Help Me Write A Thesis On Beer: Tell Me About Your Ingredients

[christmas]

I think someone else wrote this for you or it came straight from a book or internet

And I'm starting to think that with the idiocy this topic is invoking, Jim would have been better off studying crochet.

 

[brettprevans]

.......

your such a douche. you have no understanding of just about anything i posted or the reason why some of us make the posts we do (or the big sig line that says suggests i make a majority of my posts on a phone and there are spelling mistakes). if you dont like what i post add me to your ignore posts list and move on.

Thanks for the answers so far everyone.

Citymorgue, I'd love to hear your input, so let me clear up the nature of the research. Consider this question just one element of the 'fieldwork' I am conducting for a thesis in cultural anthropology. The data I'm collecting covers quite a number of areas, and is not strictly limited to the technical or gastronomic side of the brewing process which may be available in the range of 'how-to' literature. I've been careful in trying to avoid coaxing answers out of the community -hence the vagueness of the question and perhaps the confusion.

As for your question regarding the ethics of this research, there are no substantive ethical guidelines for online ethnographic research. The nature of many online communities -this forum in particular- is that information is knowingly made available to the public by its contributors, and that these contributors remain anonymous. It's a bit of an ethical grey patch that review panels have not yet been geared to deal with. Either way, my supervisor, the honours coordinator and myself are all comfortable that my involvement with the AHB community and others like it will be carried out in a responsible, ethical manner.

I hope that changes your mind. It would be great to hear from you :lol:

cool so you just dumbed it down for the great internet unwashed interesting that my last academic supervisor wouldsnt sign off on me using internet reserach as it didnt meet the uni ethics guidelines unless I could get people to sign off an info privacy and ethics form. bloody unis cant get anything consistant.

what would be an interesting angle to research is the anthropological aspect you mentioned in relation to bulk buys and case swaps. the need for human interaction and tendency for group think/consensus. brewing can be very very close knit and community minded. look at case swaps... lotsof blokes who may not know each other offline, meet up, drink and rarely ever incidents occur.
- the fact that people will bandwagon on products. plenty of egs on the web about new products coming ou and driving demand and popularity ege amarillo when it came out as well as nelson sav, galaxy etc.
- most people will do some reserach on product (although this appears to be a dwindling ability of the unwashed to be able to conduct their own research - im not aiming this at you). and will make a decision on what product suits their needs.
- as wolfy pointede out costs can be a big factor. esp when there is enough info around to make a cost benefit analysis (as brief or as simple as that may be). ege Joe White ale is cheap and gets the job done. your not goiing to notice a heap of differance in most ales unless your possibly brewing for a comp etc. nso you cut down on price you might use JW ale malt generally but for an all pils beer you might choose a better brand becasue there is a noticble benefit in the outcome

ill post more later. gotta take kids to swimming lessons.

 

[Jay Cee]

I do my scheming for the other side (I'm a dirty lefty).

In that case, I'm happy to help a comrade out Don't worry too much about the 'haters', it's a reflection of them rather than yourself, and forums are an anonymous outlet for their bitterness.

Not sure how much you understand about brewing ingredients, but I'll proceed to comment on the All-Grain method, as opposed to using liquid extract, cans etc.

There are only generally a small number of base malts that we use to make up the bulk of our fermentables. Most popular would be Ale Malt, then Pilsener, both of which are barley grain. To a lesser extent, malted wheat is used as base for..... you guessed it , wheat beers. I will buy my base malt by the 25kg sack, as it's going to be used for every beer I make. In my case it's always Ale malt, and once a year I'll also get a sack of wheat, because I enjoy the style on occasion. Within the range of Ale Malts, there are probably half a dozen choices for the consumer, which are dictated by country of origin, method of malting, and in some cases the variety of barley (look up 'Maris Otter'). My choice is almost always Australian malts, for three reasons, in no particular order. These are:

Price
Shipping / Ecological footprint (Aussie grain might travel 1000kms in its life from farm to beer, German may be 5000kms)
Other excellent commercial craft beers that I enjoy are using Aussie grains

In saying this, I will buy a bag of English variety, or Maris Otter, once every year or two and bang out a few dark English styles.

The next range of grains are 'specialty malts' - These are what uniquely define the malt characteristics of a beer, and are often used sparingly at between 5 - 10% of the grain bill. Once again, in most cases I'll defer to Australian products, unless there is a specific type that is unavailable from local maltsters. In this category there are dozens of types. At a guess I would say maybe 40, but it could be more. I will buy them by the kilo, and always have about 10 at any one time in my brew pantry. I also swap with a brewing mate, in the event that we each have something that the other does not, and is called for in a particular brew.

Therefore, with 10 specialty malts, and an abundance of base malts, I believe that I am equipped to create a hundred or more styles at any given time, without going to the store for more stock.

Hops - now here's something that many of us stockpile at ridiculous levels. The price of small-weights are very expensive, so buying in bulk is my preferred option. 1/2 of my hop surplus is sourced from the USA, a further 1/4 from an Aussie wholesaler, and the remaining 1/4 are local small-weight 100g lots, if I want o do a 'one-off'. Purchases of bulk hops are generally driven by wanting one variety only, then bulking out the order to make shipping charges more attractive on a per-gram basis. These other varieties then dictate what I'll be brewing over the next year, and there are times when I'll plan to make a stupidly hoppy IPA when I'm running out of freezer space. Lately the trend has been towards American styles, because there's such a massive range of unique varieties

Yeast - where to start on yeast ! There's well over 50 strains available to the amateur brewer. This is another key factor in driving the beer style. I flip-flop between liquid yeasts, of which there are two main brands (I have no preference of one over the other) but also always have about 10 well-regarded dry yeast packets in stock (American, English & Wheat) for when I don't want, or am unable to, do the preparation of liquid yeast, which can take a bit of time, often days.

In summary, between the 1/2 dozen base malts, the 40+ specialty malts, the 50+ hop varieties and the 50+ yeast strains, there are thousands of unique combinations to be created as desired by the brewer, so it always stays interesting.

All the best.

 

[Rowy]

For me it's pretty simple. If I like the taste of a certain style I go to the BJCP guidelines and work out what that may mean in so far as ingredients are concerned. I then go to the craftbrewer website and go through the descriptions in the grain, and hop lists. While this is happening I am putting data into brewmate and adding or subtracting ingredient amounts to get within the preloaded style parameters. I use this site extensively as well to run ideas past other brewers or to extract information on ingredients from previous AHB posts.

From a community perspective the AHB site has introduced me to other brewers, most with far more experience than me, that I can have a chat with and discuss a mutually interesting topic. This has now extended to social events such as swaps, crawls and meetings.

I got into brewing to save money (THERE I SAID IT!) but now it has morphed into something so much more. I enjoy the feeling of self sufficiency and now try to access things generally in life that are not commercially made. The down side is that it has ruined my social life.........I used to go to a local club every Saturday afternoon for a beer and a bit of a punt. Now that I can't stomach the usual commercially available beers they have I find that I don't go as often anymore or if I do only for an hour or so.

Jim best of luck with the research mate and disregard the knockers :icon_cheers:

 

[brettprevans]

righto more on ingrediants

a useful book you might want to check out is Radical Brewing. I say this because in the book Randy Mosher gives some istorical info about the beers and ingrediants and the process/community/culture surrounding brewing. All very interesting and relevant stuff. Esp about why people hisotrically used the ingrediants they used for example nordic countries using juniper and spruce branches to aid lautering and thus getting those flaours in their beers as a result and growing to love that flavour and adding them their beers as an ingrediant on purpose and not just as a coincidence. so there was an element of locality and later that grew into a sense of nationalism in some instances.

the flavours that some brewers/communities like in their beer can also be linked to the types of food/ingrediants they have available and the ingrediants going into beer match their food. I personally look at brewing like I do cooking and blend beer ingrediant flavours from malt, hops and other ingrediants in a fashion that woul work in cooking...and get great results.

The sharing on knowledge has always been a staple of, and defining feature of humans. So the sharing on info through forums etc is an extension of sitting round the fire telling other cavemen where the top hunting spot is. so the fact that communities develop and are available to provide advice on ingrediants mean that people can get more involved (increasing the group) and brew better beers or be selective about weeding out inferiour products. which again is all behaviour that is mimicked in other aspects of human behaviour. an interesting comparision/thought is how much 'ridiculed' women (admittedly more in the past say 50;s etc) for gathering to discuss best recipes or best place to buy cleaning products or whatever. now skip forward to present day and what are all of us on AHB doing? the exact same thing but for brewing.

Now Ive probably gone off topic re your question about ingrediant specifically but im assuming it may be useful. Most of the good brewing referance books that focus on specific styles of brewing talk a lot about ingrediants such as Brewing with Wheat, talks a lot about communities using wheat and about wheat in general. so those books could be useful to you as well.

 

[fullbottle]

Thanks to everyone that helped out with the thesis. I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out, so I treated myself with an upgrade to BIAB

The thesis went so well that I am thinking of publishing two papers out of it. Does anybody have any problems with this and would like any of the data they provided excluded from the papers? Obviously everything will remain completely anonymous etc.

Thanks again

 

[staggalee]

There has been some atrocious attempts at spelling in this thread.
No wonder the general public think we are a bunch of illiterate drunken bums. :lol:

 

[warra48]

There has been some atrocious attempts at spelling in this thread.
No wonder the general public think we are a bunch of illiterate drunken bums. :lol:

Grammar Nazi Alert:

Your post should start:

There have been some atrocious attempts.....

PS: It's all said in jest and in the spirit of a boozy forum.

 

[bum]

Don't talk about "spirits", Warra. Against the rules.

Awesome news, fullbottle. Be sure to direct us to the paper(s) when you're published.

 

[Muscovy_333]

I want to know what decisions are involved in selecting the ingredients that you use in your brews. How much do you know about the ingredients that you use? What is it that makes them appealing?

IMHO; you could potentially categorise brewers and their choices to some degree.


1. Those that copy recipes verbatim (for a number of reasons, including inexperience or lack of understanding of the process)

2. Those that have a good grasp of science and enjoy the experiment

3. Those that love tradition and want to emmulate old school brewing, icluding fruits spices, meads etc...

4. Those who have an inclination for a particlar style of beer and are chasing their own personal Holy Grail. eg. IPA fanatics

5. And of course the all rounder or should I say the experienced brewer who has or will have a go at all of the above at some point or another.


I have to disagree with 'Bums' comment that brewers have an inclination to conformity. The only conformity that I see is that of shared knowledge. What individuals do with it varies quite a bit, depending on who you hang out with.

I am a club member and as such have regular exposure to lots of different brew related ideas and discussions about ingredients old and new. Some club members love sours and belgians, others love traditional English styles on hand pumps, the youngens obsessed with IPAs etc. The cross pollination and exchange of ideas and tastings is huge.

I have a science background and prior to being involved in a club I was happy to experiment as I am very curious about trying new things and ideas.

If I were a 'stay at home brewer' there is no doubt that I would not have been able to tap into the collective knowledge and evolve my understanding of brewing as I have.

Sooo... on a personal note I can only speak for myself and as far as ingredients go I jump all over the place. The more experienced I get the better my experimenting with ingredients has become. I have started to work my way through styles a little more. Although I dont brew specifically (BJCP) to style, I like to get my head around them a little at least once.

A lot of my choice is limited by access to supply. I bulk buy and order online to increase my options because I have the room to do so. Having said this, I need to work my way through bulk ingredients, but I generally have a bit of foresight before I load up, and If i have too much of something I trade or sell with others.

I will brew seasonally where I can for example belgians/Saison in the warmer weather, dirty big dark beers and lagers in the cooler months.

Cost plays a small part in my decision making process, If I am going to invest the time and energy I dont think about cost too much. As far as ingredients go the cost works out cheaper than buying craft beer by the carton. Gas and equipment I right off as part of my hobby and dont consider them as part of my cost per brew (It would hurt too much if i did!)


Hope this offers some insight. (Mid thirties, incredibly good looking, Male, couple of kids, food science background yada yada yada)

 

[Byran]

"I have to disagree with 'Bums' comment that brewers have an inclination to conformity. The only conformity that I see is that of shared knowledge. What individuals do with it varies quite a bit, depending on who you hang out with. "
+1

I heard one of my lecturers say one day, "Copy the best"
In brewing I believe his term was referring to the fact that you can draw on others experience and knowledge to avoid mistakes that they have made and learned from, therefore creating an environment where the basic recipes and guidelines for brewing are somewhat plotted out for you before you create your beer, there by influencing the decisions you make on what ingredients, style, recipes, yeast, flavours you choose with or without your direct decision making because, "Thats what worked" for someone else. And the beer they made was delicious, or not. Then you can use your knowledge and individuality to craft new recipes and use ingredients you haven't previously used. Some of which may be used by the next brewer to improve his/her brewing and so on.
If it were a decision to ignore the last 3000 years or so of beer making experimentation/science/experience and go it from scratch with no learning from the brewers before you, then we would never progress or learn. Or would we? :huh:

 

[thedragon]

Good luck with your paper mate. Happy for you to use my post.

More importantly, good luck with the brewing.

Cheers
Daniel