I've been beating myself up

I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist with some things and will beat myself up over small things that I find to be not "just right". One of the places where this personality trait is most prominent is in my brewing. I always get hung up on tiny flaws that I detect in my beers. SWMBO always says that I am crazy and the flaws I think I detect are not really there.

Last night I got a bit of an eye opener.

I was hanging at my house out with some friends, drinking a mix of commercial beers, my own homebrew, and some homebrews that were given to me by other local people. A friend got up to get himself another beer and I handed him my glass and asked him to get me one, too. I told him I didn't care what it was, just bring me back a full glass.

He came back with a glass of beer that looked darker than anything I had on tap, so I thought he had grabbed a commercial beer or one of the homebrews not brewed by me.

The beer was good. Really REALLY good. So, I asked him what he had poured for me. His response was:

"Whatever you have on the tap on the right."

Eh?! I guess SWMBO is right. I was given one of my own beers, not knowing it was mine, and my opinion of the beer was MUCH more favorable.

Very cool, and i would say your not alone in many respects, it does take some rewiring to be able to stand back from something you create, and look at it from different perspectives. I'm just getting into brewing and I'm sure I will have the same fears, and outlook. But I have done graphic design work for many years, and used to run into the same type of thinking. The I could have done this better, or if I just would of tweaked this, but yet the clients loved what I had done. I would take this experience, as a sign to stop getting hung up on the flaws and realize what you are brewing is damn good stuff.

I hear ya. I have the perfectionist thing creeping into any artistic thing I do, be it drawing, playing guitar, etc, etc. I think that's why I went into technology as a creer. If the thing I am trying to create functionally does what it is supposed to do, then I don't go crazy with thoughts of what to change to make it better.

At any rate....

if any of you can figure out a way to get a blind taste of your own beer, I suggest you try it and see what you think.

It's like home improvement. You notice every flaw in the drywall or paint because you did it. No one else SEES it!!! My beers are the same. Some are down right awesome, but I'll still find something to $%tch about!!

Walker, being that I am only acquainted with you through these interwebz, I think the important thing to do here is get my unbiased opinion. I will PM you with my address and you can bundle up a keg of something and send it my way for evaluation.

P.S. Don't bother with the CO2. I'm going to go ahead and bite the bullet here and use my own tank. For this service and use of said gas, I will charge you a nominal fee. This fee is barely worth mentioning as it doesn't even begin to cover my time and effort...and yes, you're welcome!

Sure. I'll throw in a couple of $'s for the hassle of having to deal with one of those pesky corny kegs, too. I know they take up quite a bit of space and are require refrigeration, so I would feel bad if I didn't compensate you for the inconvenience.

I hear you Walker. I have similiar experiences with my homebrew and my cooking. For me the problem is expectations. In cooking and brewing you often know exactly what you are looking for in the finished product. You don't always nail the exact flavor, and in your mind it is always a flaw. Then someone comes along to eat your food or drink your beer and they do not have any expectations, except that it will hopefully taste good. So they experience all the flavors in a very zen sort of way having no expectation of the taste.

I can't tell you how many times, especially with cooking, I have served food with an apology that I didn't quite get this flavor or that flavor where I wanted it, only to have my guests tell me quite genuinely that the dish was wonderful. Same thing with some of my beer.

Or like when you apologize to your housemates for not making the chili spicy enough, but it's so hot they can't eat it?

Or wait, I think that's different...

Everyone likes my beer but me.



EDIT: of course they could be jivin' me

It's the opposite for me. People say my beer tastes really bad. I love it. And I dismiss their opinions as uninformed.

arturo7 said:

Everyone likes my beer but me.



EDIT: of course they could be jivin' me

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I'm in the same boat with you.

The only person that I know that appreciates beer the same way that I do is my fiance, and she isn't going to tell me that something is bad. I wish that I had a way of knowing if my beers taste good to someone else, or if they're flawed like I think that they are.

I'm not worried about getting honest feedback from my friends, many of whom are homebrewers.

One guy in particular (username = Boston) has been know to dump a beer out right in front of you if he doesn't like it.

Dumping beer = punch in face. Even if it tastes like excrement from a horse (add in secondary).

More importantly, how do we somehow fool ourselves into not knowing whether a beer is yours or not? I still feel like I could tell a beer was mine just from knowing what I have laying around to drink, even if I hadn't had a taste yet.

dkershner said:

Dumping beer = punch in face. Even if it tastes like excrement from a horse (add in secondary).

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Not in my world, man. If a beer tastes like ****, I won't drink it. Simple as that.

dkershner said:

More importantly, how do we somehow fool ourselves into not knowing whether a beer is yours or not? I still feel like I could tell a beer was mine just from knowing what I have laying around to drink, even if I hadn't had a taste yet.

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I don't know.... maybe get together with a bunch of your brewing buddies, all bring beer, and then have a blind tasting of everything with some commercial beers tossed into the mix?

Have one person dedicated to pouring the samples in another room and then bringing them into the rest of the people?

That's basically how it happened to me. Someone else poured me a beer and brought it to me and I had no idea what it was. The low light in the garage made the beer look darker than usual, so I already had subconsciously decided that it wasn't one of mine when it was given to me.

You know, I hear you as well....I'm my own worst critic. I made an extract porter in February and wasn't really impressed with it...it wasn't *bad*, but it didn't taste all that great to me. Last week I bought a sixer of Smuttynose Robust Porter and I'm finishing the glass and I come to the realization....hey, this reminds me of MY porter!

With my coconut stout, I was a bit underwhelmed....but a buddy at work loved it.

add me to this list. i'm VERY nitpicky on my beers. i have to be careful not to jade someone's opinion before they try a beer with a "now this one has some slight off flavors" or "i like the way this one came out, except for x, y, z..."

but i agree with snowveil, when i try a commercial example of a style i'm trying to nail down, i often think mine tastes as good, sometimes better and tend to find those same little flaws in them, which makes me feel better.

Walker said:

I'm not worried about getting honest feedback from my friends, many of whom are homebrewers.

One guy in particular (username = Boston) has been know to dump a beer out right in front of you if he doesn't like it.

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That's awesome. I can totally picture Boston doing that.

But all that 'beating yourself up' probably contributed to your beer being so good. A sports analogy being where you learn more from a loss than from a win. Some teachers I had in school would purposely make assignments to get you 'stuck' and in trying to get 'unstuck' you actually ended up learning more.

So I brew a really ****ty batch every now and then just to keep me from getting too content...yeah, that's the ticket.

devilishprune said:

I'm in the same boat with you.

The only person that I know that appreciates beer the same way that I do is my fiance, and she isn't going to tell me that something is bad. I wish that I had a way of knowing if my beers taste good to someone else, or if they're flawed like I think that they are.

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FYI - HBT is having the second annual homebrew competition very soon. I highly recommend that you submit some beer. You will get great feedback on it, and there is always the possibility that I won't win every category...

Any of you guys ever try a clone recipe and then do a blind test with the cloned beer?
I think I am going to try this sometime soon. Just so I can try and get a better opinion of my own beer.

From the looks of your picture I believe you.



I know, I know, that is not a picture of you.......is it???

Yes I have. My wife blindfolded me a fed me samples. I thought mine was the commercial one because the carbonation seemed better and the malt/hop balance was tastier. One of the best things I ever heard was that I was wrong.

Here's the beer--it was meant to be a Ranger IPA clone.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f69/hop-frog-ipa-210265/