As a beginner do you feel your beer is not as good?

[hal2814]

I never keep score. How do I compare myself to other brewers? By height. (HT to anyone who gets the reference.)

On a more serious note, I make beer for me. That means I'm going to really like my beer if I meet my goals. There are a lot of beers out there I don't particularly care for. At least half of the commercial IPA examples I've ever had are terrible IMHO. I'm sure somebody likes them, but it's not me. Of course I'm going to prefer my own to those. On the other hand, there are some commercial beers I absolutely love. I've never had a bad commercial Dunkel. I don't think I could ever make anything as good consistently even compared to the lesser-regarded Dunkels like Warsteiner.

 

[Skarekrough]

I never keep score. How do I compare myself to other brewers? By height. (HT to anyone who gets the reference.)

Judge Smails: You know, you should play with Dr. Beeper and myself. I mean, he's been club champion for three years running and I'm no slouch myself.

Ty Webb: Don't sell yourself short Judge, you're a tremendous slouch.

But anyway, one of the reasons I started brewing again was because none of the beers I was getting really excited me anymore. I have a decent local selection of micros near me with great reputations. However after so many years none of them tripped my trigger anymore.

One of my master plans is to take a single recipe and just expand upon it; make it my own and learn from my mistakes and tailor it to my own tastes and preferences.

 

[Justibone]

One of my master plans is to take a single recipe and just expand upon it; make it my own and learn from my mistakes and tailor it to my own tastes and preferences.

This is my plan for my house beer -- I'm thinking it's going to be a wheat.

Why wheat? I've brewed better wheat than anything else, wheat has complexity, variability can be desirable batch-to-batch, I like it, SWMBO likes it, most people who come over will probably like it... and I won't mind drinking the mistakes while I perfect it!

YMMV!

 

[Skarekrough]

This is my plan for my house beer -- I'm thinking it's going to be a wheat.

Why wheat? I've brewed better wheat than anything else, wheat has complexity, variability can be desirable batch-to-batch, I like it, SWMBO likes it, most people who come over will probably like it... and I won't mind drinking the mistakes while I perfect it!

YMMV!

That sounds like a winner right there! If it's getting consumed then you know you're doing something right.

Now you just need to convince those consuming it that if, ya know, they chipped in some cash now and again you can keep this party of top-shelf beer available the gravy train won't come to a halt!

Of course, this is kind of counter to my philosophy of brewing which is "I'm making a Stout that I like and everyone else can piss off if they don't like it."

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

No. But it is getting better.

 

[grasshopperfirestarter]

I have been brewing since October. I have brewed a new recipe every 2-3 weeks. The last 5 have been all grain. I feel i know my system and hit my numbers. I usually primary for 3 weeks then bottle and drink them after another 3 weeks. The beer i am making doesnt taste bad, and it is carbonated, but i am not real happy with the results when it comes to the taste. I am loving everything about brewing and want to keep doing it but if the end results doesnt become much better, im not sure if I can keep doing it. I am wondering if simply I shouldt consume the beer until 6 weeks in bottle? thats my next test with the current batches I have bottled. For the brewers that bottle, how long do you guys wait until drinking most of them?

 

[RMitch]

Go purchase a $4.5M brewery, and you'll make plenty quality beer. haha

 

[Justibone]

I have been brewing since October. I have brewed a new recipe every 2-3 weeks. The last 5 have been all grain. I feel i know my system and hit my numbers. I usually primary for 3 weeks then bottle and drink them after another 3 weeks. The beer i am making doesnt taste bad, and it is carbonated, but i am not real happy with the results when it comes to the taste. I am loving everything about brewing and want to keep doing it but if the end results doesnt become much better, im not sure if I can keep doing it. I am wondering if simply I shouldt consume the beer until 6 weeks in bottle? thats my next test with the current batches I have bottled. For the brewers that bottle, how long do you guys wait until drinking most of them?

My buddy made a brown that he wasn't very happy with, despite it being a very popular recipe on this site with about a gazillion recommendations. I tasted it, and the problem was his efficiency I believe -- it ended up tasting watery, like a session beer.

If you have done some all grain, and you aren't happy with your beer, try going back to extract and see if you can make a beer you really really like. There is no shame in extract brewing -- just extra expense and less flexibility.

Without knowing precisely what it is that you find disappointing about your own beers, I can't give much better advice than that. Except to say this... anyone can make a tasty wheat.

 

[limnicky]

I always thought the beer I brewed was damn good, but not untill my friend from England was here for a visit did I feel like I had made it as a home brewer, after the first glass he said both my Irish Stout and my Ale were "freaking awesome".

 

[TTB-J]

+1 to picking a house style and just brewing it over and over again until you have nailed it. There are a lot of variables that go into the end result of your beer's taste, the only way to know what is and isn't working in your process is to limit the number of variables that are changing from batch to batch. So many people on here wonder why their brews are so different from batch to batch, but then thy say that they've made a raspberry wheat, a Russian vanilla imperial stout, and a coffee caramel two pump no whip lager for their first three batches. So the answer to the question "what changed between the differed batches you've made" is: virtually everything! I'm all about brewing what sounds good to you, but you can't just jump in and expect to make a Sublimely Self-Righteous on your first try out of the gate.

When I got to music school in college I had to take piano lessons as part of the curriculum. I was a trombone player and had never so much as laid a finger on a piano key. We started by playing scales over and over and over again, just like I did when I picked up the trombone in 5th grade. So here I was, an accomplished musician, struggling to bang out a C scale on a piano for an entire semester. It was frustrating as hell because I knew what a beautiful Beethoven sonata should sound like, I just didn't have the skills to do it.

Brewing beer is the same thing. You know what a great beer tastes like and you want to be able to replicate that. But you need to learn the "C scales" of brewing before you can bust out the "sonatas." Find a style you really like and get the basics down. Your process should be second nature before you start going crazy with different flavors. The upside is that you could perfect your craft in a few months as opposed to the years it takes to be really good at a musical instrument. And, in the process, you might make some really good beer before you even know what you're doing.

 

[beergolf]

I am a new brewer ,but a craft brew drinker for many years. The few batches that I have done so far are very good. SO good that the other day I was reaching for a beer in the refigerator and picked my home brew over a couple of other big name craft brews that were also in there.

I am hoping to get enough of a pipeline to not have to buy beer except to try something new. I am getting closer in my quest to have enough beer on hand to only drink my own.

 

[Hockeyhunter99]

you can't compare apples to oranges. if you want a comparison of how well you are doing as a brewer, sample other homebrewer's beer. or jump into a compitition. home brew is unfiltered and can change with temp or yeast strain or water content or child sneezing into bucket (happened to me, great beer!!) or any number of homebrew problems. BMC companies keep EVERYTHING the same EVERY time. that is consistence. consistence comes with patience. patience comes with experience.

Keep Brewing my friend.

PROST

 

[jtkratzer]

I've done less comparing of my beers to specific examples from commercial brewers and more of a comparison to the style...my first hefeweizen was right on in flavor, but it was a bit darker in color, probably from the LME and boiling it for 60 minutes, but the taste was fantastic.

An altbier I brewed in November that sat in the primary for 2 months is phenomenal. It's just like the altbier I drank in Düsseldorf when I spent a few months in Germany.

I have very high hopes for the Blood Orange Wheat and Victory Hop Devil I bottled yesterday.

I don't really care how it compares to commercial brews...just that my wife and I enjoy them. The fact that I get to tweak them a bit if I want to do something different, like use and WLP320 American Wheat yeast instead of WLP380 or WLP380 because my wife isn't a huge fan of the dominating banana and clove flavors of the other yeasts just makes it that much better. Add in that these beers are cheaper than buying in the store, and I get to say I made it...that's all that matters to me.

 

[beergolf]

I've done less comparing of my beers to specific examples from commercial brewers and more of a comparison to the style...

I am interested in the same thing. I do not care if my brew is a clone of others, but is it a good beer for the style I am brewing.

 

[grasshopperfirestarter]

Thanks for the support! I wrote that after drinking a couple beers from my 1st AG recipe, an Irish Red, bottled 3 weeks. I personally just dont like it but my dad does. Im going to wait another few weeks and try one again. But yesterday I drank a couple beers from my 2nd AG recipe, an IPA, bottled 15 days so far, and I loved it! Things are looking up!

 

[grasshopperfirestarter]

I was reading all my old posts and saw this and just wanted to say my brews dont suck these days. I keg now, brew 10 gallon batches and they are good!

 

[dfc]

I was reading all my old posts and saw this and just wanted to say my brews dont suck these days. I keg now, brew 10 gallon batches and they are good!

Amazing how that happens, right? I'm the same way although I don't do 10 gallon batches.