It's the trolls that drive me nuts. It seems there's generally 2 types of brewers. The ones that's prefer to do as little as possible and spend the least amount of time/money possible and feel that making excellent beer is easy and the types like yourself mongoose that takes your beer very seriously similar to a professional and know that excellent beer takes alot of effort. It would be nice to have a area were brewers that are always improving there process can discuss improvements without getting trolled. Cheers
Funny story about this. I joined a local homebrew group early in my brewing career, hoping to find sources of wisdom and such that would accelerate my learning. Well. This was about 4 months into my brewing, and I found at the meeting that I knew things nobody, and I mean nobody, apparently had ever heard of. Things like batch sparging, doing things to the water, controlling fermentation temps, and so on. The value of that group quickly became social, not informational.
[And I don't push people much there in terms of knowledge; the LHBS owner organizes this group, and a lot of the people in the group buy kits from him. I don't want to hurt his business, we need him. So I often stand mute when it comes to talking about methods, which is rare enough, as there's a big gulf between where I am, and where most of the rest are.]
This is why HBT has been so important to my growth as a brewer. And I absolutely know where you're coming from--you want people to bounce ideas off of, who will challenge your ideas and make you explain and defend them, who will tell you if you're doing something that isn't likely smart. But people who will do that with an eye toward helping, not being a troll or a know-it-all or a jerk.
I have a very good friend here on HBT who serves that purpose for me. We met here online (!), exchanged a bunch of emails, he pushed me a bit to try some things. We have similar setups in many respects, so that what one does, the other can relate to relatively well. Heck, we went to the BYO Asheville boot camp together, and we live 1000 miles apart. He's my guy who I can bounce things off of, who will be a reality check, who can give me ideas.
He's put me onto a few things that are very....out of the mainstream. I've started using hop shots instead of bittering hops because of him. Bought a conical but I'm doing weird LODO things with it. Partly his fault, too.
We talk about fermentation, different yeast ideas, this 'n' that. He's helped me immensely in moving forward.
I suspect greatly this is what you want a subforum to be--at least, it's what I'd want it to be.
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<thinking out loud ON> Makes me wonder if a small conversation group might serve that purpose. The problem with groups is the larger they get, the more likely you are to encounter someone who rubs you the wrong way. I suspect that's what ends up happening in many threads, inevitably it seems. <OFF>
And, yes, I suspect you're right about there being two types of brewers, but I don't have bad thoughts about those whose desire to push the envelope ended early on. It's ok if you only want to brew extract recipe kits, people have the right to choose what makes them happy.
[And there's maybe a 3rd type, those who would like to push the envelope but lack the time or resources to do that. My kids are grown; 15 years ago this wouldn't have been possible for me.]
Problem for you (and me, and some others) is that we want to be out on the bleeding edge, working without a net, trying new ideas because our knowledge of brewing suggests it might work. And even if it doesn't work, we'll have enjoyed the exploration very much.
Sadly, I don't think there's a way you can make this happen on HBT. Those things evolve organically. Yeah, you'll have the less-dedicated types in threads where you may not want their "input," but that's probably the price of getting the others' input you do want.
