Not that I’m there yet, but…
When you have developed a tried and true recipe, do you make repeat batches of it or do you continue to tweak it ad nauseum looking for an even better brew?
Tweaking is a big word… I play with them… or substitute when I discover I am out of something I thought I had… it’s a fluid situation…
I think it depends on your mood for the day. Feel like tweaking or feel like making something tried and true with known results
Most of the recipes I make regularly started out as experiments as long as 25 years ago. I naturally did plenty of tweaking at first but eventually I dialed in the flavors I liked. I started brewing in the first place because there were specific beers I liked and there were specific profiles I was wanting to emulate. And I was interested in good repeatability.
So, like oscarvan, no tweaking in the sense of constantly changing things up just for the sake of it.
Nowadays any changes to my tried and true beers only happen if I am forced to substitute ingredients for one reason or another. Fortunately, substituting malts, hops, and specialty grains when necessary seems to have little impact by and large on the results I’ve come to expect from my regular formulas. So really I have no pressing urges or desire to change them up other than what necessity may dictate.
I have a small handful of recipes that I only futz with in small ways. I’ll do a lot of trying different yeast strains, etc.
For everything else, it’s fire at will in terms of changes.
I’m only a couple years into brewing so the few recipes I do make more than once (there’s still so many styles to brew for a young brewer like me!), I try to replicate as close to the original as possible.
If I have a recipe that I think I’m gonna like having around, I brew it multiple times, tweaking it until I get it exactly where I want it. From then on, I don’t change a thing.
If you create a beer recipe that is over the top (excellent beer), then I wouldn’t alter it. But that rarely happens for me so I’ll tweak a recipe to get it where I want it and then call it “a solid recipe”. I often use the motto “don’t fix what’s not broken”.
The ones I have done the best with in competitions were tweaked to make them better. Brewing again after contemplation of the scoresheet has resulted in improvements. Once the coarse adjustments are dialed in, I will make some vernier adjustments to see what happens.
I did well this year with a cream ale, a first time brew, but I know that can be made better, so it will get some tweaks.
Unless you’ve nailed down your process so well that you’re making identical beers through repeated brewings, I’d say you are in effect tweaking every time you brew. That’s why I tell people to make note of what you actually did, not just what you wanted to do.
Yup, as much as you try, it’s never EXACTLY the same. I’m getting pretty close though. And yes I do take notes, and if something tastes particularly nice I go look and see what may have caused that.
I tweak most recipes just to change things up a bit. Variety is the spice of life after all.