Not wanting to figure it out...

Every once in a while I see a post about how someone's beer isn't going right. And I see helpful people trying to, well, help them. They offer advice, or try to guide them to what might be giving them trouble. (This is when it gets strange...) The troubled brewer seems to have all the answers.
"My starter was perfect." or "My temps were right on." or "Everything was perfectly sanitized."

I guess my question is: How many people are playing stump the audience? And how many people really want to figure it out?

I know this question isn't exactly related to making beer, but it is related to the mindset when you want to do it correctly. I really want to know how much beer is wasted due to being stubborn.

Everybody wants a solution, until they learn that they were the problem

It's all about how your brain learns stuff.

People fall into patterns. When you're brewing you can get away with lots of mistakes for several batches and have it not bite you in the ass, until that one time when all of a sudden you get an infection, or your beer tastes like cardboard, or whatever. All the previous batches where you essentially got lucky are positive reinforcement for your brewing process. So then people get a bad batch and say, "well I didn't do anything different from all the times my beer came out fine" and thus do not see what is wrong with their process.

The same thing happens in poker, or really most forms of gambling. In fact it's how I make money at poker, because the game essentially rewards bad play often enough that people do not realize they are making mistakes. You get lucky just often enough that the positive reinforcement you get from making a bad play and winning a big pot outweighs the negative reinforcement from all the times you make the same bad play and lose.

Not to hijack the thread, but weirdboy's post made me think. the only problem I've ever run into is that I've had two batches that have fermented WAY too low. A couple of batches have ended up around 1.004. I certainly am not one to say that anything about my process is perfect. I do my best and that's all I can do. Weirdboy's post just made me wonder what I may be "getting away with" in my other batches.

The problem is everybody has a different threshold on what good beer tastes like. I can't tell you how often I see "that can't be it because I have been doing X for years and my beer turns out great." It may very well be true that the person really enjoys his underpitched brown ale fermented at 78F, but others may be more discerning.

It isn't necessarily that someone's playing a game of some kind. They may have the answer, and just not know they have it. The other on the forum may help the individual to realize that they had the answer all along.

Actually, this is very consistent with the ancient, classical theory of education. In fact the word education breaks down into e - ducat = to draw out; the knowledge, it was believed, was resident in the individual, and the individual was e-ducated by being made to realize they had it. It was the basis of Socrates characterizing himself as a midwife in his philosophizing, giving birth to ideas.

I don't think people are trying to stump the audience, but rather it's like my middle school daughter asking for help with her math. As I'm trying to explain a problem to her that she asked for help with, she proceeds to interrupt me and show me the "correct" process for solving the problem. "Uh, you got a 'D' on your last test, honey, so obviously whatever your process is just isn't working..."

People don't like being told they're wrong about things. I have the same problem, and I'm sure everyone does to some extent depending on what the subject is. It's hard to recognize in yourself, and even harder to recognize that it's something we all share and should be handled sensitively.

indigi said:

People don't like being told they're wrong about things. I have the same problem, and I'm sure everyone does to some extent depending on what the subject is. It's hard to recognize in yourself, and even harder to recognize that it's something we all share and should be handled sensitively.

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I don't know where this is coming from, but you are TOTALLY wrong about this!

mixedbrewer said:

I guess my question is: How many people are playing stump the audience? And how many people really want to figure it out?

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It's a rhetorical question, you're just venting, but I'll do my best to answer:

42.

passedpawn said:

It's a rhetorical question, you're just venting, but I'll do my best to answer:

42.

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So, you're saying that mixedbrewer just provided us with THE question?!?!?!

I teach into biology lab. One of the labs the students do a serial dilution of starch (and another part with amalyase) and then add iodine to see how much starch is there. The tube with the most starch should be very dark. The tube with very little starch should be very light. There will be students with all their tubes the exact same color and then ask me why their graph doesn't look right. Then they swear up and down that they did everything correctly. They don't seem to understand that if they did things correctly it's physically impossible for the results to look like that. It makes me want to fail them. Anyway, people are like that about more than just brewing.

maddprofessor said:

It makes me want to fail them.

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By fail, you of course mean beat.

Shooter said:

By fail, you of course mean beat.

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Well, more like scream and yell, but you know, either that or beating could get me in trouble.

maddprofessor said:

I teach into biology lab. One of the labs the students do a serial dilution of starch (and another part with amalyase) and then add iodine to see how much starch is there. The tube with the most starch should be very dark. The tube with very little starch should be very light. There will be students with all their tubes the exact same color and then ask me why their graph doesn't look right. Then they swear up and down that they did everything correctly. They don't seem to understand that if they did things correctly it's physically impossible for the results to look like that. It makes me want to fail them. Anyway, people are like that about more than just brewing.

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THis starts early. My 8 year old for example when i tell her to clean up her mess "I already did". If you already did then I wouldn't be telling you to do it.

To bring this back around to the realm of homebrewing, it's like when people enter a competition and then don't understand why they scored a 19. THEY liked their beer, so how could it do so poorly? Not everyone, but some folks just don't understand that the beer is being judged by a criteria. And that criteria is not if it tastes good, but if it is what THEY entered it as.

maddprofessor said:

Well, more like scream and yell, but you know, either that or beating could get me in trouble.

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How about thinly veiled threats?

maddprofessor said:

Well, more like scream and yell, but you know, either that or beating could get me in trouble.

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If you're tenured yelling should be safe. Beating is a different story...

skeeordye11 said:

To bring this back around to the realm of homebrewing, it's like when people enter a competition and then don't understand why they scored a 19. THEY liked their beer, so how could it do so poorly? Not everyone, but some folks just don't understand that the beer is being judged by a criteria. And that criteria is not if it tastes good, but if it is what THEY entered it as.

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Love this post.

The simple answer to all this:- Ugly people never want to look in the mirror.

These are all really great ways to explain it. Thanks

IrregularPulse said:

Everybody wants a solution, until they learn that they were the problem

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That's signature material right there.