Brewing is like Sex ........... The joy is in experimentation and unfettered enthusiasm. It's a voyage of discovery
Brewing by slavishly following a recipe works for some folks........ Not for me. Recipes give me ideas, not connect the dots scripted processes I'm interested in following again and again if ever. Do you dress up in character and roll play using a script with your lover, or repeat the exact sequence of steps trying to recreate the same experience again and again? Repetition is for commercial breweries. Like the classic "Rat Burger", Budweiser caters to folks who expect every bottle of beer to be identical... just like every Big Mac. It's an accomplishment, something that takes a great deal of skill and technology. It is NOT what I want. I want interesting and differing products. I know I can go back to something I made last year and hit it pretty damn close from my notes, but homebrew can and should evolve as far as I'm concerned...... Just as sex should change and evolve between partners.
I don't envision EVER wanting to repeat the same thing over and over again..... You've lost the joy of discovery, the sense of adventure.... it's NOT for me, and never will be. I want a consistently good product, but not a consistent product.
I would love to see my local microbrewery get a Braumeister and do a couple of brews a week on it...... exploratory brews, and I suspect that many of his customers would find it interesting and exciting. It could involve the customers and and educate them. If I were in the business, I would want to operate on a scale where I could do this. Where I could run small batches alongside the 15 barrel standbys.
I NEVER stop at the LHBS without buying materials I haven't any plan for, often things I've never used, be they hops, grains,or yeasts. My rule is always buy something I've never used, and often things I really haven't studied. When I sit down to design a brew, I'm frequently juggling ingredients like these, reading about how they are used and deciding what I want or do not want in my brew...........
I guess that makes me crazy by most folks standards......... Crazy in the brew house, crazy in bed.......... Not a bad reputation really!! I was just today relating an incident that happened a number of years back where two children, probably 6 and 7 years old (brother and sister) were splashing in the mud outside the local cafe/post office/grocery store (all one business here). I encouraged them to take off their shoes..... I did too ...... and we walked through the mud puddles, and in the front door. I picked them up one at a time and held them upside down while they walked on the ceiling leaving muddy foot prints, while the proprietor expressed her outrage.... trying to keep from laughing. That was actually quite a few years ago, and it's a story that friends and neighbors still tell. Dorothy has since passed on....... a dear friend (the proprietor) and I held her hand on her death bed. In a more or less comatose state, I spoke to her about old times and incidents like this......... and while her eyes were shut and she couldn't speak, she did squeeze my hand and I new that she treasured our common memories as much as I do.
H.W.