How do you think homebrewing conventional wisdom will change in the future?

[Bosh]

Due to kids I took a long hiatus from brewing and when I came back to this site for the first time in years I found that the sort of advice that people were given had changed radically from 2008 to 2015, for example:
-BIAB coming out of nowhere.
-Hopping techniques completely changing, in the old days it was mostly just boil X minutes for bitterness, Y minutes for flavor and Z minutes for aroma. Now we have a lot of people not boiling bulk of their hops at all.
-Pretty much no one advocates using a secondary for most every beer anymore.
-Shorter fermentation times. I remember people laughing a lot at beer kit instructions that called for bottling after a week in primary and telling people to be patient and wait three weeks, now we have people calling for much shorter fermentation times with people advocating ramping up the temp after the end of vigorous fermentation.
-The anti-crystal malt crusade has intensified with more focus on base malts thanks in part of SMaSH beers. Similarly much more use of base malts aside from standard 2-row.
-Vastly more interest in saisons and sours.
-In general more experimentation with process variables and less experimentation with non-standard ingredients.

So if those are some of the ways that homebrewing techniques have changed over the last few years, how do you think they'll change in the future? Here's some of my guesses:
-Raw ale is going to be the next big trend, becoming as popular as sours are today.
-People are going to start paying more attention to yeast with more yeast blends, more people adding different yeast at different points in fermentation (for example adding saison yeast late to dry out a beer), more exotic yeasts (like Saccharomyces paradoxus or farmhouse yeasts like that interesting Norwegian one I read about) and more thought given to temperature schedules for different yeasts.
-People applying newer IPA hopping techniques to low IBU beers. Things like cooler hopstands don't really contribute much bitterness so they can work well for a lot of beer styles that shouldn't be bitter.
-With there getting to be so many hop varieties that people are having a hard time keeping track of them, maybe more targeting of specific hop oils.
-Old-style diastolic amber and brown malt will make a (limited) comeback for people who want to brew historical beers.

 

[Subdivisions]

-Pretty much no one advocates using a secondary for most every beer anymore.

This has been shown to be a product of the volume that we brew. Huge volumes in a commercial environment still need to move off the yeast cake due to pressure. Five gallons doesn't have this problem.

-Shorter fermentation times. I remember people laughing a lot at beer kit instructions that called for bottling after a week in primary and telling people to be patient and wait three weeks, now we have people calling for much shorter fermentation times with people advocating ramping up the temp after the end of vigorous fermentation.

I don't know where you're getting this from but most people still advocate for at least 2-3 weeks primary. Many call for 4 weeks. Oh, leave it in the primary the whole time and don't secondary!! (See above). Ramping up the temperature has no ill effect once primary fermentation is done. It helps the yeast to attenuate better and clean up byproducts.

-The anti-crystal malt crusade has intensified with more focus on base malts thanks in part of SMaSH beers. Similarly much more use of base malts aside from standard 2-row.

Other than SMASH beers there's no real anti crusade against crystal malts. They're required in most styles. Hell, I use light crystal malt in blonde ales. Marris Otter and Pilsner are used a lot along with Pale Ale malt but haven't these always been there??

There have been some genetic advances in yeast very recently that I think will be a major change in the future of brewing.

 

[Bosh]

Subdivisions: back in 2008 IIRC you had very few people advocating fermentation times of less than three weeks and a lot fewer people ramping up temps for anything but Belgians. Now while a lot of peole still do longer primaries you get a lot of people advocating 10 days or even less for really hoppy beers that you want to drink as fresh as possible (for example the very fast fermentation schedule recommended by the influencial Brulosophy website). Bottled my latest beer after a week in primary and no problems detected, think ramping up the temp after the krausen dropped helped with that. Also cold crashing has become a lot more common.

For crystal malt while there are still lots of styles that call for it you get a lot less people using it for stuff like IPAs, PAs or stronger stouts. For example I had a pale ale swap with some local brewers and of the five of us I was the only one who had any crystal aside from carapils. If you look at recipe advice threads one of the moat commom bit of advice is to cut down on the crystal malt.

 

[specharka]

Due to kids I took a long hiatus from brewing and when I came back to this site for the first time in years I found that the sort of advice that people were given had changed radically from 2008 to 2015, for example:

-BIAB coming out of nowhere.

-Hopping techniques completely changing, in the old days it was mostly just boil X minutes for bitterness, Y minutes for flavor and Z minutes for aroma. Now we have a lot of people not boiling bulk of their hops at all.

-Pretty much no one advocates using a secondary for most every beer anymore.

-Shorter fermentation times. I remember people laughing a lot at beer kit instructions that called for bottling after a week in primary and telling people to be patient and wait three weeks, now we have people calling for much shorter fermentation times with people advocating ramping up the temp after the end of vigorous fermentation.

-The anti-crystal malt crusade has intensified with more focus on base malts thanks in part of SMaSH beers. Similarly much more use of base malts aside from standard 2-row.

-Vastly more interest in saisons and sours.

-In general more experimentation with process variables and less experimentation with non-standard ingredients.



So if those are some of the ways that homebrewing techniques have changed over the last few years, how do you think they'll change in the future? Here's some of my guesses:

-Raw ale is going to be the next big trend, becoming as popular as sours are today.

-People are going to start paying more attention to yeast with more yeast blends, more people adding different yeast at different points in fermentation (for example adding saison yeast late to dry out a beer), more exotic yeasts (like Saccharomyces paradoxus or farmhouse yeasts like that interesting Norwegian one I read about) and more thought given to temperature schedules for different yeasts.

-People applying newer IPA hopping techniques to low IBU beers. Things like cooler hopstands don't really contribute much bitterness so they can work well for a lot of beer styles that shouldn't be bitter.

-With there getting to be so many hop varieties that people are having a hard time keeping track of them, maybe more targeting of specific hop oils.

-Old-style diastolic amber and brown malt will make a (limited) comeback for people who want to brew historical beers.

I think most of this is spot on. I wasn't a homebrewer in 2008 so I can't comment on what the trends were at that time, but in my short experience at HBT I've found most of the conventional homebrewing old wives tales have gotten thrown out of the window. Brulosopher's blog, among others, consistently demonstrates the laws we live by are very much superfluous.

In the coming years, I can foresee that people will gradually return to traditional brewing practices, like cask conditioning. Some of the other predictions listed are already in place -- dry hopped saisons and Sacc/Brett beers are commonplace now. I'd like to see more variety with the available yeast selection, and not just 1000 tepid British ales...which is also starting to come to fruition. Wild ales will dominate.

 

[JKaranka]

I'm hoping for stock ales and (non-wild, unoaked) soleras making a comeback. More sugars should become available for brewers, including that weird porterine or whatever it was called that North American brewers used to turn lager into porter. More blending of beers and more beer based cocktails. Tendency to add fruit and spices in beer finally dies off.

Edit: I wouldn't be surprised if craft lager became much more popular and gear and techniques make temperature control simple and space saving would appear. E.g., no need for fridges and customising them.

Edit 2: I also think the commercial craft beer scene is going to start consolidating and moving on from it's immature / experimental phase. Less breweries, less beers, but the more solid attempts will remain. Some will be driven by the biggies purchasing brands (Meantime, Goose Island, etc.), some by closures and some by mergers.

 

[Onkel_Udo]

I do not know what the future holds but I am glad for most of the advances that occurred in my forced 6 year absence. From a world where a well stocked LHBS would have three base grains, 6 types of crystal and 3 different roasted malts...to where we are now is epic.

I restarted about 3 years ago with a modified version of my 3-tier gravity unit. Now I do (all manual) eBiaB in my basement.

Where at least a two step mash and required secondary was the norm...to single infusion for 30 minutes is not uncommon and grain to glass can be 6-7 days.

Session beers being popular is just the rest of the world catching up to what I already knew.

For much less work, my beer is just as consistent. For much less money, my options are more varied.

 

[55x11]

This is a great post!
But notice how must changes from 2008 to 2015 are not stylistic - mostly debunking "old wives tales" related to process.
Interest in Sours and Saisons is the only stylistic change (=fad if you will).

I think it's important to separate those into two categories.
If you were to extrapolate from Brulosophy, I would argue temperatures, rapid cooling, long boil/mash times, avoiding splashing, transferring traub, matters less than we think and these may become more conventional wisdoms in the next 10 years or so.
It is possible we will do 30min mash, 30 min boil in the future with solid results, and worry less about splashing, traub or temperature control even.

at the same time, its difficult for me to imagine a process of brewing to become radically different from what it is today.

in terms of new styles, or new "fads" or rediscovered styles, I would think the new yeast strains (and maybe some genetic engineering even?) will be a major player in the next decade. As in - yeast that can work at OG of 1.150? or yeast that can fully and cleanly ferment a standard 6-7% beer in 2 days flat, with no off-flavors, regardless of temperature variations or under/over pitching.
But of course there is some basic biology that may make it impossible.

If you look at new 'trends' - saisons and sours, they are all yeast (or bacteria) driven. Previous trend of IPA, DIPA and very hoppy beers were mostly hop-driven. Can we have malt or water-driven innovation in styles?

And maybe I lack imagination, but to me it seems the phase space of all possible combination of color, flavor, ABV and IBU have been covered pretty extensively already. To the point that some "new" styles overlap too much already - as in Session IPA is basically Pale Ale etc.

So sure, someone can make a Pale Porter or Super-Hoppy Stout (they do already) but is that a new beer style?

Maybe real innovation will come from unusual adjuncts, or adjunct combination. Or colors. Hibiscus can make some bright pink saisons, and beets can give you bright red colors. What about purple, or crystal clear beer? What about weird flavors. Bacon beer anyone (surely it's been done already). With so many craft breweries all competing for attention, surely there will be some crazy new brews coming soon.

 

[Bosh]

I think most of this is spot on. I wasn't a homebrewer in 2008 so I can't comment on what the trends were at that time, but in my short experience at HBT I've found most of the conventional homebrewing old wives tales have gotten thrown out of the window. Brulosopher's blog, among others, consistently demonstrates the laws we live by are very much superfluous.

In the coming years, I can foresee that people will gradually return to traditional brewing practices, like cask conditioning. Some of the other predictions listed are already in place -- dry hopped saisons and Sacc/Brett beers are commonplace now. I'd like to see more variety with the available yeast selection, and not just 1000 tepid British ales...which is also starting to come to fruition. Wild ales will dominate.

Brulosophy has great, it's definitely guided how I brew but I think the biggest impact it's going to have is to make experimental split batches more popular which will provide vastly more information than a couple guys (no matter how smart and dedicated) can provide by themselves. For example one person in my local brew group did a split batch in which one half was cold crashed with gelatin and one half was just bottled (no cold crash, no gelatin) and the taste and aroma was night and day, while Brulosophy found no real different in flavor or aroma from using gelatin. The fact that we're doing and thinking about this stuff more now is really important as we figure out more and more about which variables really matter and in what instances.

For more kinds of yeast I love how stuff like Norwegian farmhouse yeast is now starting to appear on the market and I'm sure there's a lot of other farmhouse yeasts that have unique characteristics that are currently hiding away in some remote village somewhere. Also, AFAIK there really isn't as much effort put into breeding yeast as there is when it comes to breeding hops. If that changes we could get some really interesting new lab-bred strains.

Edit 2: I also think the commercial craft beer scene is going to start consolidating and moving on from it's immature / experimental phase. Less breweries, less beers, but the more solid attempts will remain. Some will be driven by the biggies purchasing brands (Meantime, Goose Island, etc.), some by closures and some by mergers.

Its got to eventually, but on the other hand the number of craftbreweries worldwide is nowhere near its eventual peak. Here in Korea the old restrictive laws that made it illegal to distribute beer unless you had a (massive) minimum capacity have only recently beer repealed which has allowed the number of local craft beer bars to explode in the last year but even now it's really hard to find bottled Korean craft beer. Multiply that out by a bunch of other countries and internationally craft beer is just getting started.

For much less work, my beer is just as consistent. For much less money, my options are more varied.

What helps me the most is BIAB. Completely transformed how I brew.

This is a great post!
But notice how must changes from 2008 to 2015 are not stylistic - mostly debunking "old wives tales" related to process.
Interest in Sours and Saisons is the only stylistic change (=fad if you will).

I don't really agree. Coming back after a long absence the recipes I saw for IPAs were UTTERLY different. That's what's changed my own recipes the most: using hops differently.

Still think there's plenty of room for innovation in malts as well:
-I'd kill for some old school 18th-century style diastolic brown malt. It'd be incredible to brew a SMaSH stout.
-New strains of barley or old strains being brought back. Saw some news about an old 19th century British barley strain being brought back. Except for MO most people don't seem to care very much about the strain of their barley so there's some real room for change here.
-Newer malt types like Carabrown, which despite it's (annoyingly confusing) name it isn't a crystal malt at all but sort of a light brown malt or a more toasted biscuit malt.
-Really simple stuff like my own house style of using very small amounts of very dark crystal in many styles that don't normally call for that. Find that it works great to add some flavor while keeping the quantities low enough to avoid annoying sweetness.

 

[JONNYROTTEN]

I started in 09 and took a long hiatus.Now Im back.The things Ive noticed.
~Short 10 day/2 week Grain to glass (keg) Is becoming more popular for IPA's,because it works.Back in 09 anything under 6 weeks was green.
~Lots of people are going no chill.In 09 if you didn't chill your wort in record time you were practically guaranteed an infection.Not so.
Secondary fermentation isn't necessary unless adding fruit,wood chips ETC.It used to the norm for every beer.
~BIAB makes a mighty fine beer..Not sure if it was even around in 09

 

[Onkel_Udo]

I started in 09 and took a long hiatus.Now Im back.The things Ive noticed.
~Short 10 day/2 week Grain to glass (keg) Is becoming more popular for IPA's,because it works.Back in 09 anything under 6 weeks was green.
~Lots of people are going no chill.In 09 if you didn't chill your wort in record time you were practically guaranteed an infection.Not so.
Secondary fermentation isn't necessary unless adding fruit,wood chips ETC.It used to the norm for every beer.
~BIAB makes a mighty fine beer..Not sure if it was even around in 09

Try going back to 1993...brew until 2004...go to the desert for 4 years out of 7 years...come back in 2013 to STAR frickin SAN.

I still sanitized with bleach for most things in 2004 with Iodofor saved for special things.

Like I said in other threads, I still have a Phill Mill II. I did not not know even batch sparging existed in 1995 when I started all grain.

 

[55x11]

Still think there's plenty of room for innovation in malts as well:
-I'd kill for some old school 18th-century style diastolic brown malt. It'd be incredible to brew a SMaSH stout.
-New strains of barley or old strains being brought back. Saw some news about an old 19th century British barley strain being brought back. Except for MO most people don't seem to care very much about the strain of their barley so there's some real room for change here.
-Newer malt types like Carabrown, which despite it's (annoyingly confusing) name it isn't a crystal malt at all but sort of a light brown malt or a more toasted biscuit malt.
-Really simple stuff like my own house style of using very small amounts of very dark crystal in many styles that don't normally call for that. Find that it works great to add some flavor while keeping the quantities low enough to avoid annoying sweetness.

I am curious about malt innovation, but I am not holding out for some old historic recipes to drive the home brewing forward. I actually suspect the people in 18th century were drinking $hit, and they would be amazed at trying most of commercially available craft brews nowadays. Randy Mosher I think had a nice podcast somewhere where he debunked a lot of "legends" of the old styles like IPA, porter, bock, etc.

I guess I am looking for something transformational, not just something like "IPAs get a little darker" or "stouts get a little hoppier".

In some sense, the West Coast style Double-IPA is the only really new beer style (and a hugely popular too!) to emerge in the past, I don't know, 10, 20 maybe even 30 years.
Sours, Saisons, bocks, porters, blondes, stouts, etc. - were always around just vary in popularity somewhat.

 

[bkboiler]

really tremendous insight! great post!
I agree, I think the IPA trend will continue, but we'll see even more understanding of the different influences of various hop oils such as cohumulone and the impact that they have on flavor and stability.
I also think that, as some mention here, much more experimentation will be done with lagers and resurrecting historical styles such as Grodziski.
I'm betting that we'll also have the same two camps as today: those who are trying to make brew day as quick as possible, and those who are dedicated to a 5-8hr brew day and couldn't care about hurrying up.

 

[specharka]

Brulosophy has great, it's definitely guided how I brew but I think the biggest impact it's going to have is to make experimental split batches more popular which will provide vastly more information than a couple guys (no matter how smart and dedicated) can provide by themselves. For example one person in my local brew group did a split batch in which one half was cold crashed with gelatin and one half was just bottled (no cold crash, no gelatin) and the taste and aroma was night and day, while Brulosophy found no real different in flavor or aroma from using gelatin. The fact that we're doing and thinking about this stuff more now is really important as we figure out more and more about which variables really matter and in what instances.

For more kinds of yeast I love how stuff like Norwegian farmhouse yeast is now starting to appear on the market and I'm sure there's a lot of other farmhouse yeasts that have unique characteristics that are currently hiding away in some remote village somewhere. Also, AFAIK there really isn't as much effort put into breeding yeast as there is when it comes to breeding hops. If that changes we could get some really interesting new lab-bred strains.

AFAIK that's not the way new yeast strains are cultivated. From my understanding, yeast strains are typically harvested from existing breweries, isolated into colonies and propagated to investigate the fermentation properties. Wild yeast strains, like Norwegian debaromyces, have to undergo further genetic testing to determine taxonomic classification.

Right now there's an awesome push for genetic diversity in fermentation microflora. I expect that will result in more breweries experimenting with spontaneous fermentation and unique "house" yeast strains.

 

[HomebrewHandicapper]

What about purple, or crystal clear beer?

Zima makes a comeback!!!

 

[Bosh]

Try going back to 1993...brew until 2004...go to the desert for 4 years out of 7 years...come back in 2013 to STAR frickin SAN.

I still sanitized with bleach for most things in 2004 with Iodofor saved for special things.

Like I said in other threads, I still have a Phill Mill II. I did not not know even batch sparging existed in 1995 when I started all grain.

Batch/dunk sparges make things so mich easier. Especially with BIAB. Strange how many people assume that BIAB necessarily means a full volume mash.

For Starsan still haven`t ever used it due to the price, just stick with very dilute bleach.

 

[Bosh]

AFAIK that's not the way new yeast strains are cultivated. From my understanding, yeast strains are typically harvested from existing breweries, isolated into colonies and propagated to investigate the fermentation properties. Wild yeast strains, like Norwegian debaromyces, have to undergo further genetic testing to determine taxonomic classification.

Right now there's an awesome push for genetic diversity in fermentation microflora. I expect that will result in more breweries experimenting with spontaneous fermentation and unique "house" yeast strains.

Oh yes, certainly, AFAIK (which isn`t much) aside from a few high gravity strains there is very little work being put into breeding yeast by the companies that sell yeast. But what if the same amount of money, time and effort were to be put into yeast breeding as is currently put into hop breeding? I`m sure we`d get some interesting yeast out of that. Same for breeding new barley strains specifically to develop ones that make tasty beer. AFAIK nobody is doing that at all.

 

[Bosh]

really tremendous insight! great post!
I agree, I think the IPA trend will continue, but we'll see even more understanding of the different influences of various hop oils such as cohumulone and the impact that they have on flavor and stability.

What I think will be especially interesting is to see those IPA-specific hopping techniques start to propagate out into other types of beer. I`ve seen it for American saisons but for most other types of beer the hop schedules look mostly the same as they did in 2008. After all you can do a whole lot of dry hopping and a pretty big hop stand in a lot of non-bitter beers while keeping it within style in terms of IBUs. That`s allowed me to make some hop bombs (in terms of oils, very much not IBUs) that my wife loves while she won`t touch Pilsner Urquell because it`s too bitter.

 

[bob1852]

I think hop oils and hop extracts will become more popular, especially as demand and market volatility and environmental conditions continue to affect hop harvests.

I think more extreme examples of the styles on the opposite end of the current spectrum will continue in force (extremely hoppy session beers and extremely barrel aged dark beers).

The competition over brewer names and beer names is only going to get worse as there's more breweries and more overlapping distribution. That's just a reality of a growing market and a limited vocabulary.

Back to the homebrew scene.....we'll keep seeing new gadgets that come and go (i.e. Brew Bug) and slightly new techniques, but we'll also see a return to old school (Zap-Pap, etc.)

It's a great time in world's history to be into beer!

 

[Bosh]

I am curious about malt innovation, but I am not holding out for some old historic recipes to drive the home brewing forward. I actually suspect the people in 18th century were drinking $hit, and they would be amazed at trying most of commercially available craft brews nowadays. Randy Mosher I think had a nice podcast somewhere where he debunked a lot of "legends" of the old styles like IPA, porter, bock, etc.

I guess I am looking for something transformational, not just something like "IPAs get a little darker" or "stouts get a little hoppier".

In some sense, the West Coast style Double-IPA is the only really new beer style (and a hugely popular too!) to emerge in the past, I don't know, 10, 20 maybe even 30 years.
Sours, Saisons, bocks, porters, blondes, stouts, etc. - were always around just vary in popularity somewhat.

Well even very slow change compounded with time adds up to something transformational. Looks at English milds, their gravities crashed by more than half, they got vastly darker, ended up with way more specialty malts and/or adjuncts and sometimes got more percieved bitterness (gravities dropped much much faster than hopping rates during WW I so they must`ve tasted more bitter). Porter/stout went through MASSIVE transformations several times while staying officially the same style throughout.

As far as people in the old days drinking **** it`s hard to tell. People say good things about the handful of survivals of pre-industrial brewing and I KNOW I`ve had makgeolli (Korean sour rice beer) that`s pretty much the same as what people drank before Korea industrialized and it was pretty damn good. But maybe the handful of survivals survived because they`re really good and the rest were ****. I suspect that a lot of peasant brew was drank VERY fresh, after even with infected beer the yeast generally move faster than the bacteria and if you drink it before it hits FG it`ll have enough sweetness to balance the bacterial sourness (much like with makgeolli).

Just think it`s a lot harder to capture the tastes of old beers that most people think. Our barley is wrong and yeasts then were often quite different (a lot of old beer yeast seems to have godawful attentuation). Just look at old school IPA. It was often aged for a freaking year before being put on a boat while that`s the very last thing you want to do with a modern IPA. Some serious differences there, with brett yeast probably being the most important but far from the only factor.

As far as really new stuff maybe raw ale is your best bet.

 

[JKaranka]

I'd expect Victorian beer to be good if it was well cellared. It was the greatest industrial overtaking in the history of brewing, shipped the world over and documented to great detail. Stuff post diastatic brown malt is still available (malting practices haven't changed, yeasts are direct descendants, original barley varieties are coming back and hops are the same).

 

[Onkel_Udo]

Batch/dunk sparges make things so mich easier. Especially with BIAB. Strange how many people assume that BIAB necessarily means a full volume mash.

For Starsan still haven`t ever used it due to the price, just stick with very dilute bleach.

I am pretty sure you and I have a totally different idea of "easy" if you think sparging is easier than no sparge in BaiB, single vessel. I did sparging (pour over and dunk) while I was piloting BaiB before going full scale. I probably would not have made the conversion from my 3-tier if sparging had been a requirement.

As for the price of Star San...If you live in the US and place any value on you time, it is a bargain. One gallon of diluted star san has lasted me 4 brew days and I still have a quart in the sprayer. So that was one ounce...and it will last me more that 45 gallons...or about $1.25 per 45 gallons worst case scenario. If you have to pay high shipping prices to foreign lands I can almost see not using it...almost.

 

[jekeane]

Batch/dunk sparges make things so mich easier. Especially with BIAB. Strange how many people assume that BIAB necessarily means a full volume mash.

For Starsan still haven`t ever used it due to the price, just stick with very dilute bleach.

It's funny how much of this is perspective for instance:
I find it strange how many people dunk sparge with biab. When other than kettle size restrictions it is seemingly unnecessary.

It's also strange to me how many people will change their practices based of 1 experiment with a specific yeast strain (brulosophy) we have some guys in our homebrew club that change their beer weekly based on his findings. They make bad beer.

Best practices can and always should be thought about and adjusted. There shouldn't be sacred cows. That being said eschewing traditional wisdom for whatever the one time tested idea is probably isn't always great.

 

[Subdivisions]

Subdivisions: back in 2008 IIRC you had very few people advocating fermentation times of less than three weeks and a lot fewer people ramping up temps for anything but Belgians. Now while a lot of peole still do longer primaries you get a lot of people advocating 10 days or even less for really hoppy beers that you want to drink as fresh as possible (for example the very fast fermentation schedule recommended by the influencial Brulosophy website). Bottled my latest beer after a week in primary and no problems detected, think ramping up the temp after the krausen dropped helped with that. Also cold crashing has become a lot more common.

Ya, the whole get it off the yeast cake thing. I'm newer then that but I figured people moved over to secondary and let it sit a while longer. Who knew??

Funny how things have changed. Its been mostly home brewers that have de-mystified these myths just from trial and error.

 

[JKaranka]

Oh, another wish for the coming years: Brett and Brett blends as dry yeast

 

[Subdivisions]

Oh, another wish for the coming years: Brett and Brett blends as dry yeast

I'm wishing for everything as a dry yeast.

 

[Bosh]

I am pretty sure you and I have a totally different idea of "easy" if you think sparging is easier than no sparge in BaiB, single vessel. I did sparging (pour over and dunk) while I was piloting BaiB before going full scale. I probably would not have made the conversion from my 3-tier if sparging had been a requirement.

As for the price of Star San...If you live in the US and place any value on you time, it is a bargain. One gallon of diluted star san has lasted me 4 brew days and I still have a quart in the sprayer. So that was one ounce...and it will last me more that 45 gallons...or about $1.25 per 45 gallons worst case scenario. If you have to pay high shipping prices to foreign lands I can almost see not using it...almost.

Just mean that BIAB dunk sparging is a lot easier than fly sparging, for example (at least for me). Do need a bigger brew pot though

For Starsan, here in Korea it's about $16 for 8oz and $105 for a gallon. If you spray on the starsan that'd go a long way, I guess I'm just used to completely inundating everything in sanitizer (i.e. filling up the carboy to the rim in dilute bleach) which is cheap with bleach but painful with starsan.

It's also strange to me how many people will change their practices based of 1 experiment with a specific yeast strain (brulosophy) we have some guys in our homebrew club that change their beer weekly based on his findings. They make bad beer.

For Brulosophy influencing my techniques the big one would be not worrying much about kettle trub getting in the carboy and doing a 60 rather than 90 minute boil with pilsner malt. The rest is mostly just me not stressing out being not doing things I wasn't doing anyway like using pure oxygen.

Ya, the whole get it off the yeast cake thing. I'm newer then that but I figured people moved over to secondary and let it sit a while longer. Who knew??

Funny how things have changed. Its been mostly home brewers that have de-mystified these myths just from trial and error.

They used to. I remember as a kid my father explaining to me the difference between the primary and secondary and how vital it was to get the beer into the secondary ASAP to keep all of the dead yeast from making the beer taste bad.

 

[msa8967]

I am really wondering about 2 things.

1. Will the stainless steel versus aluminum debate finally cease and reach a consensus opinion?

2. How many home brewers will switch over to automated systems?

 

[seabrew8]

I never seen any of this anti-crystal stuff....?

 

[slym2none]

I never seen any of this anti-crystal stuff....?

Heh - post an IPA recipe with even 10% crystal malts in the grain bill.

 

[Onkel_Udo]

For Starsan, here in Korea it's about $16 for 8oz and $105 for a gallon. If you spray on the starsan that'd go a long way, I guess I'm just used to completely inundating everything in sanitizer (i.e. filling up the carboy to the rim in dilute bleach) which is cheap with bleach but painful with starsan.

Even at $16, so $2 an oz, I would go for it.

Picture this, you make a gallon. Two quarts go to spray bottles, the other two quarts are kept in a small bucket.

"Swish" the 2- quarts around a fermenter and dump back into the bucket...you loose about to 2 oz of the diluted Star San. Soak tubing in the bucket. Spray everything else.

I loose about 4-6 oz of solution a brew.

 

[ResumeMan]

For Starsan, here in Korea it's about $16 for 8oz and $105 for a gallon. If you spray on the starsan that'd go a long way, I guess I'm just used to completely inundating everything in sanitizer (i.e. filling up the carboy to the rim in dilute bleach) which is cheap with bleach but painful with starsan.

We're veering way off topic here, but the point of StarSan is that you reuse it extensively. As long as the pH is in range (<3 I think? Can't recall for sure) I'll make a 4-gal batch of sanitizer (takes <1 oz, so ~$2), and will use it for months and months. Dump it into the carboy, dump it back out into the storage bucket. Soak your racking cane, rack it back into the storage bucket. You'll get consistent results without worrying about whether you under- or over-diluted the bleach.

To each his own of course, but I just wanted to emphasize that, given the way you can use the stuff, even Korea prices don't make it an expensive sanitizer.

Anyway, coming somewhat closer to the topic, I had a similar though less extreme experience to you. I started brewing in '01 and through 2004 was deeply immersed in it. Then I mostly stopped (would make 1-2 batches or so a year, and wasn't reading anything new), till I jumped back in with both feet in 2011, and saw all the changes, like the no-secondary, not sweating HSA, etc. It was eye-opening for me too!

 

[seabrew8]

Heh - post an IPA recipe with even 10% crystal malts in the grain bill.

Thats why i didn't see it! I don't like IPA's.

 

[seabrew8]

Thats what i think will be a trend soon! Less hops! More bitters. A paradox...

 

[Onkel_Udo]

Thats what i think will be a trend soon! Less hops! More bitters. A paradox...

I hate being trendy so if this happens I will have to move to IPA's to maintain my counter-culture persona. Or not because I love me some Bitters and Milds.

 

[enkamania]

Shorter and smaller yeast starters.

 

[kevink]

Hopefully people will stop talking about CO2 blankets.

 

[bob1852]

Hopefully people will stop talking about CO2 blankets.

But it sounds so technical!

 

[bob1852]

I really hope 5-star ditches that "5.2" product. It's garbage, and sad that the company that brings us Star-San sells that snake oil.

 

[olotti]

I've only been brewing 2 yrs and in that time just things like big hopstands and dry hopping after primary fermentation are new where when I started it was u must have a 60, 15,10, 5 additions for your hops. You also had to wait till day 14 to dry hop and the quick grain to class has sped up, I bottle but even I've found that once I hit fg even after 4 days I can dry hop then cold crash and bottle in 14 days. It's now the fresher you can get it the better you'll get the whole nuance of the beer ie klimichs heady topper theory. He's def onto something plus the fact most new trendy beers are canned not bottled and I'm sure there's logistics in there but it certainly holds true to what he wanted in that canned beers hold over better than bottles for an IPA anyway.

 

[doug293cz]

But it sounds so technical!

And it's totally bogus.

Brew on