Why does there appear to be so much anxiety about brewing?

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TheLastDamnBatch

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You've heard it a millions time RDWHAHB!

I (mis?) interpret a lot of posts here as being overly anxious.

Did I do this or that right?

How will variable X affect my beer?

Isn't that part of the fun of homebrewing? (Attempting to establish a repeatable process on your own equipment while making a drinkable beer, all through experimentation.)

Do you feel anxious about brewing? Why? Time/money wasted? If you had no one to ask, would you still brew?
 
Time and money are a factor for most, but I think people just want to get it right and have good beer to drink.


For the average brewer:
5 hours for a brew day, 2 weeks or more in the fermenter,possibly another week dry hopping, 3 weeks carbing if you bottle. That's a good amount of time invested only to find out you made a dumb mistake a ruined a batch.

As most of us know now, beer is pretty forgiving in some respects, and a down right nasty ***** in others.
 
I am always a bit anxious when brewing a new recipe, but once the wort is done I know that nothing can be determined until fermentation ends.

Even then it sometimes needs age to prove it.

It is probably because so many on forums, videos and books obsess over sanitation, temp and additions to the point of overcomplicating the process for younger brewers which causes a bit of anxiety...quit doing this sh*t. Brewing has been done for centuries in the least favorable conditions possible that would have the forums screaming about how it would never work...and yet here we are :drunk:
 
I am always a bit anxious when brewing a new recipe, but once the wort is done I know that nothing can be determined until fermentation ends.

Even then it sometimes needs age to prove it.

It is probably because so many on forums, videos and books obsess over sanitation, temp and additions to the point of overcomplicating the process for younger brewers which causes a bit of anxiety...quit doing this sh*t. Brewing has been done for centuries in the least favorable conditions possible that would have the forums screaming about how it would never work...and yet here we are :drunk:

Very true!
 
im new to the homebrewing and enjoy the process of making home brew.. only thing i need to work on is patience!! it will come one day i know it ..
 
It's a reflection of society in general.
Everything today is a crisis but only until the next crisis comes along, brewing is a game of patience and in our insta-gratification society patience is something alot of people don't have.

Another aspect is people simply wanting answers instead of wanting knowledge, alot of people don't want to search and investigate and develop knowledge - they just want their immediate question answered asap.
I'm new here, one batch under my belt, I had a few problems to overcome and that was done almost entirely by searching and reading these forums. During that time I was amazed how many questions kept coming up over and over and over and the same recommendations as well: patience and time.

Also, certain brew kit companies do promote an image of "brew today and have beer in a week", perhaps newbies don't appreciate how that only applies to certain types of brewing.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Brewing has been done for centuries in the least favorable conditions possible that would have the forums screaming about how it would never work...and yet here we are :drunk:

I agree

we're doing what people just like us were doing 1000 years ago without the benefit of the superior equipment, technique and ingredients we enjoy. plus we have an almost unlimited pool of resources at our disposal here on HBT and other sites.

relax... you really have to TRY to ruin beer to actually ruin it
don't worry... a couple degrees, a couple pounds, a couple ounces (liquid or dry) or a couple days one way or the other is NOT going to totally foob your beer
 
The end product is so amazing and mysterious to begin with, that our minds assume that it must take great skill and be easy to screw up.

That, and the fact that there are people in this world who enjoy worrying.
 
I think its due to the amount of work that people put into it and how long beer takes to make.

For me, brew day starts at about 8 am. Milling the grain, heating the strike water, etc. And I'm not done till around 3 or 4 depending on how smooth things do or don't go. Then you wait for 3+ weeks depending on what you made. To have all that work/time go down the drain can be a littl stressful to think about.

Of course, the longer I've been brewing the more relaxing and patient I've become, but those first 4 batches were kinda nerve racking.
 
I think its due to the amount of work that people put into it and how long beer takes to make.

For me, brew day starts at about 8 am. Milling the grain, heating the strike water, etc. And I'm not done till around 3 or 4 depending on how smooth things do or don't go. Then you wait for 3+ weeks depending on what you made. To have all that work/time go down the drain can be a littl stressful to think about.

Of course, the longer I've been brewing the more relaxing and patient I've become, but those first 4 batches were kinda nerve racking.

practice does take a lot of the anxiety out of it. getting a pipeline going helps too
 
As already mentioned the amount of time to wait to see how it comes out is a huge factor. But personally I think the biggest thing is just newer brewers and it's normal. I no longer fret about anything really and everything always comes out pretty damn good regardless. Sometimes I might take a note as to what needs adjusting and just take that into account the next time I brew a recipe. But I think given enough time, or experience rather, brewing people lose that anxiety/worry.


Rev.
 
I'm pretty relaxed about brewing, but there are some things to be mindful of. I've burned myself, cut myself, pinched myself, etc. So I don't drink a beer until the boil starts, and then just one. After the wort is chilling, then I can have another.

Other than that, I don't obsess or worry about much. I do enjoy "geeking out" on water chemistry and recipe formulation and stuff like that but I'm not anxious about any of that.
 
I agree with many comments.

For now it's enjoyable, but ultimately issues develop with equipment usually. I recall in my early all grain days, self taught from TNCJOHB, that I had a 10 gallon insulated cooler mash tun with a plastic false bottom. I could never get a good runoff, always chunks of grain. Very frustrating. I finally discovered, that when the mash was heated, that the plastic bottom separated from the rest of the cooler, and bowed up, which upset the plastic false bottom. I thought the plastic FB was the problem and swapped to a metal on, but same deal. Took me months to figure out what was happening, because you cannot see the bottom of the mash tun when it's full of grain. Ultimately I swapped the false bottom for a bazooka screen and happy days from then on.

It can be frustrating to invest the time and money into a hobby, then have a frustrating brew day, when you're doing it for enjoyment and trying to relax.
Also, for those of us who can't brew as frequently as they want, there is often no homebrew to consume on brew day, and thus RDWAHAHB can't be satisfied...

TD
 
I think its due to the amount of work that people put into it and how long beer takes to make...... you wait for 3+ weeks depending on what you made....

HERE IT IS.


There is so much time to wait.....and think.......and OBSESS...........and THINK SOME MORE!!!! ONLY THIS TIME NOT SO RATIONALLY!!!!!!! AND THEN WE WANT SO BADLY TO DO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, TO MAGICALLY FIX WHAT WE THINK MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE GONE WRONG!!!!!!AND ALL SHALL LOVE ME, AND DESPAIR!!!!!


Wait. Got a little carried away, but you see my point. Beer is so effing awesome and we have SOOOOO much time to obsess. Not a good thing, especially for noobs.
 
People want to make a decent beer and post their questions here. It's like whitehaus ssaid, people have a lot of time and money invested.

Plus there can be a lot of nuances that may be out of people's experience, and they are supplementing their knowledge with the huge level experience of the collective group on this forum.

People may appear to be anxious in their posts, but keep in mind it is difficult to read someone's mood through writing alone, unless they add a lot of emoticons. :) :mug: :ban::rockin:
 
I am always a bit anxious when brewing a new recipe, but once the wort is done I know that nothing can be determined until fermentation ends.

Even then it sometimes needs age to prove it.

It is probably because so many on forums, videos and books obsess over sanitation, temp and additions to the point of overcomplicating the process for younger brewers which causes a bit of anxiety...quit doing this sh*t. Brewing has been done for centuries in the least favorable conditions possible that would have the forums screaming about how it would never work...and yet here we are :drunk:

While I agree brewing has been done for centuries in less favorable conditions, and I constantly remind myself of that I will add that we have no way to know for sure if the beer was good.

I think of it as changing tastes. Just one or two generations ago, folks thought liver and onions was good stuff. Personally, I can't stomach it. And I eat damn near everything. So was beer 300, or 1000 years ago gonna be palatable now that we have evolved both our tastes and brewing processes to meet those tastes?

Just because they used to do it and it was good, to me doesn't make it so.

Now, it very well coulda been great! And I'm not trying to discount the fact that we should relax a bit, just pointing out thoughts I've had.
 
You've heard it a millions time RDWHAHB!

I (mis?) interpret a lot of posts here as being overly anxious.

Did I do this or that right?

How will variable X affect my beer?

Isn't that part of the fun of homebrewing? (Attempting to establish a repeatable process on your own equipment while making a drinkable beer, all through experimentation.)

Do you feel anxious about brewing? Why? Time/money wasted? If you had no one to ask, would you still brew?

You hit the nail on the head, new brewers are overly anxious. They only know enough to be "dangerous" so ignorance breeds fear until they gain the experience that leads to wisdom.

They often don't understand that nothing pathogenic can exist in beer, so they think that any mistake can be lethal or make you sick.

Also they think their beer is like a new born baby and that it need to be hovered over, and if they even look at it wrong it's going to be ruined, and more than likely anyone who drinks it will therefore die a horrible deat.

They furthermore don't realize just how ugly, and stinky fermentation can be, and don't realize that we're really drinking the waste product of a micro-organism, and like any waste product it can kind of look pretty disgusting, even when it is normal.

They don't realize how hard it really is to do a screw up that would actually ruin our beer. They don't think they can screw up.

We're human, we're always going to screw something up. The thing is, it's not about not screwing up, it's about rolling with the punches when it happens. It's about saying, "Oh well, I still made beer."

They don't realize that our beer is really resilient, that 99.99999% of our screw-ups are NOT going to ruin our beer, no matter what boneheaded things we manage to do. I've said it a million times, we've sunk body parts in our beer, and it's still turned out fine.

I've been brewing for years, and I'm sure I screw something up everytime I do it....BUT, I don't run on here asking for re-assurance or analyzing the "what if/what could happen " and worrying about it. Instead I trust that it's still going to be fine, because nearly every time, it is.

And if it doesn't, there's nothing I can do about it now. The deed is done and I won't know for 8 weeks or so anyway. And more than likely even if it doesn't turn out, if I stick it in the closet for 6 months or a year.....there's a 50% possibility it WILL still turn out fine.

I suggest all new brewers read these threads instead of worrying, they'll show you how strong your beer really i, and how all of us make mistakes.

Revvy's advice for the new brewer in terms of worry.

What are some of the mistakes you made...where your beer still turned out great?

And Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer!

We're human, to expect that we won't make mistakes is silly. It still happens, I bet your pro-brewer made a bunch of mistakes while showing you what to do....but he didn't react to them, he just continued on.

That's what an expert does....it's not that he's perfect, he just doesn't let the screwups get to him.
 
I would agree i have been brewing for about 5+ years now and only now am i turning out good beers, it took some time to realize a Balanced beer takes time and most of mine takes about a 3 month process before they are mature/ good to be drank. but yes only answers is what people want, i love this site it's a treasure trove of brewing.
 
DirtyGerman said:
I would agree i have been brewing for about 5+ years now and only now am i turning out good beers, it took some time to realize a Balanced beer takes time and most of mine takes about a 3 month process before they are mature/ good to be drank. but yes only answers is what people want, i love this site it's a treasure trove of brewing.

Yep. That's the truth of it. Many beginning homebrewers are like kids, overly anxious to get to it!

Patience has it virtues for sure.
Of course, once you get good at it, and can get through brew day efficiently, it becomes relaxing to brew, and just enjoy how you're spending the day instead of being at work!

TD
 
Perversely, I think the abundance of information can also inspire a lot of worry. Imagination is a powerful thing. If you browse these forums, both as a new brewer or as a seasoned brewer, you can find all sorts of things that you may never have even considered. I started brewing more than 20 years ago, with only one book as the basis of all my knowledge. Didn’t even know I should be worrying about things like the risk of infections from secondary transfers until coming here! (Still transfer just about everything to a secondary--horrors!)

Many of us probably work in industries where precision, excellence, and quality system designs are paramount to ensure the desired outcome for our product or service. Twelve hours a day I’m in healthcare, where you can lose your license and people can die if you’re not paying attention. It’s nice to have a hobby that is stress free in comparison. I think the slogan of my brewery is “Oh, well!” As in, “Missed my mash temp? Oh, well!” “Fermentation temps off by a few degrees? Oh, well!” “A moth just landed in my wort? Oh, well!” Despite all the calamities, the truth is that I make damn good beer. I expect many folks around here do the same.
 
+1 Time and money

If you think you've messed something up which will give you a worthless beer in 6 weeks, it's better to ask to find out what state your beer is in, and if there's something that needs to be done to fix it.

"I didn't get the lid on my fermenter all the way, and my cat jumped in, is it okay?"

Probably not, don't RDWHAHB. Dump it, make a new beer ASAP (DIMANBASAP).
 
I know! I had a thermo issue a couple years ago on a long stem bimetallic thermo was off and my mash was way too hot, but I didn't know until beer finished at 1.023 ish. I ultimately refused to dump, blend, or distill it. I ended up using liquid Beano and it attenuated to drinkable levels, and was what I would call drinkable but not what I was aiming for.

TD
 
oooo we can't talk about that third option, but that's what I always think when people want to dump . . .WTF people?!
 
I think the hobby attracts people who are perfectionists. It requires some technical expertise. The toys can be complex. There is science involved. We probably start with goals to replicate a beer made by professionals. Fermentation does not look or smell perfect.
 
More than a few people have others watching when they get started brewing (thirsty buddies, skeptical wives/girlfriends/boyfriends), and they'd hate to have anything to tell their observers besides a happy ending.

Also, how well do you remember what the process sounded like to you as a newbie? For people who might or might not ever have cooked anything more complicated than grill steak or ramen noodles, it can sound like rocket surgery. Add in all the jargon (mash, gravity, lauter, hydrometer, sparge, kraeusen, siphon, etc., etc.) and the admonitions to BY GOD SANITIZE EVERYTHING and I can easily see how paranoia would take hold.

Luckily beer is pretty forgiving for the conscientious. I remember worrying over my first extract & steep red ale back in 2002. Woke up in the middle of the night to watch the airlock, freaked out at slow fermentation, asked everyone reading my blog what they thought was wrong, the works. Made an amazing beer. Was completely hooked.

-Rich
 
Try not to worry at all, but I do think about things that I may have overlooked or omitted in each stage. Biggest thing for me is did I sanitize properly?

Beer is a very forgiving hobby and perfect for lazy bastiges like myself...
Don't feel like cleaning the carboy today? WTH, do it next weekend.
Didn't get all the bottles ready? Who cares?! The game's on...
 
Before I brewed my first batch I literally had nightmares. Almost every night for a week. And I knew what RDWHAHB meant and had taken it to heart! For a newbie (especially going all grain on the first batch) there is just a lot to think about. There are a lot of steps and one doesn't want to go through all that work and wait weeks and weeks only to end up with something that gets poured out.

Good thread.
 
I think of it like photography before the digital cameras. You set a goal and have an idea in your head of how you want it all to turn out. Done all the reading set up your scene and *click*, it's perfect. Then you don't have time in the darkroom for another week and your starting to think that you should have taken better notes on your lighting.
I've done a few batches. I have 3 going at the moment. Brewday Sunday is my favorite day but going to work on Monday morning is nerve wracking. I never know if I'll get home and have to repaint the ceiling.
Luckily, I have beer in the refrigerator to calm my nerves.
 
From my perspective all these anxious posts are from people who did not bother to do their homework, or read previous threads that would have answered their questions. I lurked on HBT for almost a year. Reading many posts, doing my homework. Whenever I had a question it was most definitely discussed before, usually in several threads. Never had a reason to post a question that had been answered several times over before. It wasn't until I had 30 batches all grain under my belt that I even felt confident enough to contribute to discussions and threads.

Even now if I have a question or concern I usually search the forum first before posting. I think people are generally lazy, and don't want to take the time or effort to search. They want a quick fix, and to be reassured. :rolleyes:
 
I'm a totally green brewer and have had zero anxieties about my very few brews. But when I realize something I have done may not have been correct, I'll come here and ask a question. That question is usually met with a bunch of "settle down...don't worry..." responses. I'm not worried, just looking to learn whether it should have been done differently. I'm not offended by the "don't worry" responses but I think maybe there is a misinterpretation that questions = panic and anxiety.
 
Echoloc8 said:
More than a few people have others watching when they get started brewing (thirsty buddies, skeptical wives/girlfriends/boyfriends), and they'd hate to have anything to tell their observers besides a happy ending.

Also, how well do you remember what the process sounded like to you as a newbie? For people who might or might not ever have cooked anything more complicated than grill steak or ramen noodles, it can sound like rocket surgery. Add in all the jargon (mash, gravity, lauter, hydrometer, sparge, kraeusen, siphon, etc., etc.) and the admonitions to BY GOD SANITIZE EVERYTHING and I can easily see how paranoia would take hold.

-Rich

Lot of great points Rich.
 
I don't stress when it comes to brewing. I enjoy doing it...... If I F**k a batch up it sucks. I have had my share of mistakes. I made a Graff that............well the jury is still out on that one 6 months later.If it works out great! If it sucks...... oh well try something else. Either way brewing beer is one of the best things I ever got into.
 
From my perspective all these anxious posts are from people who did not bother to do their homework, or read previous threads that would have answered their questions. I lurked on HBT for almost a year. Reading many posts, doing my homework. Whenever I had a question it was most definitely discussed before, usually in several threads. Never had a reason to post a question that had been answered several times over before. It wasn't until I had 30 batches all grain under my belt that I even felt confident enough to contribute to discussions and threads.

Even now if I have a question or concern I usually search the forum first before posting. I think people are generally lazy, and don't want to take the time or effort to search. They want a quick fix, and to be reassured. :rolleyes:

Spoken like someone who's reassured by the fact that there's nothing important different between theory and practice... In theory. ;)

-Rich
 
When you change gear or try something new their are lots of ways for it to go bad. How many of us have ever had a stuck drain on a full MLT? One guy said he put two full 6.5gal glass carboys on a table and the table broke. Our beer is like making a great dinner that took hours to cook, it's our good name as cooks. But yes after a few years and some high tech crap, their is little to mess up.
 
I think a lot of it has to do with all the warnings that abound about sanitizing this and making sure that is right and on and on and on....

My first brew wasn't perfect. When I bottled, I realized half way through racking from my carboy to the bottling bucket that the priming sugar/water was still cooling on the stove and not in the bottom of the bucket so I just dumped it in.

One thing that needs to be stressed to homebrewers is the whole RDWHAHB philosophy. Two months after my first boil, I've realized that as long as the ingredients were boiled and the wort is ok, there's not a lot that could get screwed up...
 
I've been brewing on and off since 1991...and used LME. After reading the CJOHB, I looked at the all-grain section, two bucket lauter tun, and igloo and said to myself, "This can't be all that hard." It wasn't. Been all-grain brewing since.

I remember one extract brew flocculated like MAD, and I got a stuck airlock/stopper and it blew the rig across the bathroom. I called it, "Exploding Bathroom Porter." I picked the airlock/stopper up, sanitized it, and wiped the inside of the carboy neck with sanitized rag and reinserted. Everything was fine and was one of the best brews to date.

Just after that, my brew partner and I went to a "Homebrew Club" and watched a bunch of overly critical guys talk about beers that really didn't taste all that good. We brought a couple bottles of our "beginner beer", and everyone loved it. However, they got pissed at us because we didn't take notes. We finally said we took them...just didn't bring them with us. Since then, I haven't been back to a homebrew club since.

This is all a way for me to enjoy cooking, beer and my inner MacGyver skills without worrying too much about it. :mug:
 
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