Nope, I understand the principle that you can use these ingredients. My question is whether it ultimately makes the beer better more often than not.
As you point out, people have been brewing for a very long time. And over time, the "community" wisdom has refined the process. (Funny how we are actually getting back to the original point of this thread). I think that most people would say that beer is a beverage that starts with some sort of malt, has some hops, and has some yeast. I know this wasn't always the case, but over time beer brewers have refined the process to get us to this point in history. I tend to think that these refinements have improved beer over time through a process akin to natural selection in the animal kingdom. Survival of the fittest has resulted in the best practices (and types of recipes) being accepted and replicated. Less successful practices and recipes have fallen by the wayside. This is not to say that interesting things have not been lost without good reason (e.g., some beer styles have nearly died out and are making a resurgence). But, I think that beer has been evolving and improving over time. And the thousands of years of evolution have brought us to the point that we use malt (generally wheat, barley, corn, and/or rice), hops, yeast, and water as the basic ingredients in beer.
I understand that Dogfish Head is doing interesting stuff by researching some of the long dead "beer" recipes and trying to recreate them. But, I can say that I do not enjoy these beverages. I would much prefer to brew myself an excellent stout or excellent pale ale than to make Midas Touch. This, of course, is a matter of taste.
To use your cooking example, I love watching the show "Chopped" because it is interesting to see what the chefs can come up with from the sometimes crazy ingredients. That being said, if given the choice, I think I would enjoy a meal that any one of those chefs makes with more traditional ingredients more than what they come up with on Chopped at least 80% of the time.
My gut hunch is that the same is true with beer. Sure, I could replace some of my malted barley with Grape Nuts (which is made with barley flower). I understand the concept, my question is whether doing so will normally make a better beer. This is why my original question (which you still have not answered) was how often you found that your experimentation made the beer better than it would have been if you had stuck to traditional ingredients.
