It’s the kind of article I imagine is written just to get people stirred up and sharing the beer but I dunno, maybe he just really likes sweet beers.
I agree about the Pico and the Pico packs or whatever they are called. I don’t personally see the value in buying a prepared package of ingredients that will supposedly clone a beer at a huge premium. For me the purposes of cloning a commercial beer including making a beer you like cheaply, testing the quality of your brewing against a standard and brewing a beer you like to do something different to it (e.g. hopping differently, adding fruit). None of those really apply to those Pico packs. I wouldn’t hate on people for buying them I just don’t personally see the point.
Oh man! I could buy a complete, new, turnkey 3 barrel brewhouse with 3 or 4 fermenters for less than it would take to replace all my non-beer making tools. And that’s not bragging, it’s just the way it is if you’re into tools, and it is the result of an entire life busting my butt looking for deals on stuff I need and want. Most of the other guys I know who are tool junkies have shops that make mine look Neolithic by comparison.
I guess that may be why I always am perplexed by the folks on this forum who fret excessively about spending a few bucks on equipment upgrades. I suspect that may be the lingering effect of the hyper frugality of Dave Line, Mr. Papazian and the other folks who did so much to bring this activity out of the shadows. I’ve never had a fat checkbook, but I learned the hard way, a very long time ago that cheap tools are no bargain.
I could have mentioned my friend who is a serious bike rider, and has multiple high dollar road and mountain bikes, so he can select the right one for the course. His “tools” are expensive too.
Seems to be true for most hobbies I have partaken in. You can compete in archery with $50 of equipment, but you’re not likely to succeed as well as they big boys with $1-$2K in components. Skiing the same: you can get down any hill will a couple boards, or even just one if you roll that way, but having specialized equipment for the given terrain can make a world of difference. For just having fun, I think its best to stay on the low end. Recently, I thought it would be really neat to get into hand tool woodworking. Once I did some research and saw how much each of the 50 or more tools would run me, that idea went the way of the dodo
Exactly. I’ve never seen my wife as mad as the time a family member criticized us for trying to grow as much of our own food as possible. He said, “Not only is it impossible to grow enough food to feed your family all year, think about what you would be giving up by spending your time doing that? I can go to the co-op and buy any variety of tomato I want, and I don’t have to grow them.”
We feel that there is tremendous value in doing things, rather than just getting things. The process enhances the product in such a way that the time spent is its own reward, because you’re doing meaningful work that validates your own life. I’m all for creative pursuits - making quilts is a huge time investment, but you’re creating things that otherwise would not exist. Our beers are the same way - each one is unique and fleeting, creative products of our careful attention and personal investment.
Bottom line, DIY anything makes you have a greater knowledge of that thing, and usually a greater respect for those pros who are doing it right. As evidenced by this article
Maybe we can chalk it up to the author being fashionably obtuse. Or perhaps expressing a viewpoint which is the ultimate realization of the disposable consumer society, which I guess is the same thing, or at least a very similar thing.
I think the author of this piece probably is just cynically harvesting income by playing to the shallow, vapid masses. At least further evidence to the contrary, I’ll give him credit for as much.
Nothing is to be gained by trying to explain why some people enjoy, or are driven to try a wide variety of pursuits, or God forbid, be self sufficient, to the intended audience of this piece, because as they say, “you can’t fix stupid”, or “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you”.
I wonder what provoked this random rant…There wasn’t any introduction suggesting some catalyst or recent experience, just a rather vague opinion article from “some old guy” about how he wants to buy beer…my response is simply OK go for it. As for me I’ll continue my hobby happily regardless of this opinion.
