Greatness: always out of reach?

[sibelman]

I've been brewing beer a good long while. Making good beer isn't real hard. Almost all the beers I make are good. Great beer is another story.

Feedback is one thing, whether from polite friends who just say the beer is great, or from those with more detailed responses. But then there's my own judgment. Even though my take on my beer is unavoidably subjective and biased, it's the only one that truly matters in the end.

Many of us look for continual improvement: better recipes, equipment, processes... we hope that we'll be really happy, not just mostly happy, with more of our beers. But we're our own most demanding taste testers, and there's a sort of sliding scale: as my beers improved, my expectations rose. Standout successes continue to be bracketed by merely good batches, even if "good" is better than it used to be because the bar got raised. (No, not that bar!)

(Some may feel differently. I get how a rack of competition ribbons might convince a brewer to chill on the continual improvement thing. Satisfaction is good. Complacency, not so much.)

A small story illustrates what I'm feeling. Years ago, a friend who had gone to cooking school cooked dinner for a group, and expressed frustration that the really great meal he made for us had not turned out as well as he hoped or expected. I told him a true artist is never fully satisfied with their creations.

I guess, for me, the bar is always out of reach, even as I celebrate the success of almost every batch and the occasional stand-out that even I feel is a great beer.

What about you?

 

[IslandLizard]

Such a welcome topic! Thank you for starting it.

Same as your chef example, we homebrewers can be our own worst critics. On the opposite side, so can be our (brew) friends not always saying it to our face, or underplaying a perceived issue with only a subtle hint such as "it's a little bitter." That's usually something we should certainly pay much more attention to, and discuss it, so we can improve.

I find it important and helpful to get feedback from others, that's one reason I like brew clubs, and having good brew friends, including those who are critical.

Many of us (serious) homebrewers have been raising the bar with the years, always striving for better. I don't see that as brutal self-punishment when we don't always reach that bar or have set it a bit higher than we can reach right now.

Damn, now I want to brew again to prove that I can!

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

Great words for sure! I read it over twice as I too feel just like you. I've been brewing beer for several decades now and I feel I'm at my best and still have so much more to learn.

I recently had a bad batch of beer, I mean really bad. I dumped half of out, I have one keg that I still think I can save but deep down I know it'll be food for the septic tank. I traced it down to a dirty beer hose or my pump. I'm very religious about cleaning and sanitizing but I felt beaten, stupid and a failure for not cleaning it enough.

Beside the brewing part I want to learn as much as I can on the history of brewing and how styles came about. At this point in my brewing life, I feel it's more than just brewing beer.

 

[Yesfan]

I feel like I'm stuck at a crossroads. My brews haven't sucked, but they aren't stellar store shelf worthy beers either. Many years ago, I brewed a black IPA that almost placed 3rd out of 8 entries in my brew club. #3 had just a little more going, so he took bronze that day. That's the closest I've came yet to winning a medal.

For me, it's the medal. I don't have to be the best. I just want to be one of them. That's my current goal. I've had a few friends brag about my beers, but the guys in my club are on another level and I want to level up.

Greatness is indeed out of reach......

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

For me, it's the medal. I don't have to be the best.

I'm about brewing great beer for me. When I get compliments, I feel good but certainly not great as I know I usually can do better, it's that "level up" feeling. Sometimes I feel I've reached as far as I can but deep down, I know I'm wrong, as I try some commercial beer and say, "I want to brew a beer like this!".

It's all about what makes us happy in this World Wide Brewing Adventure.

 

[Yesfan]

I'm about brewing great beer for me. When I get compliments, I feel good but certainly not great as I know I usually can do better, it's that "level up" feeling. Sometimes I feel I've reached as far as I can but deep down, I know I'm wrong, as I try some commercial beer and say, "I want to brew a beer like this!".

It's all about what makes us happy in this World Wide Brewing Adventure.

Exactly. The bold print is the crossroads I feel like I'm at. I taste a favorite commercial beer and think "I want to brew that".

I'm hoping I get more time next years to brew and enter more club competitions. Don't get me wrong. If I brew "my best beer yet" and it still doens't earn a medal, I'm walking away a winner either way. The medal is a personal goal for me.

 

[Bassman2003]

I am always striving to improve and always judge my beer. But, this is a hobby that I love, so I am never hard on myself. I am judging just to quantify, not to punish. The only way to reach greatness is study and being open to new processes. The last 10% is about knowledge more than anything. Once you gain the knowledge (Kunze, Narziss etc...) the artistry will have more impact. Artistry without knowledge is just trying.

 

[Red over White]

Great topic! The one thing that has helped me get closer to my goals was to clone commercial examples of beers that I love drinking. Tweaking the same beer every other batch until I get as close as possible. Having a commercial reference point to continually compare against is key for measuring my success. I don't have any variables with equipment or my base malt crush from batch to batch (only changing the gap for smaller kernel adjunct grains). The more that I copy macro brewery conditions and procedures the closer I am getting to my goals. I will do whatever it takes to achieve those results in the glass and nothing is off the table. I feel that if I'm going to dedicate a good portion of my free time to this hobby, I need to be improving. 1% better here and 2% better there eventually adds up to 10% better overall.

 

[Agent]

"The more I learn, the less I know" - Batman

I feel you in the fact that amazing brews seem perpetually elusive even as the overall quality of beer made is on the rise over the years.

Personally, I blame the fact that I haven't brewed a wholly same recipe over and over with the purpose of perfecting it. My most repeated recipe has had maybe four re-brews? There's just too much possibility out there to keep neurotically tweaking the same old APA or cream ale.

Along with that, I don't have the time to go through everything in my power for the perfect beer. For the most part, I've subscribed to the 80/20 rule because I've got myself stretched a bit thin and five B grade projects are more useful than one or two A+ projects.

And when you find a groove where you can easily fill kegs for <$20 with beer that is good enough for yourself and friends, the impetus to make "great" beers is diminished.

 

[huckdavidson]

Define "great beer"?

Each batch of beer hits its stride at a certain point in time, if you miss that time, you are probably missing the point at which the beer would be perceived as great beer.

The vast majority of commercial beer is ok - maybe good - but not great.

Highly rated beers by BJCP certified judges don't equate to great beer.

Highly rated beers online (BeerAdvocate, etc...) don't equate to great beer.

Highly hyped beers (Westvleteren XII, Heady Topper, Julius, Pliny, etc...) aren't great beers all of the time either. Some batches of these beers are ok and you really have to wonder what happened at the brewery. Other batches are good drinkable beer, but every once in a while when you get a fresh bottle that's hit it's stride, all the flavors pop, the stars align and bam it's a great beer.

New beers and beer styles aren't great, they're just new.

Great beer isn't always out of reach it's a perception that happens at certain times with well brewed beer.

 

[Skeeter686]

I recently had a bad batch of beer, I mean really bad. I dumped half of out, I have one keg that I still think I can save but deep down I know it'll be food for the septic tank. I traced it down to a dirty beer hose or my pump. I'm very religious about cleaning and sanitizing but I felt beaten, stupid and a failure for not cleaning it enough.

I'm fortunate to have a wife who is very supportive of my hobby and assists me with brewing. And is the voice of reason when I start beating myself up for mistakes. She'll point out that this is supposed to be a fun hobby.

I mean, you should have goals and challenge yourself, but she's absolutely right that I shouldn't be beating myself up for a silly mistake. I'm not a pro brewer and I am not dumping barrels of beer. Gotta keep perspective.

This is an insightful thread for me, though. I've only been brewing for a few years but I've become a little frustrated. I guess I didn't appreciate that my own standards are being elevated along with the quality of my beers, which is probably why I'm not recognizing any improvement.

 

[day_trippr]

When New England IPAs out of Vermont were first stirring up notice many years ago I tried my hand at brewing a few, primarily clones of Alchemist brews, but kept running into uber short shelf life issues. Like, I barely got a keg through a couple of weeks on tap and hardly half consumed before the oxidation thing started showing its hand, first as attenuated aroma, then a week or so later attenuated flavor and the slow darkening to oblivion.

This was particularly irksome because I LOVE HAZIES! And was getting crushed by the oxidation thing.

Fortunately I was not alone and was able to benefit from others' investigations and demonstrated methods of avoidance and mitigation. Over time this was refined, and today I can reliably have a keg of my hoppiest hazy stay truly amazing for many months.. I still keep three of them on tap bracketed by a fruited wheat and a West Coast (read "bright" ) IPA, with my imperial chocolate stout riding shotgun as always...

Cheers!

 

[mac_1103]

Satisfaction is good. Complacency, not so much.)

I am neither satisfied nor complacent. Rather, I am content. Content to tell all the people who compliment my brewing (or cooking or woodworking) exactly what I did wrong or could have done better. But also content to eat and drink good things that I made myself.

 

[sibelman]

it's a perception

Yes, it's the perception of greatness that I was talking about. I'm unaware of any objective measure of beer greatness. In various human endeavors, perception is reality.

Others have spoken about frustration, feeling defeated, seeing no improvement. I've had those kinds of feelings at times, when a beer turns out poorly or I make a stupid mistake. My mostly quite good results help me to get past those moments.

I don't have the time to go through everything in my power for the perfect beer.

Yes. Whether it's deep diving into water chemistry or intense pursuit of hot-side LODO, there's limits to where I'm willing to go in pursuit of improvement.

hoppiest hazy stay truly amazing for many months

I've had this happy experience after vigorously chasing down cold-side oxygen. But sometimes a mistake or equipment glitch ruins this. And I'm still not 100% on achieving this result.

 

[seatazzz]

Excellent post. I stopped beating myself up over 'bad' beers a couple of years ago; after learning that they can happen with no perceived mistakes in the process. If one gets a burial at sea, I chalk it up to experience. I do try to keep my husband from finding out about them, however; he sees it as a waste of time/money spent. I have a hefe on tap right now that my friends and husband think is amazing, but that I feel is just meh; kinda tart, not much banana, just not what I wanted. So a lot of it does come down to perception. One person's failure can be another person's piece de resistance.

I tend to brew the same recipes in rotation, because I like them; I'm not much of a 'try the next best beer style' kind of gal. I do get a bit discouraged when a tried and true recipe doesn't come up to snuff, but I try to find where the failing was first; then look to ways to fix it. New processes (pressure fermenting, LODO on a small scale, etc.) have helped a bit. Until I hang up my mash paddle for good, there's always the next brew.

 

[sibelman]

I'm about brewing great beer for me.

I've never been interested in beer competitions.

A friend once told me that I'm the kind of person who wants others to like me (and that he didn't care what others thought). He was mostly right, but...

I do like it when people say they like my beer - even though I naturally wonder how genuine the praise may be. But even if my baseline confidence in my brewing lets me be receptive to positive feedback, it doesn't influence my own judgment about the beer - that I know of, anyway

 

[MaxStout]

I've been brewing about 11 years, and think I make good, if not great, beer. It's hit-and-miss. Some brews really hit the mark, and those recipes I tuck away to brew again. Others suck so bad I never want to revisit them. No one bats 1000, but if I can make decent beer most of the time, I will be happy. I'm always trying to learn from others and learn from my own screwups, big and small. I take good notes of each brew day and go back to them. If I brew an "OK" London porter, try again next time, go over my notes, tweak the recipe and process, and strive for a better London porter.

I'm hard on myself and very critical of what I brew. Others who try my beers seem to like them. Maybe they're being nice and pulling punches, but I do watch their expressions when they take that first sip and I don't often see any grimaces. I ask them for their candor. I must be doing OK. But I want to make it better next time.

I realize I have to operate within the constraints of my system. Kegging is not an option for me at this time, so I bottle. That already creates an oxidation handicap for certain styles, such as hazy IPAs and other hop-forward beers. I tend to brew beers that are more conducive to bottling, and I try to drink them up reasonably fast and move on to the next batches.

 

[Beerstein]

Just a few points for you to internalize:

• Possibly find new friends…beers are kind of like pizza toppings
• Most of my friends dont like the same styles I like (thats fine, i just ignore their feedback)
• Break all the style guidelines
• A lot of the “great” beers (from friendly feedback) have spent some some time in oak barrels still pondering this one.
• Im really happy with > 80% of my brews. Less happy with the ones I brew to any given ”style guideline”

 

[Bobby_M]

Highly rated beers by BJCP certified judges don't equate to great beer.

In the grand sense of "great beer is in the eye of the beerholder" kind of woo, sure. This one is arguable I think. Of course I'm biased because BJCP certification was interesting and important to my further enjoyment of the hobby so I'm "invested" in it being useful. It is at least true that it's a collectively good faith endeavor to place any given beer on a scale of stylistic conformity as well as flawed vs. less flawed. It's not perfect but at least there's a process to vet a judges sensory skills and descriptive ability. If after a full day of judging, one judge held on to their lowest scored beer and highest scored beer, say a 22 and a 43, I bet something like 98 out of 100 average beer drinkers would be able to correctly place them in the right score bucket. That's to say that people generally know what good and bad beer is.

As a judge, I've scored a beer as high as 47 which by definition is world class, and in the realm of the best beer I've ever had both in stylistic accuracy and intangible enjoyment factor/drinkability. My judging partner, without any prior discussion scored it a 48 and then we rounded down to 47.

TLDR, that was a GREAT BEER.

Incidentally it ended up 1st place best of show in that competition which had at least a two National judges, a Master, and a Grand Master on the final table then it later got 1st place BOS at the next competition judged by a completely different set of judges all the way through. So, in your opinion, is that still not objectively a great beer?

A couple perspectives as a brewer though, since I think that's what you're looking for. I have a lot of medals, but I only really care about the next one and even then, I don't really care as much as I once did. My homebrew club and close peers have become such prolific brewers that it's very difficult to compete against them. I would say the same thing about the general state of homebrewing across the country for that matter because the whole community has gotten that much better. When I got into the hobby, and also a bit later when I started judging, about 25% of the beers were nearly undrinkable with maybe 5% being excellent. I think that has flipped backwards.

The highest score I ever received on my beer was a 48. I loved that American Stout and tried brewing it exactly the same about 3 more times and never really got the balance right since. My brewing has morphed from producing beer to drink to brewing beer to learn more about brewing and to share my beer and the knowledge with other passionate brewers. I try to show up to homebrew cub meetings with the output of a split batch experiment almost each month. When people engage with each other and leave with a little more brewing insight, that is great beer.

 

[Bobby_M]

I've never been interested in beer competitions.

I do like it when people say they like my beer - even though I naturally wonder how genuine the praise may be.

A beer competition's goal is to give you the most sincere feedback possible because the people providing that feedback have no motive to lie. The only disconnect is that there is a chance that the truth will not be complimentary. That's the one thing you need to be open to in order to enjoy competing.

 

[sibelman]

still not objectively

the truth

(quotes out of context, purely intended for humorous effect)

I understand what you're saying about the value of feedback from a disinterested judge who is trained to identify beer characteristics according to a clearly defined rubric.

 

[huckdavidson]

In the grand sense of "great beer is in the eye of the beerholder" kind of woo, sure. This one is arguable I think. Of course I'm biased because BJCP certification was interesting and important to my further enjoyment of the hobby so I'm "invested" in it being useful. It is at least true that it's a collectively good faith endeavor to place any given beer on a scale of stylistic conformity as well as flawed vs. less flawed. It's not perfect but at least there's a process to vet a judges sensory skills and descriptive ability. If after a full day of judging, one judge held on to their lowest scored beer and highest scored beer, say a 22 and a 43, I bet something like 98 out of 100 average beer drinkers would be able to correctly place them in the right score bucket. That's to say that people generally know what good and bad beer is.

As a judge, I've scored a beer as high as 47 which by definition is world class, and in the realm of the best beer I've ever had both in stylistic accuracy and intangible enjoyment factor/drinkability. My judging partner, without any prior discussion scored it a 48 and then we rounded down to 47.

TLDR, that was a GREAT BEER.

Incidentally it ended up 1st place best of show in that competition which had at least a two National judges, a Master, and a Grand Master on the final table then it later got 1st place BOS at the next competition judged by a completely different set of judges all the way through. So, in your opinion, is that still not objectively a great beer?

A couple perspectives as a brewer though, since I think that's what you're looking for. I have a lot of medals, but I only really care about the next one and even then, I don't really care as much as I once did. My homebrew club and close peers have become such prolific brewers that it's very difficult to compete against them. I would say the same thing about the general state of homebrewing across the country for that matter because the whole community has gotten that much better. When I got into the hobby, and also a bit later when I started judging, about 25% of the beers were nearly undrinkable with maybe 5% being excellent. I think that has flipped backwards.

The highest score I ever received on my beer was a 48. I loved that American Stout and tried brewing it exactly the same about 3 more times and never really got the balance right since. My brewing has morphed from producing beer to drink to brewing beer to learn more about brewing and to share my beer and the knowledge with other passionate brewers. I try to show up to homebrew cub meetings with the output of a split batch experiment almost each month. When people engage with each other and leave with a little more brewing insight, that is great beer.

It's artificially labelled as great beer because it's been judged to have limited flaws at that moment in time and the knowledge of having limited flaws exists within the realm of those giving the label "great beer". In other words, at that time there exists causation to label it as great thus the label given by those with apriori knowledge is negated and as time passes so does the label "great beer".

The label "great beer" is still just a perception that happens at certain times with well brewed beer.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I have never entered my beers in competitions but I like that they are around and certainly encourage people to enter theirs if they seek evaluation and advice.

I went through the BJCP training to learn about evaluating my own beer. I thought about the judging part but didn't think I could be good enough at it with beers I wasn't fond of.

Lots of my friends have done the same and some are active judges so I think I'm getting good feedback.

 

[MaxStout]

I like to experiment some, like adding a new ingredient, using non-standard yeasts, etc. It's fun to mix it up.

But most times I want to color inside the lines, as closely as I can. If I decide to re-create an authentic Bavarian Festbier, I want to get as close as possible. If I enjoy drinking the Paulaner offering, my goal is to approximate it at home. Whether or not I actually get there is another thing, but I have to keep on trying.

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

I'm with MaxStout - many if my brews are non-standard. I know I'll get flack for this statement, but lots of my brews are lagers that I brew as an ale. I like what an ale yeast brings over a lager. Part if it started because I couldn't brew true lagers. Now I can but I still do some as ales.

So, it's more that I brew what I like and what works for me. I'm about pleasing myself, isn't that what we want from this hobby?

 

[tracer bullet]

I'm also my own worst critic. I'm about the only one that drinks my beer and others who do are typically Coors Light drinkers anyhow, so it's kind of up to me.

I too have hits and misses, usually my first times. I recently kegged a stout that I used cocoa nibs in, it's my 6th time making it, and for me at least it's stellar, I'd say it's as good as anything I can buy. I recently dumped the last gallon of my first Cold IPA, didn't care for the hops in it (including Mandarina Bavaria, next time I'll go with something like Centennial).

I've learned to go easier on myself, after a few recipe iterations I'm almost always quite happy. And if I think it's not as good as store-bought, I occasionally do a comparison and realize that, in fact, it is. Almost any beer I make that I don't love, I realize is the product of my ingredient choices, not my methods, and so I always take notes for recipe tweaks the next time. And remind myself that's why I'm here, the tinkering and experimenting.

 

[Brooothru]

When New England IPAs out of Vermont were first stirring up notice many years ago I tried my hand at brewing a few, primarily clones of Alchemist brews, but kept running into uber short shelf life issues. Like, I barely got a keg through a couple of weeks on tap and hardly half consumed before the oxidation thing started showing its hand, first as attenuated aroma, then a week or so later attenuated flavor and the slow darkening to oblivion.

This was particularly irksome because I LOVE HAZIES! And was getting crushed by the oxidation thing.

Fortunately I was not alone and was able to benefit from others' investigations and demonstrated methods of avoidance and mitigation. Over time this was refined, and today I can reliably have a keg of my hoppiest hazy stay truly amazing for many months.. I still keep three of them on tap bracketed by a fruited wheat and a West Coast (read "bright" ) IPA, with my imperial chocolate stout riding shotgun as always...

Cheers!

Please share your processes and techniques! I've had pretty good luck reducing oxidation using 'Trifecta' in both mash and boil. I've continued to reduce the amount I use (currently for 6.5 gallon batch size, 1.8 grams in mash and 1.4 grams added in the last :10 minutes of boil), but occasionally I get a strange metallic taste in the finished beer that has me baffled. It's either in my equipment, cleaning or process, but it's not a persistent problem, and I'm trying to eliminate the variables.

 

[MaxStout]

Please share your processes and techniques! I've had pretty good luck reducing oxidation using 'Trifecta' in both mash and boil. I've continued to reduce the amount I use (currently for 6.5 gallon batch size, 1.8 grams in mash and 1.4 grams added in the last :10 minutes of boil), but occasionally I get a strange metallic taste in the finished beer that has me baffled. It's either in my equipment, cleaning or process, but it's not a persistent problem, and I'm trying to eliminate the variables.

I do the trifecta in mash and boil, and have noticed a difference. I also add 10 ppm ascorbic acid and k-meta just before bottling, and I think that helps with shelf life. Just enough to scavenge O2, but not so much as to slow the yeast for conditioning.

 

[Brooothru]

I do the trifecta in mash and boil, and have noticed a difference. I also add 10 ppm ascorbic acid and k-meta just before bottling, and I think that helps with shelf life. Just enough to scavenge O2, but not so much as to slow the yeast for conditioning.

I've been wondering if the source of my undesirable metallic taste might be from the BrewTan. I may try reducing the amount of BTB in my Trifecta blend and let the ascorbic and Meta do the heavy lifting. The really weird thing about the metallic taste is that it disappears in a second pour from the same tap. I used to think it was from beer trapped in the line , but recently I had the same comment from a judge in a competition, and that sample was obviously not from a keg or keg lines. BTW I also tasted the same trace 'metallic' in an extra bottle of that same beer after I got the score sheets which obviously was also not from a keg line. I'll have to retrieve that keg from the beer fridge and run it through the kegerator to see if it's a persistent off-flavor.

 

[day_trippr]

My O2 avoidance is cold side process and equipment - I'm not really set up to deal with hot side O2, but that's not a shelf-life concern imo. Carboys are piped to purge my kegs, cold crashing is done under ~0.4 psi of CO2 head pressure, transfers are tightly closed. I add 1 teaspoon of ascorbic acid dissolved in 30ml of warm RO then injected into the keg purged with fermentation CO2 prior to a closed transfer using pre-purged lines and vented through a bucket of water so nothing is going to find its way in the "back door" so to speak.

But I had been doing all of that mechanical stuff since even before the "Hazy Craze" hit. The ascorbic acid was the game changer - a profound game changer, really...

Cheers!

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I also add 10 ppm ascorbic acid and k-meta just before bottling, and I think that helps with shelf life.

How do you convert ppm (for each of those items) into grams?

 

[Yesfan]

How do you convert ppm (for each of those items) into grams?

And if that can that be done in Brewfather, Beersmith, etc.?

My O2 avoidance is cold side process and equipment - I'm not really set up to deal with hot side O2, but that's not a shelf-life concern imo. Carboys are piped to purge my kegs, cold crashing is done under ~0.4 psi of CO2 head pressure, transfers are tightly closed. I add 1 teaspoon of ascorbic acid dissolved in 30ml of warm RO then injected into the keg purged with fermentation CO2 prior to a closed transfer using pre-purged lines and vented through a bucket of water so nothing is going to find its way in the "back door" so to speak.

But I had been doing all of that mechanical stuff since even before the "Hazy Craze" hit. The ascorbic acid was the game changer - a profound game changer, really...

Cheers!

You add the asorbic acid post boil/pre-fermentation? Genus Brewing (where I learned the asorbic acid trick) seemed to suggest adding it in the mash. I always felt adding it in the mash was a waste and would be eventually boiled off.

 

[day_trippr]

You add the asorbic acid post boil/pre-fermentation?

Clearly yes - at kegging. That's it.
Imo everything that happens before fermentation has potential character modifying possibilities but doesn't have much effect on shelf life...

Cheers!

 

[Brooothru]

Clearly yes - at kegging. That's it.
Imo everything that happens before fermentation has potential character modifying possibilities but doesn't have much effect on shelf life...

Cheers!

Not so sure I totally agree. Removing dissolved oxygen from strike water is the basis of staunching the staling effects of O2. Since I do continuous recirculating during mash, treating mash water is important, as is treatment in the late boil that helps keep D.O. in check through chilling, whirlpooling, and transferring into the fermenter.

Of course, the first thing we do before pitching yeast is to oxygenate, but nearly 100% of that O2 gets metabolized in the early stages of fermentation. I do closed transfers under CO2 pressure into sanitized CO2 purged kegs.

I don’t brew hazies, but my IPAs stay fresh for months and Continental lagers with noble hops last even longer. I’ll continue reducing the amount of Trifecta in mash and late boil and start adding ascorbic (and maybe NaMeta) at packaging to see how well they hold up after packaging.

 

[lumpher]

Greatness is never out of reach. I'm right here.

 

[day_trippr]

So, my thoughts are, whatever character changes induced via oxygen uptake from strike to the end of boil have happened, but post-boil wort O2 content is pretty much zilch. Then post-pitch I introduce straight O2 shooting for 12 ppm, but that oxygen is theoretically consumed within a matter of hours going into fermentation.

All that is pretty much rote. To me the cold-side O2 game really begins when fermentation is within a couple of points of FG. From that point on everything becomes important...

Cheers!

 

[mashdar]

The only recipe I've ever "perfected" is my pumpkin bread. I had to make it about 20+ times to get the process down. It really was more process than ingredient changes that made the difference between good and great.

I suspect brewing would take repeating a recipe numerous times to dial it in, but personally I rarely make the same recipe more than once a year. I've been considering making every other brew a "house" recipe to work on it.

How do you convert ppm (for each of those items) into grams?

IIRC from cider making, 10ppm is ~1 campden tablet per 5 gallons. Been a while, though, and I know there's some free ion math that is usually more important than straight quantity.

 

[redrocker652002]

While I am still new to all of this, about 2 years now, I feel much the same as most. I have had friends I have given beers to who have given me some strong feedback. Mostly have said my beers are really good. Now, with that said, let me also say they are cops, so personal feelings never really enter the game. LOL. If it was to suck, they would tell me that I think and I would respect that. I want to always know what others think, because as it has been said, I am my own worst critic. Once the brew day is done, and I have cleaned up the mess I have made, I then move on to two weeks, if not more, of worrying about whether the beer is going to suck or not. LOL. I have a pretty good routine now, and cleanliness is a very important part of it. I probably use more StarSan than I should, but I wan to make sure nothing is going to happen that is within my control. As you all can see, I am not afraid to ask stupid questions, and have on many occasions. LOL. Will I ever achieve the kinds of beers that are produced commercially? Probably not. They have equipment and processes way above what I can produce in my garage with a 10 gallon kettle and a propane burner. Will I keep trying? HELL YEA!!!!!! To me, the process is fun, and the results have been better in some cases and not so good in others. But with the help of all you folks here, I feel that I have much more to learn and much more to try. So, to me, are my beers great? Nope. Are they as good as I can get them? Nope. Am I enjoying the fact that I can make my own beer and enjoy it with friends? YEP!!!! And that's why I do it. Rock on!!!!!!

 

[MaxStout]

How do you convert ppm (for each of those items) into grams?

For 10 ppm, that's about 0.038g per gallon. For a typical 5 gallon batch, I add about 0.2g of each. I just add it to the container of priming sugar solution.

A small gram scale comes in handy, as I don't want to guess using volume measurement.

 

[Yesfan]

Clearly yes - at kegging. That's it.
Imo everything that happens before fermentation has potential character modifying possibilities but doesn't have much effect on shelf life...

Cheers!

Do you use the same mount Genus recommends for the mash or do you go a totally different route?