Brewing all styles?

[Craig311]

I've brewed a good number of the recipes in BCS. That said, I haven't ever brewed a beer I wouldn't personally want to drink 5 or 10 gallons of. Has anyone actually made their way through a book like BCS and brewed everything? And, if so, has it made you a better brewer than you might have been just sticking to the styles you like?

In other words... Do you learn something making a rauchbier that directly translates to a better pale ale or whatever it is you like to brew/drink?

 

[Yooper]

I've brewed most styles, with a few exceptions (never made a kellerbier or a few others).

Brewing "to style" really doesn't teach you anything except how to brew to style. That's really important if you want to win BJCP competitions, but if you love gose and want to brew only gose, then brewing a rauchbier will not help you brew a better gose in my opinion.

Having a firm grasp of techniques like proper yeast pitching rates and temperature control along with mash pH management will help you brew better beer in the all around picture.

 

[brewcat]

It would give you perspective on different ingredients.

 

[NoIguanaForZ]

I suppose forcing oneself to make and drink a batch of every subtype of IPA would "build character," but other than that...

 

[Oginme]

Brewing "to style" really doesn't teach you anything except how to brew to style.

^This^ (for the most part)

When I started brewing, I had developed many of my own recipes so my perspective may be a little different.

I started designing recipes to match many of the BJCP styles. It does teach you a lot about the ingredients and gives you practice at refining your technique. From there, I took many of the recipes and started making slight changes to match my preferred tastes. For me, making the recipes are like cooking: you make a dish, decide what needs to be altered in the spices, ingredients, cooking time/method and next time you fold those changes into the recipe. Many of the 'house' recipes I brew now may have started as a BJCP style, but are very much on the fringes right now.

 

[Bobby_M]

Brew every style? Maybe not. I do think that brewing outside of your favorite beers will expand your experience and palette.

 

[giraffe]

Ive brewed pretty much every style except some sours.

I think there is value in brewing styles outside your comfort zone. Like if a style is one you dont usually brew, you do the research for it with a more open mind; you probably think you know how to make a pale ale, and have a bunch of assumptions about malt bills and hops etc. If you sit down to make a rauchbier, you have less preconceptions, you can try commercial examples you can find, see how other people approached it, go to the library. Ironically, usually beers like that end up some of my better batches. And while what you learn may not teach you to make a pale ale directly (except the experience of another batch) it may help with your lagers in general and smoked beers in general.

(Also its fun.)

 

[Qhrumphf]

I haven't ventured much into the lager realm (only proper lager I've done wasn't a BJCP style, but is a GABF style, and that's Malt Liquor that I brewed more or less as a joke), but I've brewed just about everything else. Some styles I've brewed once for the experience/experiment that I probably won't brew again (say, a Roggenbier), and other style I've brewed many variations of (I've brewed dozens of various English Bitters for example). I tend to brew more of styles that I like, whether that's tweaked version of the same recipe, or intentionally different recipes within the same style, and other styles I may have a recipe I like I brew every few years when it strikes my fancy (like my Witbier), or may just brew once.