“Fancy system” can be interpreted different ways. A cooler w/ a braid might be fancy to someone with a bucket and drilled holes (Zapap?). A single vessel BIAB/all-in-one might be fancy to someone with a cooler w/ a braid. A 3 vessel HERMS/RIMS might be fancy to someone with a single vessel BIAB/all-in-one. A full blown 3 vessel low oxygen setup might be fancy to someone with a 3 vessel HERMS/RIMS.
A drinkable beer to your taste with no discernable faults is a good beer no matter how it’s brewed or what system it’s brewed on. Process and process adjustments get you to that point.
i think the messages are clear here but as i get older, and i know many people here much older than i, i definitely anticipate increased automation and investment in my brewing equipment. when im 60 i definitely dont want to be lifting 5 gallons of wort or beer even for a very short distance.
IDK how “old” you are but I can attest to the fact that 60 isn’t at all old. I’m 61 and can still carry 2-5 gallon kegs (100 lbs.) up 15 stairs around the corner, down the hall and into the garage to put on tap. Am I huffing and puffing? Hell Yes!! And that’s my signal to have a beer!! Cheers to the old farts!!
What makes better beer, experience makes better beer. I have 2 systems, both run on NG. Both built over years of brewing. Both make great beer now. Both made very average beer years ago. It isn’t the system at all in my opinion. I do see an AIO system for me down the road. I’d love to brew inside and have strike at temp when I wake up. Man that sounds nice. Brewing 20g of Kolsch on Saturday. It’s so much better now than 10 years ago. Every step matters, equipment not as important.
Not being defensive or anything, but if you feel YouTube videos are useless, than what would you suggest?
I joined a homebrew club in the hope of learning more. They’re a great bunch of guys, but it’s really more of a bunch of guys who enjoy drinking beer together, rather than a high functioning homebrew club that hosts educational events.
I can read books, and I’ve collected a number of them, but it’s nice to see different techniques and systems in action. YouTube can provide that, and I’m not sure where else to find something similar.
I have to agree with this. I use Youtube for a bunch of stuff. Repair work mostly. When the Fridge Icemaker went out, I was able to fix it with the help of Youtube. My stove stopped heating, and with the help of Youtube I was able to get the part for less than 50 bucks and fix it myself. So, to me, Youtube has some great vids to help repair things that I don’t have any clue on. Also, I have found the brewing vids from some of the pro’s (Clawhammer, Apt Brewer, Brulosphy) have been awesome to watch and take info from.
I’ll agree that books are more likely to be researched and vetted, but there’s certainly no guarantee of accuracy. Especially for something like brewing, which is still a relatively small niche market where a small publisher may not have the expertise on the topic. My wife’s coworker self-published a book on the Civil War. I don’t think an editor was even involved with that.
Yes, you’ve got the big names who you can reliably count on, but those books typically focus on a specific topic or they tend to be like textbooks for brewing, with a lot of general info and guidelines. Perhaps you’ll see a picture or description of the brewer’s own setup, but there are so many different manufacturers out there and even more permutations for putting a system together. I can see a variety of different equipment and builds posted on forums or on YouTube, which can give me ideas for optimizing my own setup.
Also, books are still static, printed text. You can’t see an actual demonstration of a technique or a brew system in action. Sometimes, seeing how something is actually used can really help a new concept to “click”.
I appreciate the huge amount of bad info that’s potentially out there, and you need a critical mind anytime you’re on the net. But again, I feel that YouTube fills a need for me.
Perhaps the “best of both words” (print, audio, and video) is following experts where and how they chose to offer their content. In the early 2020s, many of the book authors from the 2010s are hosting or guests on chats, videos, blogs, podcasts. Much of this content is advertiser supported, the rest is available on subscription from ‘publishers’.
I like a cpl BrewTuber’s channels. I pretty much learned to brew all grain watching the old Northern Brewer guys. Don Osborn introduced me to batch sparging in a cooler. It was easy to watch him and do what he did to end up with pretty good beer right out of the gate. (He mentioned learning the technique from some guy named Denny Conn[emoji2369]).
These days, Brew Dudes is one I still check in on from time to time. I see eye to eye with most of their stuff.
I like to check out the British and Aussie brew channels from time to time as well just to get different points of view.
I did join a club which is really just a bunch of guys who bring beer, drink each others beer, hang out, and vote on who’s beer we like best. Not much learning going on there.
