Getting the Balance Right

[Hanso]

In any worthwhile pursuit there is an interesting mix of art and science. Even in the "pure" sciences, say physics, when you get to the edge of the known, there becomes the need for a leap of faith, creative thinking based on intuition rather than facts, in order to expand the way of thinking in the field. Even in "pure" arts, like music, there is always the science of sound and tones and scale that underlies the art. There is always some balance to be struck in order to succeed in the field, no matter how heavily weighted it is one way or the other.

Approaching brewing in any way that treats one side or the other without the proper balance of art and science is ultimately going to slow your growth as a brewer.

My question is: What is the proper balance?

My general observation (or assertion I suppose) about the homebrewing community is on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 being all science and 10 being all art, we are currently sitting around 7 or 8. I say this based on reading a lot of your posts and seeing that people who emphasize a more scientific approach are rare and most typical experienced, respected homebrewers here never speak a word of science.

BTW as an aside, people who deftly straddle both sides of the art and science are even more rare (mad fermentationist, maybe?).

Perhaps that reflects the tendency toward scientific illiteracy and the fact that as a society we under emphasize scientific discipline and would never consider mixing a fun hobby like homebrewing with something as god awful boring as science.

Or, the under emphasis of science may reflect the fact that it is truly much less important than the art, and so the 7 or 8 range is an appropriate balance for the homebrewing discipline.

These thoughts came out of a PM with smokinghole and other recent encounters of mine.

Discuss.

 

[prandlesc]

Brewing is more like cooking than it is like a lab experiment. I know that there are important things happening at the molecular/chemical level and I've read some about them. But when it comes right down to it, I'm cooking something that I'll drink later - so it's the art of the recipe design and the execution of that recipe that make or break my beer. I do have to know some of the basic science - water profiles, mash temperature effects on starch extraction and conversion, the effect of heat on hops bitterness and flavor extraction, and the basics of yeast biology - but that's really about it. The more experienced brewers know the basic science because they use it in their brewing recipe design over and over again - but they don't talk a lot about it. I think that's because once you get the basics of the science of brewing down, the art is what drives our passion - how a combination of grains, adjuncts, processes, and yeast combine to create a wonderful beer experience.

As in the food world, there will be those that love the science. And in cooking molecular gastronomy is one of the results of taking the art of food preparation to the scientific level. And I'm sure that it produces some fantastic results. Alton Brown, the Food Network's most scientific chef, had this to say about the topic. "My worry about molecular gastronomy, especially with young cooks, is that they will try to use it to replace knowing how to cook food. Show me you can cook a chicken breast properly. Show me you can cook a carrot properly. Now do it a hundred times in a row. Then we can play around with the white powders."

And I have to side with him and extend that to beer brewing - make a hundred batches, then focus on the science behind it.

My three cents worth - I was going to put in my two cents worth but got carried away a little bit!!

 

[smokinghole]

Ultimately brewing is about enzymes, plain and simple. All enzymes are proteins and all proteins have specific pH ranges and temperatures in which they operate most efficiently. That applies to malting, mashing, boiling, and fermentation. Hitting specific pH ranges at certain points are like critical control points from a quality point of view. If you hit those points your chances of ending up with a great beer in the end is better than brewing blindly and getting lucky. I'm not saying everyone needs high precision instruments and pH meters but if you can figure out what you're working with you will be much better off.

We're not talking the application of the scientific method in brewing (unless we're talking tweaking recipes, then dependent and independent variables can and should be used). It's about utilizing and understanding the science behind what happens and why it happens. If you can teach yourself or learn some of the basic and more moderately advanced scientific principles of brewing, it will help out with the artisanal aspect of brewing. For example aged hops smell pretty awful on their own. After boiling, however, and a lenghty fermentation with brett the bound aroma compounds contained in the hops become a very citrusy aroma and flavor component. Prior to that biological impact from the yeast's glycosides they smelled like cheesy feet with an athlete's food problem. If you didn't know that someone looking to make a lambic may NEVER try aged hops because the smell bad. Another example is pitching rates. High pitch rates, to an extent, reduce ester development. However too high a pitch rate can make it just as estery (but in a different way) as too low a pitch rate. That's because metabolically the yeast doesn't have to reproduce and the Acetyl CoA (an enzyme) will be directed to making flavor rather than more yeast. This is why brewing new wort and blindly pitching on an entire yeast cake is ill advised. That's WAY too much yeast. Plus as you move forward trying to reuse the yeast the viability drops significantly because the yeast aren't reproducing they're just consuming sugar and shutting down. So as you reduce the replications necessary to attenuate your wort you have old yeast lying around in the fermentor with no nutrient and reduced glycogen to make new yeast resulting in a crappy culture. There are plenty of examples but I don't want to bore anyone more than I already have.

One of the things that bugs me is that homebrewers make statements based on something they read that someone else said. So then that statement is picked up by 5 more people and its repeated and next thing you know there's 300 homebrewers on this site alone that holds that original claim as true even if it isn't 100% correct. The other thing I see happen is a homebrew "celebrity" does something one way and so that becomes the accepted way and a preached technique. The technique could be terrible, specific to their brewing system, but because "insert name here" said so people tell others to do the same thing. So it could be wrong from the start and with no understanding beyond what they heard, bad information or techniques spread. This doesn't happen all the time but it does happen often enough.

An example of this herd mentality is with lactobacillus. Sure the commonly available cultures of lactobacillus are not hop tolerant. They're very sensitive to hops actually, well WL and Wyeast cultures are. However, when I make the claim that lacto soured a 35ibu 8%abv beer I made, people have told me I'm crazy. I have pdfs of academic papers working with hop tolerance in lactobacillus that further discusses how they even "trained" the bacteria to have stronger tolerance to hops in a short amount of time (its all about genes and protein synthesis). Again, I'm not saying you we need to all read academic papers, but instead be quiet enough to accept information contrary to strongly held homebrewing belief. I think there are many homebrewers that like to be an authority on certain things they read and its apparent on this website. There's a certain "this way or the highway" tone to some people's posts. That kind of attitude can scare someone away from homebrewing, and we don't want that. Ultimately people can do what they want, but there are bad, good, better, and best practices. I think our goal is to eliminate the bad practices work towards the best practices.

The meshing of science and art is important from the start. It begins with extract and just snowballs into full on grain brewing. Extract brewing is like making soup. Add ingredients boil, and ferment. However science still applies in that most basic type of brewing because you still have to worry about yeast and that yeast cannot be thrown in 180F wort and expect it to live and ferment. That's because the proteins (stupid proteins again) in the yeast denature and the yeast dies at that high temperature, if it was a thermophillic bacterium it'd probably be find at 180f, but we don't make beer with them. Also cold break is fine in the fermentor, all of it is fine in the fermentor. Most commercial breweries chill on the way to the fermentor during knockout and that means cold break is forming in the wort transfer line due to the heat exchanger.

When moving to grain brewing one should have an understanding of pH, and water chemistry to some extent to make the best beer one can make. If you have very soft/acidic water you are not going to make a very good stout because your mash pH will be too low. Same goes for trying to brew a pilsner using very alkaline water except in this case your mash pH will be too high. Sure you can just dump water in a mash tun and brew blind, it works for many people.

I am not suggesting we all become a science is the only way robot. There certainly is an artisanal aspect to brewing. That comes with knowing the flavors of your ingredients, the flavors the yeast produce, and imaging how they will combine to make a beer. I do draw the line at claiming it is art though. I claim its a merely a craft. If you ask me, Art is meant to be displayed and collected, something a craftsmen makes is consumed or used. You can refer to it as an art but I am not going to claim that I am an artist like some pompous American brewers that charge 4x per ounce compared to their import counterparts. Either they're horribly inefficient and have to charge to make up for that, or they're gouging considering you have less middlemen taking a cut.

Anyway that's my take, I'll shut up now.

 

[coypoo]

The pro's are more scientific. They have microbiologists, and labs, and beakers, and safety glasses.

Us hobbyist don't have the money or equipment to get super science-y. That's why it seems more artful bc that's a we've got

 

[BrewCrewKevin]

Holy man, have a beer, man. Relax, have a homebrew!

lol J/K. I get where you're coming from. And I agree.

I would even say on a commercial level they are still too close to the Art side of it. I'm an engineer and have worked in a few different industries, and every industry i've been in has huge amounts of research and development knowledge, even just in basic manufacturing. If you listen or read interviews from Brewmasters at some of the largest craft breweries in the country, they very rarely have formal education. It makes sense, since there are only a couple of reputable programs (Siebel Institute in Chicago, other wise UK/Scotland). More often, they say "I started with homebrewing, got a job in a brewery working on the bottling line, and gained knowledge from working in the industry".

I know there's a lot of technology and science out there, it just seems even the pros are more experience based than science and theory based, which supports your theory that it's still more of a 'black magic' art in a lot of cases.

 

[MindenMan]

Smokinghole, I read through your post, and appreciate having to turn my brain back on for a few minutes. Aside from molecular gastronomy which I think is very cool, to merely baking a loaf of bread, is it science, is it art, is it a craft, well, yes, sort of. There is Rainbow bread, and there is artisan bread, both using the same basic ingredients, but getting very different results. So is it science when a starter is used to age and flavor the dough? We are talking yeast here, right? I believe that
thinking outside the box of conventional wisdom whether it be bread, or beer, or pizza, anything that these days has the craft/ artisan label attached. Baking is both an art and science. Too much of this, too little of that, and, well, it qualifies as bread, but you don't want to eat it. When brewing beer the same rules apply, and the wrong amounts of ingredients one way or another, and you wouldn't want to drink it. Brewing is an art form coming from craftsmen, who continually hone their skills with every batch they make. But they are also artists in their own way, as they continue to push the boundaries of what is seemed to be "out there"

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Remember, there is a big difference between knowing how something works and simply knowing what somethings work.

Brewing [essentially] predates science. For most of the history of society, people only had a rudimentary understanding that "if you do x, this liquid becomes really cool most of the time". So there's very much a tradition of "do what works and worry about the 'why' later".

I know that some people have lamented the poor state of brewing science in the literature (especially for things at the homebrew level), and I think much of this comes from the fact that established historic breweries developed their process through trial-and-error before modern science and technology, and their processes were emulated. If their processes weren't the most perfectly optimal, that wasn't so much an issue, because they still made beer that people liked to drink. Today the scientific literature on beer is still playing catch up.

I think at the end of the day, the key is that you need to understand the science if you want to be a molecular biologist, but you don't need to understand the science to brew good (and sometimes even great) beer; you simply needs to know what works. But often where understanding the science can help is recognize where your own practices are deficient and can be improved, and can help you either correct flaws in your beer or improve process and get that extra little bit of quality or consistency that you're looking for. But there are enough people who have their systems dialed in well merely through trial-and-error and experience, they're 98% of the way there, and putting in a whole lot of study to get to 99.5% doesn't make a lot of sense.

 

[Nightshade]

I think at the end of the day, the key is that you need to understand the science if you want to be a molecular biologist, but you don't need to understand the science to brew good (and sometimes even great) beer; you simply needs to know what works.

Without a doubt, what he said

 

[Hanso]

Wow, there are some really well articulated viewpoints here. prandlesc, bwarbiany, and smokinghole especially.

I do appreciate and agree with the thoughts that brewing is much more like cooking than like running a lab experiment, and that history of brewing predating modern science is a good point. I also think that on a personal level the key to improving most rapidly is not through massive amounts of trial and error alone but through properly educated guesswork that guides the trial and error process. In other words, experimentation. We are fortunate enough to live in a time that we have instant global communication and tons of peoples' experience to rely upon yet as a result are inundated with noise amongst the little bit of signal here and there because of all of the redundant or irrelevant information out there. Sifting through the noise is still better improvement process than being isolated and trial and erroring everything on my own which is why I'm writing this post urging a reduction of BS.

When I started home brewing, probably like most, it was a matter of following process as outlined in the instructions. There was no mashing involved, as it was an extract batch with some steeping grains. I had years of experience in the instruction sheet telling me exactly WHAT to do but there was very little WHY. Accordingly there was almost no thought on my part put into why things happen the way they do, it was too overwhelming just to make sure everything is sanitized and to follow the steps exactly. I just trusted and it worked out ok.

Over the years and as I got more involved, wanting to improve on every batch, I did a lot more reading and became interested in the underlying mechanics. Books and videos about the microbiology clued me into some of the science and I realized mashing was an aspect I was losing out on a huge level of control. So I switched to all grain a few years ago.

I've been in a mode of having just enough science to know how to make improvements for a while now and I wonder what the next step is for me. Recipe formulation is one of my strengths now, but some of the things smokinghole mentioned like being able to look past all of the false science/alchemy of accepted "knowledge" out there in the forums and collective heads of the brewing community is a difficult task when you are only equipped with enough to get by.

I can sniff alchemy out a mile away because I am at least somewhat scientifically literate, but often don't know a better alternative to the explanation provided. It "just seems" baseless. I also can sniff out when people (some chronic repeat offenders) on the forums are out to prove how great their advice and knowledge is, and a newbie comes along and picks it up like he was given a gold nugget... with much sycophantic gratitude returned to the experienced forum member, he takes that alchemy and goes on his merry way applying it as the gospel of correct procedure to be applied in all situations without ever wanting to know why. So for example heavily aerating in one situation might make sense but in others, not so much.

So part of my reason for bringing this topic up is for personal advice on how to grow in the scientific knowledge so that when something questionable comes up I have the confidence to know my next step.

The other reason is a call to action to those that do have the knowledge to be on the lookout for BS and call it out whenever it's encountered, or at least clarify the blanket statements whenever possible.