers no matter whether they BIAB, batch or fly. It's a really good thread, very constructive, very educational and rarely sees negativity.
Rarely does anyone talk about BIAB outside of that thread. I do from time to time, like now but I think given the huge advantages for not only new AG'ers but the possibilities that full-volume mashing can give to traditional brewers, then we should all be talking about brewing in a bag a lot more.
My pet hate is seeing guys post here saying they have their kettle and are saving up for a mash tun and HLT. If those guys were advised correctly, they could be brewing beautifully tomorrow.
Spot ya.
Pat
