Appreciate you making this point. Marshall and crew are not a bunch of people like me. They are a bunch of people who believe heavily in brew dogma. Marshall remains shocked at almost all of the experiments. He talks about thinking he was going to ruin the beer by doing the things he was doing. I mean he was certain he was going to ruin the beer. Speaking of ruining the beer.
"Not much effort to avoid ruining a whole batch of beer"
Are you implying that pitching a pack of dry yeast could ruin the beer? Or not making a starter could ruin the beer? Please explain more.
Decreasing lag time and overall ferm time aren't side benefits, they are the only benefits, period. Read this write up from Marshall. They have tested slurry four times as well 3 of the 4 no significance. Anyways he was certain the starter beer was better than the sloppy old slurry. Confirming the effort. Until he opened the keg door and realized he had switched lines and was "preferring" the sloppy slurry beer. I splash out the 5 dollars a batch for fresh yeast. I dont mind because I dont brew to much, but if I brewed 4 batches a day that would change.
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As I've noted before, I think there's a flaw in the way the brulosophy stuff is done. They have no control over what people were consuming prior to testing (IPAs? Heavily-spiced food?), and they don't randomize the presentation of the three samples in the triangle test.
The way they do the experiments? I think it's fine, actually quite good.
But the testing is flawed, potentially hugely so. It's really easy to look at the brulosophy stuff and say that there's no difference, but there is a huge alternative explanation for the results (which, btw, is the essence of causal analysis--eliminating alternative explanations of results). That is, it's very hard to have confidence in results when the people doing teh tasting aren't controlling the instrument, i.e., their palate.
Now, there's no rule that says you have to take from Brulosophy stuff what Mongoose says you're allowed to take. Do what you will with the results. But when we're trying to figure out what happens when yeast this, and yeast that, we shouldn't be looking to Brulosophy for guidance.
It's entertainment, mostly, and may give one food for thought. More's the pity, too, as the experiment side of the brulosophy analyses are pretty well done.
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There's at least one exception to the above, IMO. When a LOT of people can tell the difference with a triangle test, and then there's a clear preference for one or the other, that should be looked at seriously.
But the "there's no difference" conclusions should be taken with a boulder of salt. Is there no difference, really? Or that the burned palates of the tasters can't perceive it? And would that work with different yeast, different recipes, different gravities, different fermentation temps, different populations of tasters?
The best way to use the Brulosophy stuff is do take the experiments as ideas for testing at home, and see what works in one's own homebrew environment...or not. I've done that. Used to strive to keep trub out of the fermenter, straining it out. Then I read a brulosophy experiment where they couldn't see a difference between trub and no trub, decided to try it myself. I couldn't perceive a difference. So I became less concerned about it. But that's me, my palate, and my recipes and my fermentation temps and my water and......