TNGabe

Recipes 

I've got to disagree 100% on this one. I can throw a beer together or I can throw together some dough and get in the ball park, but if I want to have consistent results, measurements must be made.

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Give a man a beer, he'll drink for a day. Teach a man to brew, he'll drink for a lifetime.

Homercidal

Recipes 

I have been before. I try and do things the right way. I used to be more "sloppy" due to brewing without being totally prepared. i made more less than great batches that way, so I spend more time making sure everything is in place and I have a list to check off now.

Though to be honest, I have made some decent beers by winging it. It's just not as much fun as having everything prepared and thought out. Actual brewing time is cut down drastically when you are prepared too.

bobbrews

Recipes 

I'll 50% disagree with that concept.

Brewing can be seen as almost a middle ground between cooking and baking. You don't need to be 100% accurate to have an award winning beer. Consistency is great for commercial breweries. But we are homebrewers and we're not brewing the same beer hundreds of times for the public to judge and pay for our product.

To answer the OP's original question. If you're a good brewer, you can wing it and get away with some great beers. But I would not recommend winging it if you're a noob. Learn how recipes/processes work first.

Otterella

Recipes 

I'm too new to brewing to be this way yet, but it's how I cook and its how I knit, so I don't doubt it will be how I brew when I get some experience. My husband is the exact opposite, though. He's very meticulous with recipes and instructions. Since we brew together, I might wind up constrained by him. He doesn't realize that my signature lasagna that he loves so much would never have happened if I let myself be bound by recipes.

JKaranka

Recipes 

I go changing boil length and additions depending on how the thing tastes. Definitively reminds me of cooking (adding herbs to a casserole).

craigd

Recipes 

Agree sloppy has a bad connotation - I'm not OC about some things when I brew though. I do measure most ingredients but am not above eyeballing water levels. I also usually leave gravity measurements to the end (if at all) and may or may not bother adjusting with some water if needed. Now, like others if I am trying to replicate something I will get anal about all of it but usually I am happy with getting beer at the end... My day job requires some meticulous granularity of process and I usually prefer to be relaxed about brewing.

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-Craig

lgilmore

Recipes 

"I've got to disagree 100% on this one. I can throw a beer together or I can throw together some dough and get in the ball park, but if I want to have consistent results, measurements must be made."

So you haven't tried different hops or different hops addition times than scheduled? I think you missed my point a bit. You can make slight changes in your brewing and get different results. You can bump up your Ibu's without adding more hops, but adding them at different times in the boil.

Brewing beer is an ongoing process that allows you to make changes to the batch much like cooking. Baking? Once it's in the oven, it's in the oven. Very hard to correct baking after the dough ball is formed and raised. Beer? Flexibility in changing the flavor profile even weeks after the boil.

Hope that clears my comments up for you.
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241

Recipes 

I do BIAB so I always just toss extra base malt in at will to help with efficiency. I don't have a scale and try to use the left hand dumbell right hand grain bag measurement system. It's terribly inaccurate. One day I'll invest in a good scale

ryno1ryno

Recipes 

You explained my thoughts quite well.

ryno1ryno

Recipes 

How are some way you change flavor during/after fermentation?