i dont want to seem like a dick and i honestly hope no one from that club reads it, but damn. ive been to a few homebrew club meets so far and the beer is really, really not up to par.
i actually sincerely wonder if people’s (MY) taste buds get into ruts where they can’t appreciate certain things??
i brought a good beer of mine and it got several people coming up and saying its good, but i wonder if everyone got that kind of reply
the beers i tasted, i immediately thought “needed more yeast in fermentation” “you packaged this too fast” (x 3) - and a high-pressure lager fermenation done in ?? 7 days or something that was just awful.
honestly, if i didnt havea beer that i didnt sincerely enjoy i would not bring it as a sample.
it kind of on one hand makes me believe i am making good beer, but on the other - what the hell is going on out there?
my only next step i can imagine is submitting my beer to a much more serious tasting.
thoughts? are homebrew clubs this way?
one wild-brett thing was just poisonous tasting - as in i thought it could just simply have been in contact with some unsafe plastic material for a long time, why the hell would anyone let people taste that?
bring on the hate or bring on suggestions, i feel shocked and disillusioned tbh
I appreciate your concern, but I think that you’re looking at this wrong.
There is little chance that all of those aspiring to brew beer are going to get it right without knowledge and experience. We have to try and learn. I don’t like drinking crappy beer any more than you, but I try and use my knowledge to help decipher when there’s a problem and help a brewer to fix it.
You can be a part of the solution to the bad beer in your club or you can turn up your nose. I recommend trying to help.
My club started in 2003-2004 timeframe, and I was a member from day one. My club was just like you describe for a few years. Then… it got better. We learned a lot from each other. Most of us had only been brewing a couple years; the hobby was relatively young yet, and the internet barely had a presence yet beyond rec.crafts.brewing etc. Most of those original club members from 20 years ago are no longer with the club, most of them left years ago, maybe because their beer sucked, or maybe because life got too busy, they lost interest, whatever else. BUT… several of those original members (including me) ARE STILL homebrewing today… AND our beer is MUCH better, even excellent. And that’s because all of those factors like improvements in online knowledge, as well as from having technical discussions at club meetings and events, brewing together at people’s houses, with stronger club members not being afraid to tell it like it is but tell a person when there’s something wrong with the brew and offering advice on how it might improve. That’s the key… how not to sound like a dick but to be able to offer great suggestions to someone on how they might improve their process. And that requires some boldness on the judger and some thicker skin by the recipient. My club today is made up of tougher skinned nerds who are pretty much all on a constant quest to improve their beer. Anyone who couldn’t handle criticism left a while ago. This is both good and bad… but mostly good, IMO. The trick is to try not to sound like a dick when providing feedback. One idea for how we’d done this in my club is to have a ton (probably 3 or 4 per year at leaast) of BLIND competitions where we judged each other’s beers briefly, took a few notes on a small slip of paper on what was both good and bad about it, then turned over all those sheets to the brewer upon completion. Or we’ve also done several where we judge them Best of Show style where we are still blind but audible, where the bad beers are eliminated immediately for good reasons and we usually quickly reach consensus, narrowing down to which beers are the best and why, without knowing exactly whose is whose (asking also that if you KNOW which beer is yours… try not to be selling it too hard, jeez!). It is in these same ways also, tasting blind, that I have even been able to give MYSELF OBJECTIVE feedback on MY OWN BEER! THAT is cool. I love when I have nasty comments about my own beer, it really can open up your eyes to your own biases.
So anyway. Sounds like your club is full of noobs, or maybe stubborn old guys who don’t give a crap about quality but just enjoy a good buzz, or some of both. Or they just never bothered to learn anything from each other, but would rather just socialize, maybe get wasted, whatever. There is a little merit in that approach, but… look into blind tastings, if they haven’t already, and/or the manner in which those blind tastings are conducted. That might help a bit. And encourage everyone to read up on the best sources in books and online, that’s helped me immensely… reading a lot. And tasting a lot. Encourage people who are interested to become certified BJCP judges. That I think also is the point at which our club started turning around. Three of us went to BJCP class, myself included… and things haven’t been the same since. It can be eye opening.
Personally, I think there’s too much useless “noise” out there confusing new and occasional brewers.
Even harmful noise from bad experiments that can’t control variables and evaluation well enough , and end up concluding e.g. that there’s no difference between 5 % and 6% ABV or between a lager fermented at 10C vs 20C.
The only thing a new brewer needs is the Palmer book for process including water and mash pH and Jamie’s book for recipes. Then someone to tell them: do the recipes as-is for a year or two.
If you have time to kill, listen to Jamil old podcasts on styles.
And if you want to know what the good pros do, get the recently translated Narziss book or Kunze’s book.
Prost!
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” - Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan Doyle)
While I agree with most of what you said, I have Palmers book and started reading it when I was about 2 years into the hobby. Most of it went right over my head. Way too technical for me. It is sitting in my book case and hasn’t moved for probably 6 to 8 months. I feel I have learned more from you good folks here and the other forum I post on than I did reading his book. With that said, if you enjoy the technical stuff and can understand the ideas behind them, I am sure you will get a lot more than I did. I am not the sharpest tool in the shed as they say. Other than that, I have only had a few home brews from other folks, and I have to admit I have enjoyed them all.
There are some good suggestions here for improving brewing through homebrew clubs. I’ll also add that I very much enjoy our meetings, even when some of the beer isn’t that good. Half of the fun is just getting together with friends who are home brewers and sampling their beer - just because it’s homebrew.
I have found that if you have a book like Palmer’s that you don’t grasp, after a period of time brewing and getting tidbits from other places (such as this forum), you can go back and have a better idea of what John was saying. Not just his books, but many others.
Palmer’s How To Brew is not the only or best answer for everyone either. There’s something to be said also for Papazian’s Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Even though it was written in like the 1970s, and the information outdated a bit, his simple, straight-forward, and entertaining manner in which he presents the basic information that you need to get started is still pretty much the best there is or ever was. How To Brew by Palmer is great for some, but if that doesn’t work, try Papazian; it’s different, and gives good ideas for getting started that can continue to grow. It worked for me.
But we digress. Getting back to the original topic… if an old brewer never read anything but Papazian (or Dave Line!), I might see how your beer might be pretty good sometimes, but maybe never really great or excellent. To those old brewers who don’t want to read anything else or don’t want to learn, and are just happy the way things have always been… yeah, people or clubs who don’t try to learn or improve are going to be less than mediocre. There’s always opportunity for those who care to share ideas and discuss details to improve. And if that’s just a little at a time for many years, that’s fine. No need to take a crash course, or to be ridiculed, as long as you’re willing to learn, and you’ll even have fun at the same time.
A lot of homebrewers are not brewing world class beer and not necessarily looking for feedback about their beers at homebrew club meetings. Some clubs are just folks who enjoy homebrewing and sharing their beers with likeminded people. That club may not be a good fit for you or the overall club meetings are not as useful to you as finding a group within the club that want to collaborate on improving their beers.
I used to be part of a club for a while that was exactly like this and I dropped off because I never found that group there. Most of the beers were not good but kind words were always exchanged. For all you know, other members had criticism for your beers and didn’t want to throw unsolicited criticism in your face anymore than you did to their faces.
From a homebrewer perspective, is there anything new or interesting in Narziss for someone who already has a copy of Kunze (5th edition)? What is June’s book? I’m not familiar with that one.
I haven’t been in a club for a number of years… the one I belonged to changed the meeting place to a new location which is too far for me to drive. But there were several certified and experienced BJCP judges and they offered honest and constructive critiques of everyone’s beer. They told us what they perceived in the beer and offered tips to help correct it. Your club would no doubt benefit from having a mentor or two like that in the ranks. I know I became a better brewer with that kind of feedback.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” - Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan Doyle)
$100 is not $1000.
Narziss book is $100.
You can get Palmer and Jamil, both used, for $10 each.
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” - Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan Doyle)
But they’ll spend well over $1,000.00 in shiny new mash tuns, kettles, fermenters, glycol chillers, kegerators, etc… which probably won’t improve their beer the way information can.
This comment and your response seem to be looking for a fight.
Dead nerd?! Really?!
Have a great day, everyone!
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” - Sherlock Holmes (A. Conan Doyle)
i think my original post had an odd tone, and was definitely influenced by having had a few beers as well as my honest inexperience in the social aspect of homebrewing. i think the club’s been around for a while, and i also forgot there was one extremely interesting beer which some of you may be aware about if you read brewing blogs and it was impressive, but was overshadowed by all the others i had after.
yes, definitely it will be about either just rolling with it and enjoying it as a social thing and/or seeing what can be done in a constructive and really, indirect way to explain some specific best practices based on what i tasted.
online im anonymous and pretty free in critiquing but IRL i am the opposite generally. and i in fact was expecting and even hoping for more criticism of my beers.
i think one big thing when doing homebrew on a regular schedule is to try to only change one variable at a time when you are “”“improving”“” your brews.
i definitely only said good things or lol, on that night a bit of nothing-at-all as well. its a fairly large group and i think there is a segement that is more serious or focused on different styles than others.
its intriguing to me how many people are just really really into hazy/NEIPAs even as a homebrewer.
Though i think that kind of point in itself indicates that people just have different tastes and expectations of beer.
Yeah, not a fan of that word. tbh, i am a self (and socially, especially in my past) identified nerd. and despite the relative coolness nowadays “oh im such a nerd!”, imho we ARE the people who have the obsessive nature as well as unfortunately often the sometimes grating personalities ( ;D ) that are required to create a relatively odd hobby and fully flesh it out from simply thinking about it to a real, likely billion dollar industry supporting it. im talking about the creation of home-brewing in the modern sense of it. im a nerd for sure.
lool. that was the thing with the one beer - the guy was showing off his complicated pressure ferm equipment lol and it was such an objectively ugly beer. (if that guy ever happens to read this - he is a LEGIT very nice guy and i think he made a good beer in a previous meetup.)
A homebrew club will have people from beginners to accomplished brewers. We all made our first beer. Some get better on thier own, some don’t, some benefit from the help they get in the club. I made my first beer, joined a good club and benefited from advice from others.
Now I give advice. It is gratifying when people come up to me and say I helped them make better beer.
I’m a lifelong learner. A little nerdy. Not dead yet. If Narziss is $100 I might have to spend a little for that, just because.
My equipment is mostly 20+ years old. I make the beer on the equipment I have using the techniques I learned over the years. There are 2 guys I know, and many of you have heard of, that make award winning beer on very basic systems. They know what they’re doing. One guy said, “What works for me, works for me”.