I went into a local BYO place today because I was told that I might be able to order grain from them. Turns out they were very willing to order grain for me from their supplier when they order LME and specialty grains so that was positive. Gotta wait a bit but at least I will get 25kg bags of 2-row without the 2 hour drive I was doing before.
But, we got talking about beer, brewing etc and I was so sadly disappointed to see what they considered a “Recipe”. Basically, every recipe they showed me was:
X lbs LME
X time 2 glucose.
Probably 1/3 LME and 2/3 corn sugar in all of their recipes. They also only used dry yeast and all of the beer was fermented at 68 degrees regardless of whether it was a lager or an ale. Just so sad.
I did see an interesting way to ferment though. They had 50L plastic barrels with holes cut in them and then a plastic bag put into the barrel. The beer was put in the bag and a twist-tie put on the bag. That’s it. No fermentation lock or anything. 2 weeks in that, filtered and bottled for a week. and you have beer. Or what they called beer.
We used to have one of those places here in Scottsdale… very cool place, had good beer… but they had a ‘menu’ of recipes and were more than willing to let you bring in one, and brew it with you… to bad it shut down…
A 68* lager!!! Dear god I hope Major does not read this thread. Will all his recent problems, this will be just thing to drive him over the edge. We’ll next be reading about him in BFI’s exploding heart thread!! :o
Oh, I should also mention when I was trying to get 2-row, I asked if her supplier carried Maris Otter. “What’s that?”
This from a person who owns and runs a brew your own.
I don’t know if it’s the same place, but about a year ago I got contacted by a brew on premise place in Canada to help them troubleshoot some problems they were having. Very nice people, but all they knew about brewing was what the previous owner had told them and most of that was incorrect. Keep in mind that the people you’re talking to might well just look at the place as a business and have no idea (or interest) in what brewing’s all about.
On a serious note, I’ve been thinking about this thread a lot this evening, and you know what really bums me about it? How many people will go there, pony up 100$ or better (I’m told these byo places are not cheap) and make beer that taste like butt. So, they decide to never give homebrew, or homebrewing a chance again, based on this experience. If you ask me, it’s not doing our hobby any justice. :
Weazeltoe - $110 Can for 48 L of “regular”, $128 for 48 L of “premium” 10% discount if you’re not wearing pants.
Denny - might not be the same place, Canada is a fair size but you never know. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if cash is the driving factor over quality.
I paid $75 for two cases of Bigfoot today. That is the normal net yield from a five gallon batch. As much as I’d like to think my barleywine tastes good, I like Bigfoot better. I can’t imagine getting excited about spending $100 for two cases of lolo kine beer.
I’m slowly convincing my local beer shop to become a homebrew supply shop as well (we’re having the first Paris homebrewer’s meeting there next Wednesday) and the BYO shop was something I had mentioned to him, and he seemed interested. I feel like that sort of shop would only work in a very densely populated urban area like NYC, Paris or London, where most apartments have (literally) 1 square meter of kitchen. That’s the only reason I see for having one.
They all went out of business a decade ago around here. I once gave a friend who had tried this one of my homebrews and he said, “I didn’t know it was possible to make beer like this at home.” The beers I tasted from Brew On Premises establishments were about the same quality as your very first off-the-shelf extract kit, the one with dry yeast, old extract and lots of sugar. Perhaps they’re better now?
edit to change from “brew your own” to “brew on premisses”
edit again to correct the spelling of “premises”
I will tell people about brewing only if they ask and I don’t go into details unless they ask more questions. It’s not a hobby for everyone and I personally kind of prefer it that way. Makes it seem more special to me.
I certainly understand how you feel, and to some extent, I feel the same way. But, think of it this way…the more who get into the hobby, the more homebrew shops open up. The more homebrew shops open up, the cost go down for each to stay competitive.
Also, if I do chose to tell someone that I homebrew, and their only experience is with something even worse than homebrew swill, what will they think of me and my beer, no matter how hard I try and tell them other wise? Of course, a sample would help, but sometimes it’s just feasible. Some times, I even get to thinking that Mr. Beer does our hobby more harm than good. I have a buddy in Idaho who used it for a couple batches, and just totally gave up on homebrew, because it was so awful. Well, fast forward a few years…I now have my 12 gallon system in his garage to do my brewing. Man is he gonna be shocked when I tap that first keg next week, and finds out what real homebrew taste like. Point is, if he never met me, he would be turned off homebrew for life. And to me, that just sucks.
And I feel the opposite. I owe everything to Mr. Beer for getting me into this hobby. Had I not been given a kit, I most likely would have never tried brewing. It gave me the kick in the ass that I needed. At least one of them.
As for more home brew shops opening, that means little to me. I do group, bulk buys for just about everything and a few more hobbyists aren’t going to make our suppliers drop their prices. Don’t get me wrong, I do see your point and it may apply to more people like yourself, just not me.
Euge,
I think Weazletoe summed it up fairly well. Picture a place with a half dozen brew kettles. You add your water, dump in a bit of malt extract and a lot of corn syrup and some hops. Boil it and cool it and then you get to pitch the yeast so you can say you made beer. It’s sort of like being a father in the delivery room. They let you cut the cord so you can say you helped but you really didn’t do a hell of a lot.
Agreed…It’s amazing that with all of the information available on the internet, in books, magazines and through LHBC’s and LHBS’s that folks would entertain such an idea. I understand the convenience factor to a point but if the beer quality is poor then why even pursue it. I can only imagine the beer quality to be pretty nasty.
…but perhars it’s different strokes for different folks.
The people I talked with (who by the way did all their fermentations at 68!) were definitely interested in quality, but as a means to keep the customers happy and their business going. You really can’t fault them. They bought a business.
