Too Relaxed, Not Worried Enough?

Too many homebrews? (most likely)

After being away from homebrewing for a number of years (14?) I've recently picking up the hobby again. The main enabler was moving into a larger house and therefore pulling my equipment out of storage. Prior to being able to brew I spent months reading and researching to get ready to brew again. The overall theme of everything I read was RDWHAHB. With this in mind here is my typical brewing strategy:

1) Brew Beer
2) Cool Beer
3) Measure Gravity
4) Pitch Yeast
5) Wait 3-4 weeks
6) Measure Gravity
7) Maybe Cold Crash/Maybe Not
7) Keg
8) Force Carb
9) Drink

It seemed to work for the couple of batches I've done, but then I read many posts about people detecting infection, or stuck fermentations, or lack of fermentation, or dayglow colors emanating from their fermentors. I brew in buckets, I have no idea what's going on in there. I clean and sanitize thoroughly. I use bottled oxygen and yeast starters, as long as there's bubbles in the airlock I assume fermentation is chugging along. I ferment under my basement stairs which hovers about 67F all year long. I check that there is still liquid in the airlock, but other than that I don't think much about my beer until it's time to keg. Should I be paying more attention to my beer during fermentation, or is this approach reasonable?

You nailed it. More steps than cooking a steak but totally worth the effort. Comparison:

1) Cook steak
2) Eat Steak

iaefebs said:

You nailed it. More steps than cooking a steak but totally worth the effort. Comparison:

1) Cook steak
2) Eat Steak

Click to expand...

You forgot 2 major points.
Drink beer while cooking steak
Drink beer while eating steak

You and I are on very similar paths. My last entries in my brew log were 2001.

I just pulled my gear out of storage and am in the process of organizing and getting ready to brew.

Oh, and this time I decided to make a real keezer/fermentation chamber to go with it.

The UPS guy will be busy this week, and then it will be time to get that mash going.

But back to your point, I'm pretty relaxed about the whole thing too. It just doesn't seem that complicated, but I need to get my gear ready...

Some people are too relaxed. Some are not relaxed at all. If you are making good beer then why worry? I make changes to my brewing procedure when I find something happened I didn't like. Had a diacetyl beer so I bit the bullet and got a stir plate and finished my ferm chamber. It is all about what works for you.

Honestly, I think if everyone started off fermenting in buckets, the number of newbie freakout posts on here would be cut by about 3/4. There's not much worth looking at going on in there. The only thing you can do during fermentation is keep the temperature reasonable. 67F is a tad on the high side, but not by much. If you get into lagers, really big beers, or use some temperamental English yeasts, you might have to learn about things like diacetyl rests or "rousing," but for 99% of ales, you can just leave it alone.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.