No one organization or individual should be respected as an omniscient authority on homebrewing. It’s a hobby. And it is a young hobby. We can all learn from one another. Mistakes will be made. Usually we will drink the mistakes and just brew some more.
Cheers all.
I treat my mistakes as unintentional experiments…and drink them, if they taste good enough to deserve consumption.
We all have more knowledge than we started the hobby with and it seems that there are some instances of “2 steps forward and 1 step back” as we go. I can live with that.
I guess it’s like everything else in life, fact check everything yourself. “Trust but verify.” I’ve noticed a couple of threads lately on the forum running something like: OP has a question, people contribute, OP comes back saying thanks guys, I went and did some more research, here’s what I found. Maybe later this too gets corrected. That’s how we really learn. And share in a supportive community. Drinking mistakes was the only tool we had way back when. Thanks, Jim for posting the mission statement. Good reality check.
Well, I guess if I am getting pissy I am in good company. This is a pretty good example: Scottish Ales
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?share_fid=40079&share_tid=29752&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.homebrewersassociation.org%2Fforum%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D29752&share_type=t
I especially like this quote:
Ya know what, now that you ruined my day by reminding me of the Scottish beer style debacle, I have to apologize and agree with you. Anyone who still perpetuates invented fake Scottish beer style info, should be severely reprimanded.
Tuesday I stopped at a brewery in the next town east, where a friend brews. He had a Scotch Ale on, the sample was so malty. 98% Pale Malt, 2% Roast Malt @ vorlauf. I complimented him for not throughing in a bag of pleated malt!
The lack of sound technical information from the AHA is why I allowed my membership to lapse. All this is a great example of that.
Yes, the AHA’s purpose is to further brewing, not be a technical authority on brewing. However, allowing misinformation to be regularly broadcast from their platform will only tarnish their reputation and hinder their efforts to serve out hobby. Fake news, anyone?
The AHA doesn’t need to be Seibel, or Kunze, or even Ron. (Though the BJCP ought to at least LOOK at his blog…) They SHOULD at least have the in-house knowledge to sort fact from fiction.
Ron Pattinson is listed under “Review and Commentary” in the 2015 Guidelines. He was involved at some level to get that call out.
Fake news indeed.
I stand corrected. I’ll admit I haven’t really done a deep dive into the 2015 guidelines.
The difference is that the authoritarian thing is far more obvious with the BJCP.
Deep dive not needed, his name is on the title page; but a look at the Scottish ale section suggests his voice was clearly heard.
As to authoritarianism, that’s part and parcel of style guidelines. Which I believe are antithetical to everything true and good about brewing, but that’s another matter. AHA shouldn’t be authoritarian, but a reliable clearinghouse of info so we can better do our own thing.
Uh yeah.
Not here to defend the BJCP on any specific style guideline, but the amount of work collectively done by those listed in the credits is commendable. Old information and myths persist, unfortunately. Since the BJCP is inherently geared toward competition, there will be some authoritarian strokes in the style guidelines. I don’t have a problem with that and if you want to stray from the guidelines for a particular style, there are styles for those “strayings”, you just have to fit the right one and be a bit descriptive. I stray all over the place and treat it like the hobby that it is, generally, in my typical brewing - but if I enter a competition with a particular style that is relatively concrete, I accept that as the constraints in which I should enter my beer. I then sit back and welcome the comments, knowing that the judges are giving me an honest assessment within their limitations (and some are really good, some are not so thorough, and some are pompous and presumptuous - like every other avenue of life).
Just sayin…and I don’t deny that I have had disagreements in situations where reasonable minds may differ and we end up agreeing to disagree.
Here we go again. Just read an article on Irish red ale in the current Zymurgy. It tells us that while both Irish and Scottish ales get their color and a bit of flavor from roast barley, Scottish are distinguished by long boils to caramelize the wort and, of course, a touch of smoky flavor. Hope Ron has quit reading it again, think I will too. I recently rejoined AHA on the assumption that it must by now have become something worth supporting for the promotion of the hobby. But so many recent articles could have come right out of an early 90s issue.
I like to just put the peet moss right in the glass. In my imagination, thats how they did it.
That’s it isn’t it? “Well I imagine the old timers probably did such and such…” Why bother with research?
Something went awry when you quoted my post…
Sure did – where the heck did that come from? Has a nice ring to it though. I’m literally having trouble typing this through tears of laughter.