The Importance Of Being Same

[jonhughey_att.net (HoosierBrew)]

Now, on to the NL Wild Card.  Pirates suck.  Go Cubs!

Agreed.  Go Cubs.

[klickitat_jim]

Not drinking Joe

But on that note, if the absolutist says a test is invalid due to the samples not being absolutely the same, how do they know they aren’t?  Probably they are not, but its possible they are, until tests are done to prove otherwise. How fair is it to bunk findings based on a probable assumption? Especially when its not known that those microscopic differences would be perceptible.

Now… back to your game

[hopfenundmalz]

@klickitat_jim

I think we wonder about differences from ingredients and differences from process. For the sake of simplification, I’m narrowing it to just plain difference, regardless of cause. Its important to think about wether or not the difference is important before choosing a way to determine difference.

In a criminal trial, things must be proven beyond reasonable doubt. If there is no doubt for which there is a reason, the thing is considered proven. In a civil trial, the thing must only be proven by a preponderance of evidence. A weighing out of evidence showing that more likely than not, it happened. If there is 1 reason to doubt but 2 reasons not to doubt, then you have a preponderance of evidence it happened. Whereas in the criminal trial there must be evidence it happened and there can be no reasons to doubt.

So what? Well, sometimes we hold trial on presented ingredients issues or process issues. What level of proof do we require? Is that level of proof in line with how much difference is made and how important that difference actually is? If, for a home brewing process, we require greater level of proof than is needed to put a Murderer in prison… maybe that’s going too far.

For a minute, imagine you’re trying to repeat a beer. Make it the same as the last one. Is that possible? The person who would require absolute evidence would say No. Its impossible to rebrew a pefectly identical beer. I would say Yes. As far as it is only going to be tested in my mouth and compared to my memory, yes, I can rebrew beers that are the same according to my level of proof.

So, if I am looking to make a change, will that change be discernable in my mouth as compared to my memory? And is the discernible difference desirable? Then, is the ingredient or process change worth it to obtain the difference?

That thought process shows the importance of personally experiencing changes with home brewing, rather than putting too much weight on the credibility of the claims of others. Ultimately, beer is a personal experience. It doesn’t matter that a scientific analysys proves a difference, or if some expert says so. If its not there, for you, its not there.

Case in point. I brewed a beer with US05 sprinkled dry. Then I read an expert who claimed that 50% of them die because of osmotic preasure. So I rehydrated. Then I read that liquid yeast was better so I bought Wy1056 and followed the instructions. Then I read that it wasn’t enough yeast, so I made a starter. Then i read that repitching was way better, but i didnt repitch enough, then i was repitching way too much. Then I read that my starter needed to be on a stirplate. Then I read that it needed to not be on a stirplate, but shaken instead. Most recently, I chose to hit it with O2 because I’m too lazy to shake. And pitch at high krausen, whereas I used to chill and decant because I was told that the spent wort was bad. Now unspent high krausen wort seems to be the thing.

So in that last paragraph theres a lot about what I had read or been told but nothing about what I experienced from those different methods. All the expert stuff is just academic. A good starting point if you dont know what to do. The only thing that really matters is what you think of your results with your beer. And when comparing changes, memory is all that really matters, because its awfully hard to preserve a perfect sample from last year’s beer in order to do a triangle test.

Some times some of us need to prove things to others, but all of us need to prove it to ourselves.

Make your beer, keep good notes, think for yourself, reach your own conclusions with your system and your process.

[hopfenundmalz]

@klickitat_jim

I think we wonder about differences from ingredients and differences from process. For the sake of simplification, I’m narrowing it to just plain difference, regardless of cause. Its important to think about wether or not the difference is important before choosing a way to determine difference.

In a criminal trial, things must be proven beyond reasonable doubt. If there is no doubt for which there is a reason, the thing is considered proven. In a civil trial, the thing must only be proven by a preponderance of evidence. A weighing out of evidence showing that more likely than not, it happened. If there is 1 reason to doubt but 2 reasons not to doubt, then you have a preponderance of evidence it happened. Whereas in the criminal trial there must be evidence it happened and there can be no reasons to doubt.

So what? Well, sometimes we hold trial on presented ingredients issues or process issues. What level of proof do we require? Is that level of proof in line with how much difference is made and how important that difference actually is? If, for a home brewing process, we require greater level of proof than is needed to put a Murderer in prison… maybe that’s going too far.

For a minute, imagine you’re trying to repeat a beer. Make it the same as the last one. Is that possible? The person who would require absolute evidence would say No. Its impossible to rebrew a pefectly identical beer. I would say Yes. As far as it is only going to be tested in my mouth and compared to my memory, yes, I can rebrew beers that are the same according to my level of proof.

So, if I am looking to make a change, will that change be discernable in my mouth as compared to my memory? And is the discernible difference desirable? Then, is the ingredient or process change worth it to obtain the difference?

That thought process shows the importance of personally experiencing changes with home brewing, rather than putting too much weight on the credibility of the claims of others. Ultimately, beer is a personal experience. It doesn’t matter that a scientific analysys proves a difference, or if some expert says so. If its not there, for you, its not there.

Case in point. I brewed a beer with US05 sprinkled dry. Then I read an expert who claimed that 50% of them die because of osmotic preasure. So I rehydrated. Then I read that liquid yeast was better so I bought Wy1056 and followed the instructions. Then I read that it wasn’t enough yeast, so I made a starter. Then i read that repitching was way better, but i didnt repitch enough, then i was repitching way too much. Then I read that my starter needed to be on a stirplate. Then I read that it needed to not be on a stirplate, but shaken instead. Most recently, I chose to hit it with O2 because I’m too lazy to shake. And pitch at high krausen, whereas I used to chill and decant because I was told that the spent wort was bad. Now unspent high krausen wort seems to be the thing.

So in that last paragraph theres a lot about what I had read or been told but nothing about what I experienced from those different methods. All the expert stuff is just academic. A good starting point if you dont know what to do. The only thing that really matters is what you think of your results with your beer. And when comparing changes, memory is all that really matters, because its awfully hard to preserve a perfect sample from last year’s beer in order to do a triangle test.

Some times some of us need to prove things to others, but all of us need to prove it to ourselves.

Make your beer, keep good notes, think for yourself, reach your own conclusions with your system and your process.

Edit - and be open minded!

[wort-h.o.g]

Try  and Fail…try and fail…try and succeed .  It’s just beer, so have fun, learn as much as you can/choose too, and don’t sweat the small stuff…that is until you become a a professional / commercial brewer.

[klickitat_jim]

Meanwhile, im canning up some starter wort for next month. Woo hoo!

[wort-h.o.g]

@klickitat_jim

Meanwhile, im canning up some starter wort for next month. Woo hoo!

I still have this on my list to do from your posts on doing it last year. I went and bought a canner last year ( still new in box) so will have to do a batch soon.

[klickitat_jim]

It’s pretty easy and way handy come brew day.

[chinaski]

@dilluh98

I love Marshall’s experiments. I think they’re both highly informative and entertaining but it’s also a single brew day. While he has multiple taste testers, his N still equals 1 regarding the experiment itself. BUT, he never has claimed his experiments to be the final verdict on a topic - only fodder for further discussion and exploration. That caveat is the nature of good scientific process.

I couldn’t agree more- these experiments are not statistically rigorous (n=1; only one sample of each is being tested) and that isn’t necessarily the point.  (Read on if you don’t mind a bit of statistics geekery on my part.)

Even if the FWH hop experiment involved many batches of many styles and results were collected by many levels of tasters, we are still (statistically speaking) only really left with a result saying there is only a certain probability that the result is due to random chance rather than a “true” difference.  Different fields of science tend to assign different probabilities as being “statistically significant;” in my field of ecology it’s 5% for example.  In science, there is no such thing as being “proven;” just a smaller and smaller probability that differences aren’t by random chance.

And then there is the question of whether the size of the difference (not measured by triangle tests) is relevant.  You see this all the time is news stories about health risks- “such and such” behavior reduces risk of heart attack by 5 times.  If the base risk is one in 20 million people; then the risk reduction of the behavior isn’t all that relevant (to me at least).  Base risk/probability is what often matters but yet is usually not reported at all.  In homebrewing, this is where the pragmatism of folks like Denny is illuminating and our own personal experiences matter.

In the case of homebrewing processes, these experiments are food for thought, discussion, and further experimentation.  What’s better than that?

[chinaski]

I was actually thinking about this this morning.  Complete consistency in a repeat is not possible at the homebrew level.  For a 5 gallon batch, the margin of error in our measurements must be unbelieveable compared to someone brewing a 700bbl batch.  However, I’ve been brewing several of the same recipes for years, and they are as consistent from year to year as I need them to be.

I always wondered if the promise of “repeatability” of fancier brewing systems than mine (e.g. herms, rims, etc. controlled by various pieces of electronics) was necessarily true.  I feel like if I pay a lot of attention to important details while brewing my way (no automation, batch sparging, but keeping track of temps, volumes, and gravities) there isn’t a reason why I couldn’t crank out the same beer over and over.

p.s. thinking in the morning?  what’s that like?

[toby]

@klickitat_jim

Not drinking Joe

Why the hell not?

[quote]But on that note, if the absolutist says a test is invalid due to the samples not being absolutely the same, how do they know they aren’t?  Probably they are not, but its possible they are, until tests are done to prove otherwise. How fair is it to bunk findings based on a probable assumption? Especially when its not known that those microscopic differences would be perceptible.
[/quote]

That’s why it all depends on what you’re going for.  I take good notes and follow as consistent processes as I can manually, and my results may not be exactly repeatable if you did some chemical analysis.  But they are close enough for my purposes.  After all, most of the tests at places like brulosophy.com are specifically geared towards whether the average person can tell a difference between a couple of variables.  They’re ultimately geared towards finding out if there’s any need to worry about technique X vs. RDWHAHB.  It’s more like the Pepsi challenge than a rigorous scientific experiment.

[klickitat_jim]

Precisely.  And the new findings thread by Marshall about DMS is another one that points out this stuff. For me, Marshalls findings are pretty solid evidence, at least enough proof for me to feel safe trying it with my beers on my system. But, others might point out that he didn’t present foundation for the evidence. The scientist wasn’t here, we didn’t get to question his qualifications,  or cross examine his testimony, so its all just inadmissible hearsay. Sometimes you cant win for losing, LOL. Poor marshall.

[denny]

@klickitat_jim

Precisely.  And the new findings thread by Marshall about DMS is another one that points out this stuff. For me, Marshalls findings are pretty solid evidence, at least enough proof for me to feel safe trying it with my beers on my system. But, others might point out that he didn’t present foundation for the evidence. The scientist wasn’t here, we didn’t get to question his qualifications,  or cross examine his testimony, so its all just inadmissible hearsay. Sometimes you cant win for losing, LOL. Poor marshall.

Jim, always keep in mind…this is homebrewing.  We’re not trying to cure cancer here.  For me, that means that the standards for evidence are much lower, and rightfully so.

[pmorrissette (Phil_M)]

I think that without debate, there isn’t really science. A good scientist is going to question everything. Isn’t that part of why many scientific jobs require degrees? School is where you debate about which direction a friction force is applied in or how different parts of a mechanism move in relation to each other.

I’m not saying that some debates aren’t easy to solve, (See the friction reference) but the point is the debate still exists.

Now we can debate on if that statement makes any sense or not…

[klickitat_jim]

@denny

@klickitat_jim

Precisely.  And the new findings thread by Marshall about DMS is another one that points out this stuff. For me, Marshalls findings are pretty solid evidence, at least enough proof for me to feel safe trying it with my beers on my system. But, others might point out that he didn’t present foundation for the evidence. The scientist wasn’t here, we didn’t get to question his qualifications,  or cross examine his testimony, so its all just inadmissible hearsay. Sometimes you cant win for losing, LOL. Poor marshall.

Jim, always keep in mind…this is homebrewing.  We’re not trying to cure cancer here.  For me, that means that the standards for evidence are much lower, and rightfully so.

For me too

[erockrph]

My biggest takeaway from all of Marshall’s exBeeriments is that it’s well within the ability of a good homebrewer to produce consistent/repeatable beer, since so many triangle tests fall outside the level of statistical significance. The exbeerimenters are able to produce beers within a tolerance such that even when making a small change the beers are virtually indistinguishable.

To echo the sentiments of others, “same” has different tolerances depending on what you’re testing and the resolution of your measuring device. For a beer tasting, the ideal measuring device is my own palate. Any other measurement has to be viewed with the understanding that I may not get the same results. At that point you need to decide how much weight to give those results based on how much you trust the source and whether it falls in line with your own experience. In those cases, I am unable to assess the “sameness” of the samples directly, so the more/better data the higher my confidence is in the results.

[leejoreilly]

@erockrph

To echo the sentiments of others, “same” has different tolerances depending on what you’re testing and the resolution of your measuring device. For a beer tasting, the ideal measuring device is my own palate.

“You don’t need to measure with a micrometer if you’re going to cut with a chainsaw.”

[hopfenundmalz]

@leejoreilly

@erockrph

To echo the sentiments of others, “same” has different tolerances depending on what you’re testing and the resolution of your measuring device. For a beer tasting, the ideal measuring device is my own palate.

“You don’t need to measure with a micrometer if you’re going to cut with a chainsaw.”

In the engineering lab’s there was a saying that went like this.
Measure with a micrometer, mark it with chalk, cut with an axe, paint it to match.