Brulosophy

[hopjuice_71]

Yes it’s hogwash, but you cannot ignore this type of “belief” and allow it to persist. It’s like a disease that will spread to other susceptible people. This is how we have mass (relatively speaking) movements towards anti-fill in the blank (vaccine, climate change, medicine, etc).

Getting way of topic, but I am not sure what you mean here. To use your example, the anti-vaccine movement we are suffering through is because a so-called "expert" found a voice for his "expert" opinion through a high-profile journal. It survived peer-review and no one questioned it until the damage was done.

 

[hopjuice_71]

Correlation does not equal causation. Without going into too many details, the highest profile retractions of course will occur in the highest profile journals (for a multitude of reasons). But that doesn’t mean we assume all scientists (experts, etc) are bad.

No, certainly not. And given a choice would I consult Joe Blow on the street vs. a perceived expert? I would of course go with the expert. Its more of a cautionary tale that there is human element to all of this and sometimes even what the experts say should be questioned.

 

[dmtaylor]

*sometimes even what the experts say should be questioned.

*always

FTFY

 

[isomerization]

*always

FTFY

Skepticism is a basic tenet of science. It’s the ability to think critically after the skepticism where most fall short.

 

[isomerization]

Getting way of topic, but I am not sure what you mean here. To use your example, the anti-vaccine movement we are suffering through is because a so-called "expert" found a voice for his "expert" opinion through a high-profile journal. It survived peer-review and no one questioned it until the damage was done.

Andrew Wakefield was discredited over 20 years ago. There will always be bad apples in any area, but the scientific response in this area has been more than enough to persuade a rational mind.

 

[hopjuice_71]

Skepticism is a basic tenet of science. It’s the ability to think critically after the skepticism where most fall short.

Well said.

Cheers

 

[hopjuice_71]

Andrew Wakefield was discredited over 20 years ago. There will always be bad apples in any area, but the scientific response in this area has been more than enough to persuade a rational mind.

Yes, you made my point precisely. He was an "expert," published his "expert" opinion (peer-reviewed and all), there was lag while the damage was done, then ultimately an international panel investigated and discredited his work. However, the initial publication gave him the illusion of credibility as an "expert" and the minds that still take this "expert" opinion seriously are not rational (I don't mean to offend anyone here...). Drawing on your earlier post, I feel there is an issue that expert opinions are (in my expert opinion ) not viewed with enough initial skepticism.

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

It’s not a statement worth commenting on.

It’s pure hogwash.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social/#LeaTesExp

Here’s an article on experts. It’s section 3.2. I’m not making this stuff up.

 

[Immocles]

Depending on the topic, I sometimes listen to the podcasts while driving to work. I never realized they were so controversial haha.

 

[hopjuice_71]

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-social/#LeaTesExp

Here’s an article on experts. It’s section 3.2. I’m not making this stuff up.

Interesting read. Thanks.

 

[doug293cz]

OK folks, this thread has gotten out of hand. One of the fundamental rules of discourse on HBT to to discuss the topic, not other posters/members. Derogatory comments about other members are never allowed. I have had to delete 34 posts (about 1/3 of the total posts in this thread) because they violated that rule, were responses to other posts in violation, or were otherwise off topic.

Stick to the topic, and absolutely no sniping at others, or the thread will get locked, and flagrant abuse may get sanctioned.

If you have any comments about the moderation, or think other posts should have been deleted as well, start a conversation (aka PM) with me. Posts in this thread about moderation will be deleted.

doug293cz
HBT Moderator

 

[Pappers_]

All good answers. Maybe a different way of asking the question would be. Do you agree all the things they find insignificant are actually unimportant

No, I don't. They did an experiment on 'fast lagers', am I correct, or was that a different person(?), and found that the traditional lagering methods didn't make a difference. In any case, I know that, in my lagers, beers that I've fermented for a month and then lagered for a month taste better and get better scores at competitions than beers that I didn't. So, I take my time with lagers now.

Now, that's for my process, of course - someone else could make better beers than mine using fast lager techniques, perhaps. But for the beers I've made, I've had better success with slower lagering than fast.

Its hard to make absolute statements in the brewing world, there are way too many variables.

 

[Blazinlow86]

So now we're back on track I should clarify my original question better. I have nothing against brulosophy or even have any issues with there experiments and or outcome. They do there tests and report what they find. It's cool they do. The issue at hand to me is more so brewers that feel doing any of the additional steps that were found insignificant are a waste and referencing the brulosophy test as proof. Again my stance is taking 1-2 shortcuts is possibly so minute it's unnoticible to most but take 15- 20 shortcuts and it's gonna be noticible. Cheers

 

[Soulshine2]

*always

FTFY

trust but verify

 

[Moose_MI]

Per Op’s Original q’s...

What do the pros do that would not have the same benefits at home.

They charge for their beer...that would definitely benefit me at home.

Do you agree that there has to be a difference in pro vs home brewing? Yes

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

So now we're back on track I should clarify my original question better. I have nothing against brulosophy or even have any issues with there experiments and or outcome. They do there tests and report what they find. It's cool they do. The issue at hand to me is more so brewers that feel doing any of the additional steps that were found insignificant are a waste and referencing the brulosophy test as proof. Again my stance is taking 1-2 shortcuts is possibly so minute it's unnoticible to most but take 15- 20 shortcuts and it's gonna be noticible. Cheers

It would seem from this and other threads that you and I are in opposition, in fact after discussion, I generally find that though we brew differently, we are not far apart in our paths. I certainly have my limits as to what I will do to make a great beer. Very few if any of us own a beer centrifuge, which I think could be an excellent tool to make a really delicious beer. In fact, that may be why RIPScotty can’t replicate Trappist brew, as in my reading, I’ve found that at least one of the Trappist breweries uses a centrifuge. A big part of why I like to brew is that what I’m doing isn’t far from what my great grandfathers great grandfather did. It connects me to them in time. Glycol chilled stainless steel conicals would make my beer taste worse even though it may make better beer.

My quest is for the Soul of good beer. I believe that Brülosophy is on the same quest.

 

[Big Monk]

It would seem from this and other threads that you and I are in opposition, in fact after discussion, I generally find that though we brew differently, we are not far apart in our paths. I certainly have my limits as to what I will do to make a great beer. Very few if any of us own a beer centrifuge, which I think could be an excellent tool to make a really delicious beer. In fact, that may be why RIPScotty can’t replicate Trappist brew, as in my reading, I’ve found that at least one of the Trappist breweries uses a centrifuge. A big part of why I like to brew is that what I’m doing isn’t far from what my great grandfathers great grandfather did. It connects me to them in time. Glycol chilled stainless steel conicals would make my beer taste worse even though it may make better beer.

My quest is for the Soul of good beer. I believe that Brülosophy is on the same quest.

For the record, I brew beers in the Trappist spirit that have many of the same hallmarks. They are my own recipes and not clones and are excellent beers in both the subjective sense (I love them) and the objective sense (others love them). I can replicate many of the qualities in those beers yet fermentation, and getting the right balance for “ape’ing” beers like Chimay, Westmalle, and Rochefort, in particular, is always tough. Tough, but not impossible. I don’t shoot for clones of those beers though. I have a stable of 4-5 recipes for Single, Dubbel, Tripel, Dark Strong, and Golden Strong. I pursue those because it’s more fun that way.

My original comment was that I find it tough to clone Chimay, Westmalle, Rochefort, etc. so that’s why I still purchase them. They are delicious and I can’t fully replicate that. I’m not complaining, however, as I love them and they are all available at my local grocery store.

Centrifuges only play a part in packaging. All it does is remove old yeast, etc. and prepare the beers to get bottling yeast at packaging. It’s not a contributor in a flavor sense.

We likely agree on certain things more than you think. I just don’t feel the need to make brewing anything more than it is: crushed grains, hot water, little buggers that eat sugar, and a whole heap of good science.

It’s not spiritual for me. I’m not trying to find the “soul” of beer or connect with the European immigrant forebears of mine. More power to you if that’s your thing, it just doesn’t resonate with me.

As far as the Bru Crew are concerned? They have to do what they have to do to make that money and support the site. I guess I can’t begrudge them for that, even if it means I don’t agree with their whole concept. Marshall and crew need to make that money and get free stuff and who the hell am I to say nay to that. Content drives clicks, clicks get endorsements and help them monetize what they are doing. More power to them I guess. Can’t hate on someone who has found a way to make money off of what they love.

I’d certainly do it if I could.

I apologize to anyone if I was antagonistic over the course of this thread. Sometimes you just get riled up. I disagree with many of you about many things. I should do better at turning that into something more constructive.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

So now we're back on track I should clarify my original question better. I have nothing against brulosophy or even have any issues with there experiments and or outcome. They do there tests and report what they find. It's cool they do. The issue at hand to me is more so brewers that feel doing any of the additional steps that were found insignificant are a waste and referencing the brulosophy test as proof. Again my stance is taking 1-2 shortcuts is possibly so minute it's unnoticible to most but take 15- 20 shortcuts and it's gonna be noticible. Cheers

My biggest take away from Brulosophy is...don't blindly trust something you saw in a book, was told in a forum, or read on a Brulosophy article...try it for yourself! I don't see the primary focus of Brulosophy to be taking short cuts, but instead on trying different processes and ingredients and deciding what impact it has on your beers and your process.

I have friends that consistently produce incredible beers, and I have friends that consistently produce bad to mediocre beers (I like to think closer to the first group). I suspect the difference is not one factor (like ferm temp control, water treatments, etc.) but 20 small factors.

I guess as I think about it, it can be hard to separate out the Brulosophy experiments on "bad" practices that by themselves were not significant (using old grains, poor temp control, aeration after fermentation, etc.) vs processes that might not have the impact that was/is thought (first wort hopping, dry yeast rehydration, mash temp, etc.).

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I love the concept. Generally they do a pretty solid job of reigns trying to eliminate variables. Their confidence level threshold is obviously up for debate.

My biggest beef had that they frequently choose recipes that would mask the differences. For example, looking at late boil hop additions vs flameout or whirlpool additions with respect to IBUs. The have a recipe with 3 oz of hops. With people routinely putting 6-8 oz of whirlpool hops in a NEIPA, their recipe isn't likely to really highlight the differences.

I've seen a number of experiments where the recipe just want likely to expose the difference you might hypothesize was there.

I'm not saying use outrageous records that are outside the range of what someone would brew, but choose recipes that are within the norm but would not mask the potential differences.

 

[applescrap]

Ok, apologies, let me try again. Help me to understand better your thinking and thoughts about their work Rpiscotty. I like their work and find it interesting.

edit, I see you beat me to it. Thanks for sharing how you see it. That really was a thoughtful post. I am not opposed to learning more about how you think. I like those styles a lot too btw. I particularly have fallen in love with mixing red wine into an abbey.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

My biggest beef had that they frequently choose recipes that would mask the differences. For example, looking at late boil hop additions vs flameout or whirlpool additions with respect to IBUs. The have a recipe with 3 oz of hops. With people routinely putting 6-8 oz of whirlpool hops in a NEIPA, their recipe isn't likely to really highlight the differences.

Are you referring to Kettle Hop vs. Hop Stand?

If so, I found this article interesting from a different perspective: a 'short and shoddy' Pale Ale - throw all the hops in at the end of the boil and let the kettle sit for a while:

...
To evaluate the differences between a Pale Ale hopped at various points during the boil and one where all hops were added at flameout for a 20 minute hop stand.
...
participants were unable to reliably distinguish a Pale Ale hopped that was hopped at multiple points during the boil from one where all of the hops were added at flameout and steeped for 23 minutes
...

What's also interesting in this article is that they used current recipe software to estimate IBUs and had the IBUs measured in a lab.

 

[Moose_MI]

.... that's for my process, of course ..... Its hard to make absolute statements in the brewing world, there are way too many variables.

^^^ This.

 

[Aggie10]

I object to their usage of the term Short and Shoddy. Brulosophy doesn't have a clue what short and shoddy brewing is. Their process and setup is sooooo much longer and advanced than mine.

I have been striving to find the quickest and simplest method to make beer of a quality level I enjoy. I can bang out an extract based batch in 45 minutes from stovetop on to yeast pitched. Quality is better than my local craft brewery's weaker varieties but not as good as their good ones.

I'm sure I could improve my process but I have extremely limited time and actually am more interested in understanding the scientific side of brewing and using that knowledge to develop as quick and simple of a process that produces a decent product. Brulosophy has helped me do that immensely!

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I object to their usage of the term Short and Shoddy. Brulosophy doesn't have a clue what short and shoddy brewing is. Their process and setup is sooooo much longer and advanced than mine.

Isn't "Short and Shoddy" just for all grain brewing? With extract+steep, I thought it was called "Quick and Quaffable".

 

[madscientist451]

. I've never really understood the difference? Aside from batch size I cannot see what the difference is between pro and home brewing.

Just today was reading through the short and shoddy brew sessions and taste panel results. Some short and shoddy brews were better received than others.
Short and shoddy brewing is an example of what home brewers can do that pro brewers can't afford to do. The short and shoddy method has lower efficiency, so you have to make up for it by adding more grain. The hop utilization is also decreased, so you have to use more hops. If you were in business, the extra cost of more grain and hops wouldn't be equal to the time you saved brewing short and shoddy. If you are brewing on a 10bbl (or larger) system you also don't want to waste ingredients and produce mediocre beer. A little extra grain and hops doesn't matter all that much when you are brewing 5 gallons. Fine tuning the recipes to suit your taste should result in acceptable beers (for certain styles) using the short and shoddy method. For me its a better option compared to using extract. I've never liked the extract beer flavor, but for some its OK.
I'm a wage slave and don't have much time for brewing these days, so I'm going to sacrifice some of my 200+lb stockpile of grains and do some short and shoddy brewing. I'm thankful for the Brulosphy exbeeriments, I've learned a lot from them.

 

[Blazinlow86]

Just today was reading through the short and shoddy brew sessions and taste panel results. Some short and shoddy brews were better received than others.
Short and shoddy brewing is an example of what home brewers can do that pro brewers can't afford to do. The short and shoddy method has lower efficiency, so you have to make up for it by adding more grain. The hop utilization is also decreased, so you have to use more hops. If you were in business, the extra cost of more grain and hops wouldn't be equal to the time you saved brewing short and shoddy. If you are brewing on a 10bbl (or larger) system you also don't want to waste ingredients and produce mediocre beer. A little extra grain and hops doesn't matter all that much when you are brewing 5 gallons. Fine tuning the recipes to suit your taste should result in acceptable beers (for certain styles) using the short and shoddy method. For me its a better option compared to using extract. I've never liked the extract beer flavor, but for some its OK.
I'm a wage slave and don't have much time for brewing these days, so I'm going to sacrifice some of my 200+lb stockpile of grains and do some short and shoddy brewing. I'm thankful for the Brulosphy exbeeriments, I've learned a lot from them.

you have a point in regards to efficiency but thats not really relevent to good or bad beer imho. what about the 20 other things that have been found as insignificant that pro brewers do? pitch rates, water, ph, closed transfers etc those are the big ones. if those werent important i dont think pro home/commercial brewers would be doing them. cheers

 

[madscientist451]

Methods used in commercial beverage production may or may not be necessary.
If you are running 100,000 barrels of beer a year through your brewery, you want to do everything you can to make sure there aren't any problems. Do you have to use the exact same methods to make good beer at home? The answer depends on too many variables to list here, but the exbeeriments on Brulosophy show that you can get away with making significant changes in standard commercial brewing processes and still make good beer.

 

[eric19312]

No, I don't. They did an experiment on 'fast lagers', am I correct, or was that a different person(?), and found that the traditional lagering methods didn't make a difference. In any case, I know that, in my lagers, beers that I've fermented for a month and then lagered for a month taste better and get better scores at competitions than beers that I didn't. So, I take my time with lagers now.

Now, that's for my process, of course - someone else could make better beers than mine using fast lager techniques, perhaps. But for the beers I've made, I've had better success with slower lagering than fast.

Its hard to make absolute statements in the brewing world, there are way too many variables.

I think this is good example of limitation in the triangle taste method used by Brulosophy. The choice to try to preserve the scientific integrity of the test leads them to not disclose anything about the experiment. They don’t even admit the beer is a lager and then see how many people can tell the beers apart.

Compare that to a BJCP competition where the judges are looking at a flight of all different beers, but all supposed to be within a narrowly defined style. That provides a bunch of contextual information not available to the triangle testers. Your finding that your beers score better in BJCP competitions when lagered longer does not invalidate the original finding.

So should we ignore triangle testing and simply judge impact based on competition scores? Hahaha right I know. If you are not a believer in power of confirmation bias just remember the last time you read a score sheet for a beer you loved and the judges didn’t...

 

[brewbama]

I think Brülosophy performs a service to the Homebrew community. It’s up to the individual brewer to decide how to best use the results in their brewery.

They did one experiment where they lagered a batch and didn’t lager an identical batch. The majority of tasters couldn’t taste the difference. But the clarity of the lagered beer vs the haze of the unlagered beer was remarkable. The brewer decided he wouldn’t lager his beer in the future based on taste. But It made me decide that I’ll definitely lager my lagers based on appearance. This is an example of letting chips fall where they may and allowing the reader to decide based on the results.

Another example: last summer I had to get from grain to glass in a much shorter time than I normally would using my process so I could participate in a charity event. I used some of the short cuts described on Brülosophy and an AHA article by Drew Beachum. The results were substandard and I apologized every time I served a beer at that event. I believe it reflected poorly on me as a brewer and made a vow never to use those shortcuts again. Next time I’ll either decline the invitation or pull a beer from my normal rotation vs brewing a specific beer for the event. I brought the remainder of that keg home and let it cold condition for a while. It turned out to be drinkable which confirmed that portion of my process as invaluable for me. I attribute that experience which I would not otherwise have gained to Brülosophy and the AHA article.

Anyone who disagrees with their approach should start their own site and perform comparisons based on a better approach. It would also perform a service to the community. But to say they suck so they shouldn’t do it or decline to drink their beer!? How would not trying it or them not doing the comparisons confirm a better process? Who knows, they may do a comparison that should be adopted.

 

[lump42]

So now we're back on track I should clarify my original question better. I have nothing against brulosophy or even have any issues with there experiments and or outcome. They do there tests and report what they find. It's cool they do. The issue at hand to me is more so brewers that feel doing any of the additional steps that were found insignificant are a waste and referencing the brulosophy test as proof. Again my stance is taking 1-2 shortcuts is possibly so minute it's unnoticible to most but take 15- 20 shortcuts and it's gonna be noticible. Cheers

I believe this topic has been brought up many times before, maybe every 6 mo to a year, and follows the same course as this has.