Don’t get me wrong, mashweasel, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your critique of Sean’s experiment. I’m no scientist, but the idea of a repeatable procedure & peer review is not new to me, so your insight was quite enlightening. I also really enjoyed reading Sean’s article.
Now, the ‘only beer’ thing I said…
All I was really trying to say was that we are all passionate about beer (or else we wouldn’t engage in this hobby). If Sean took the time to round up some tasters, gather their subjective opinions and write it up for us to enjoy, lets take it at face value - they are subjective opinions about beer. Reading peer reviewed articles is great, but nothing beats the empirical evidence gathered by your own senses from a couple of frosty pints!
Gotta give credit where credit is due, most homebrewers rely on other homebrewers for many experiments and very few of us are able to maintain a lab quality, controlled experiment. I’m into it for the beer, yeh some are better than others but if I can brew a decent beer that other people like… why tell them I might have sneezed over the brew kettle? :D
I like being able to read a report without having to take a class to understand what a cyclotron or some other gadget is, don’t get me wrong I do appreciate those experiments… I just wish those experimenters (scientists) wrote their report like they were addressing ME rather than a group of professional scientists in such a manner that it seems they are seeking a nobel prize etc. We’re “home”- brewers that like to dabble just enough to hopefully make decent beer on a regular basis for the most-part.
Kris, yeh, I like reading your posts on what you’ve found or done too… but you’re a bit wordy sometimes and I start drifting… not your fault but mine, I’m getting old and like to cut to the chase more now.
You are not the intended audience for those types of experiments and reports and asking scientists to cater to your intellectual capacity is a little silly
I don’t think that the write-up of the experiments should be simplified as much as possible in order to make them more understandable. Most of these write-ups are simply for the sake of documenting what was done which allows peer-review. This way the experimenter down’t have to worry about the audicence.
However, I do agree that it is helpful to present conclusions drawn from the experiment in simple terms since this is what most other brewers are looking for.
Wow, I thought the major breweries had their own scientists and reports. I guess I just thought discussing pitching rates for 5 or 10 gallon batches in an in-home setting was more of a home brewers issue.
Glitterbug, you’re full of yourself aren’t ya. I believe you will teach one day.
My MO is just to read the first paragraph and the last paragraph. If there’s more to it then that I give up. Hey, I did manage to read all of the Dune series and I understood at least 45 percent of it.
“It was also found that higher pitching rates led to lower bitterness unit levels in the resulting beers (possibly due to the uptake of bitter substances by yeast cell walls and/or to increased foaming during fermentation) . . .”
I think it’s cool that the tasters in Sean’s experiment perceived the beer with the higher pitching rate to be less bitter.
It would be really awesome if someone who had access to and has read these scientific studies would put together a short summary of the results most relevant to homebrewers. Then we could all share in the knowledge. If the summary was citated, then people who were interested in more detailed results would have a guide as to which articles they might want to purchase in full.
I thought that was interesting too. More than a few times I’ve questioned why some of my brews seemed more bitter than expected with astringency issues from time to time. I use mostly dry yeast and usually teeter on the edge of underpitching anyway and then consider the date code on some packets. I’m glad Sean did this home style experiment and shared it with us, I’ve learned something from it. 8)
i was a nuclear engineer and am now a doctor (why i am now broke)
i lived in hawaii but struggled with flip flops.
i don’t have to know what wavelength of light is coming off my truck to know i love the old gray mare
i know that if i prime my lawnmower 3 times it will start if i prime it twice most times it won’t (and i am a poor beer judge but i still enjoy a cold bud after mowing the lawn)
some people have good results with fly sparging, some with batch
as presented the information is helpful so that most of us can experiment and find out what works on our own brew
