Trends in My Homebrewing

When i first started homebrewing I was trying to brew crowd pleasers, pale ales, amber ales and other medium gravity ales. Over time I have started to discover that it is way more worth my time to "shoot for the moon" so to speak and brew styles and types of beer that are commercially expensive or commercially rarely available. I have found myself brewing and formulating more barly wines, strong scotch ales, belgian trappist style ales, old ales..etc..etc...etc.. These big huge beers that cellar well and cost you an arm and a leg at the beer store.

I enjoy a good pale ale or wheat beer as much as the next guy, but for me as a homebrewer, the ROI is much, much larger with a barley wine that I can give as gifts and savor for a very long time and it improves with age.

Has anyone else had a similar epiphony so to speak?

That's interesting. I find that my experience has been totally different. I also used to go for more diverse styles, and crowd pleasers, but then I changed. I realized I am a total hophead. I like IPAs and APAs and hoppy ambers, so I started brewing about 80% hoppy beers. I throw in an oatmeal stout or an alt now and then, but I rarely brew any high ABV beers or anything not "hophead material".

I do have to brew ambers, for my spouse. I have to have at least one beer on tap that is approved, so that all of my other beers can simply please ME!

Being a malt-o-holic, I've been brewing huge beers from the start. It's only recently that I've been appreciating the simplicity and ease of smaller beer.

I used to think huge beers were cool. I still brew them for special occasions, but I find myself brewing more hefeweizens, witbiers and bitters. All low gravity session beers.

I'm a lot like Edcculus. I brew almost exclusively session beers. So far I have only brewed 1 beer above 1.060, the rest have been small beers. I will brew a big beer every once and a while (planning a barelywine soon), but I just love smaller beers.

Yea, I'm tending towards sessions. Love the taste of what I produce, and just want to be able to drink, and drink, and drink it.

Can't do that so much with a barleywine.

I like to brew a big beer on occasion, but since they last for a while I don't need to go crazy on them. I brew lots of session stuff, so that way I don't have to go out and buy beer.

I am with the last few posters. Big beers just don't do it for me.

I want quality flavor along with massive quantities

OG under 1.050 seems to fit most of what I like. LOTS of flavor and aroma hops.

I have made an Oktoberfest style with lost of malt and a couple of Blondes and American Wheats. All session beers.

I feel that is a big reason I came back to homebrewing. Too many commercial micro-brews are 1.060 and above. It is rare to find a micro session brew. If you do, the price is the same as the higher gravity brew. That doesn't work, for me.

crowd pleasers?! oh no, my friend, not for me. I'm gonna brew what I think I'm gonna like.

granted, I'm a newbie. and I do like big beers, I've not met a barleywine I didnt like, and belgians are great too.

at this point I'm trying to build up a pipeline. after that, I'm sure I'll throw in some big brews, but 2 to 4 (12 oz) big beers is plenty for me at one time. after that I'm gonna move on to a session brew.

I have been using close the same APA recipe but varying the hops. I want to find which hops I like best. Seems I like Cascade and Amarillo the best so far. No surprise from what I've been reading here.

So, I brewed a Stout this week. Still used Cascade and Amarillo, but added a little Goldings. Probably a little hoppier than a stout should be.

The next will be a red ale. Yep, and American red ale with Cascade and Amarillo! After than I am out of ingredients. Might change direction, but I really want to use some citra hops. Hmmm...

I'm all over the charts. I think I always have been. I never just stuck to one style or brand, even when I knew far less about beer and brewing. I brew recipes that grab my attention. One day it might be a malty mild, the next, an intensely hopped IPA. I do try to have one "crowd pleaser" on tap most of the time, but I make no guarantees. I guess I simply like beer.


epiphony [ɪˈpɪfənɪ]
n. pl. -nies
1. Not a Gibson

I can relate to you on this, since I'm pretty new to this I want to brew beers that I can share with people and really wow them with what can be produced at home. So far that has meant keeping it semi low-key, but my most recent two are an IPA and a Brown, my next one will probably be something high grav. I'm getting more adventurous.

Other than an occasional beer that my wife will like in the summer, I've never brewed to please anyone but me. There are commercial beers for the crowd pleasers. Brewing what I like is why I started brewing.

I find it depends on the situation. There are times I am brewing just for myself, like this past Friday when I had a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout the night before and decided I wanted a case of that for myself. Other times, I go big for friends. My buddy is a huge Belgian fan, so I have now done a couple brews with him on beers that otherwise only marginally interest me. When doing something for a party, I try to do a crowd pleaser. So it's all situation-specific.

I will say, though, that I feel the best about the ROI when I do a big brew. I point SWMBO to certain bottles in the store (in the $7-15 range) and say "My cost per bottle on the same style is 1/10 of that."

I mainly brew what I like or my wife likes. I like stouts, barley wine, big porters, and wheat beers, so I've been alternating brew sessions between dark/big beers and wheat beers/light amber. I'm on brew 15 new since starting last year, so it may change.

t

I went through the big, hoppy beer phase; then I realized session beers were more of a challenge and not many people were making them. The styles I'm brewing lately, don't exist commercially in the US.

Baldy_Beer_Brewery said:

Other than an occasional beer that my wife will like in the summer, I've never brewed to please anyone but me. There are commercial beers for the crowd pleasers. Brewing what I like is why I started brewing.

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Same here. The latest beer I made was a Belgian Wit since my wife asked for one, but otherwise I brew what I feel like drinking. I generally like pale ales, ambers and wheats. I never got into the whole big beer thing. I like beers that I can drink more than 2 of in a sitting.

I enjoy big beers and I am especially fascinated with beers that improve/change with age. I think that is why I am currently brewing barley wine, strong scotch, belgian strongs....etc..etc..

I have 3# fresh hops coming tomorow so it may finally be time to throw down my first imperial IPA.

I have 5 beers that I would consider my house beers. Maybe 1 in 10 brews will go outside these beers.

What I do though is experiment with methods and I go in different routes.

Can someone define "session" beer?

I have a 1.053 Amber with a nice 38IBUs and dry hopped. My wife and I love it. I have brewed it 3 times since I started brewing in Nov.

I've also brewed a tripel and regret it, it's hogging up a primary right now. I also have an 80 shilling in. I'm sitting here wondering why I brewed that one too. At the time I was looking for variety. From now on I think I'm going to stick with styles I like or think I will like. I like malty medium hopped beers with 5-6%ABV and a the occasional IPA. If that's "session" count me in.

I am new but i like to brew things that are big and interesting. I just bottled a Chocolate Mint Stout yesterday.

KC - A session beer is designed to allow consuming multiple pints without getting blasted or tired of the flavor. Something like an Ordinary Bitter will be around 3-3.5%, 20-40 IBUs, and have a very clean finish.

At this time I brew anything and everything that I have not brewed before(style wise). I am in the search for the ONE STYLE that I just have to have on hand. You know the one that you just have to keep on hand.

Just like some of the other posts I am not into the "big beers", I really want one that I can drink, drink and drink but I am not apposed to trying high ABV beers.

When I started I went into the typical crazy phase where I was trying all manners of coffees, oatmeals, fruits, etc. The only recipe that survived that phas is my strawberry wheat i do seasonally.

Then I calmed down into a hophead. IPAs and wheat beers were 90% of what I made for 5 or 6 years. The other 10% were big beers like barleywines and triples. Then one day it happened: I just got sick of hops. Hop bombs were suddenly like parachute pants. What the heck was I thinking? I still do Pale Ales on occasion, but have dropped IPAs almost entirely.

Now I'm back out in the open field trying styles I've never done before. I did a nut brown, some pilsners, a vienna lager, and have a marzen planned for March. I've also revisited some styles I've only tried once like my porter. My house brew right now is a smash using pilsner malt and saaz but it's too lightly hopped to be a proper pilsner.

I've also gone AG in the past year or so and big beers just got a lot harder. Sure I could do a partial or extract barleywine but I'm enjoying my 1.050ish OG beers too much to bother right now.

So I guess inadvertently, I've gone from less crowd-pleasing to more crowd-pleasing but it wasn't my intent. I just make beer I like and if you like it too, then good for you.

I'm fairly new to brewing, but prefer big beers most of the time. I do like the ROI aspect about big beers, but that's not the main reason I brew them. I think about 2/3 of my batches are 1.070 or above. Imperial stouts, weizenbocks, big dubbels.....yummm. I have brewed a few smaller beers, but it's just not what I prefer. As for crowd-pleasers, the crowds we have aren't beer drinkers, so I stick to what I prefer.

Since more than one person here has mentioned return on investment, I have to ask: are you factoring turnover time into your ROI? If I have a barleywine sitting in a bright tank for a few months, that's time I could've been using the bright tank to make beer that turns over faster. Therefore, that's money I'm losing. I know there are even more factors to take into account. I guess I just wanted to make the point that comparing the savings from cost of batch ingredients to cost of commercial product does give an accurate ROI. But the good news is that we're homebrewers. We can be as efficient or inefficient as we'd like.

hal2814 said:

Since more than one person here has mentioned return on investment, I have to ask: are you factoring turnover time into your ROI? If I have a barleywine sitting in a bright tank for a few months, that's time I could've been using the bright tank to make beer that turns over faster. Therefore, that's money I'm losing. I know there are even more factors to take into account. I guess I just wanted to make the point that comparing the savings from cost of batch ingredients to cost of commercial product does give an accurate ROI. But the good news is that we're homebrewers. We can be as efficient or inefficient as we'd like.

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It depends. If I had a need for the carboy during that time, I would most likely agree with you. However, what I've noticed is that I do big beers when I don't have the need, either because I have more than enough in my pipeline to hold off from brewing for a while, the upcoming smaller beers I have planned don't need clearing time, or I'm fine with leaving the next batch(es) in primary for longer and not using the secondary.

I think your last point hits it on the head. A large part of this hobby is the joy of brewing itself. When I look at my "investment" (so to speak), I don't really count the time spent brewing and waiting for it to mature because that part gives me pleasure. The actual brew day, checking in on fermentation progress with the hydrometer, bottling, tasting my way along the conditioning timeline...all that is a joy, in many respects. So, when looking at my actual investment, I focus on the money spent rather than the time used, simply because the only painful part (if you want to call it that) comes when I lay down the dollars to purchase ingredients.

Having said all that, I fully admit this is probably just a psychological trick my mind plays in order to justify the pride I feel when I see a $10 bottle in the store that cost me $1 in ingredients.

I like my beer just how i like my women.

Big, Strong, Easy to open, Hard to finish.

I am going more and more towards balanced session beers with less than 5% ABV - mostly Koelsch, Mild, Pale Ales, Wits, etc. Occasionally I will brew a high-gravity Belgian Dark Strong, but I got tired of the whole imperialize everything-trend some time ago.
I am going to be playing more and more with sour beers this year as well. Berliner Weisse is such a delicious style and weighs in at only 1.030-1.040 at the most.