How do you deal with setbacks?

[monkeymath]

To me, homebrewing is a strange hobby. The actual act of brewing is, for the most part, boring. Cleaning and paying attention to sanitary practices is fundamentally tedious. But there is an element of wonder, of magic, when that dull mass of wort suddenly comes to life: fermentation begins and transforms this sweet, bitter, unpalatable concoction into the nectar of gods. Unfortunately, the result would not always please the gods; at least not all of them.

[You can skip this paragraph, which just covers the background of my question]
I still get excited about every single batch I brew, and the batch I currently work on is always the essential one. A couple of weeks back, I brewed my first Münchner Hell. I put a lot of thought into the ingredients I would use, the process I would employ. Then I waited for a long time during the cold fermentation and maturation. At bottling day, the sweet sweet whiff of lager stink was intoxicating. I tasted the first bottle yesterday: it was good, pleasant to drink, but it was lacking in several respects compared to my idea of a Münchner Hell. Living in Munich, I can easily find better examples of the style. Much better even, to be honest. What frustrates me even more is that I don't really have a clear idea what I could do to improve this brew in a future iteration, how I could move it in the direction of my ideal Münchner Hell.

So, how do you deal with setbacks in homebrewing? Do you just immediately jump into the next attempt at whatever you have in mind? Do you sometimes take a break off brewing? Do you manage to turn your disappointment into initiative to change something about your brewing process? Do you have your "signature brew" that you've made numerous times and that you can reproduce without fail?
The latest option sounds quite appealing to me right now, except I have never really brewed the same thing twice. I'm still very much in "exploratory mode" (you'd think I'd be done by now, after more than 50 batches ...). I could rebrew one of my past successful recipes, but there is a significant risk involved: what if it won't live up to my memory of the brew? It's quite possible that I remember a couple of them as being better than they actually were...

Anyway, I'd love to hear about your coping strategies

Cheers,
Daniel

 

[VikeMan]

I tasted the first bottle yesterday: it was good, pleasant to drink, but it was lacking in several respects compared to my idea of a Münchner Hell. Living in Munich, I can easily find better examples of the style. Much better even, to be honest. What frustrates me even more is that I don't really have a clear idea what I could do to improve this brew in a future iteration, how I could move it in the direction of my ideal Münchner Hell.

Can you define the respects in which it's lacking, compared with a notional perfect beer? If not (and even if so), consider having your beer evaluated by others, preferably beer judges who don't know you, if that's possible. (I don't know the competition situation in Germany.) The worst person to do an objective sensory evaluation of a beer (in isolation) is the brewer.

Once you can enumerate the shortcomings, you can consider them in the context of your process and recipe, and figure out what to try differently. If you've identified the shortcomings, but can't connect the dots between them and your recipe/process, then post the details in the forum. There will be no end of advice, much of it good!

 

[brewdude88]

I'm going to put on my armor and bring up a dangerous topic.

I to had problems brewing German style lagers that tasted like the real deal. I tried everything I could find over countless hours of research. I used every German malt I could get my hands on, decoction mashing, different lager yeasts, water adjustments... None of these things made much difference.

Then I came across LODO brewing. My research of it showed it as highly controversial and a general PITA to pull off. I gave it a go, and had problems on my first LODO brew that rendered the extra effort wasted. I tightened things up and decided on one more try.

I won't get into technicalities here, but I noticed many key differences in the mash and finished wort, and when the day came to tap the keg... Pure heaven... like it was imported straight from Munich.

I'm a believer in LODO now. I only use it for German styles, and I've been getting great results and reviews from the samples I share.

As to your question, try new things (not too many at once) and take great notes, so you can do it again when you hit paydirt.

 

[TheMadKing]

When I make a batch of beer that I'm not happy with, I keep in mind that I learned something while doing it. There's no such thing as failure, just learning one more way NOT to do something. So I analyze my beers that I dislike, try to identity what SPECIFICALLY I don't like about it, identify the possible causes for that flaw, and then reformulated my recipe, or make a change to my process accordingly.

I don't agree that the brewer can't effectively evaluate his or her own beer. Only the brewer knows exactly what it was supposed to taste like, only the brewer knows the process, and the only hard part is separating what you WANT to taste from what you ACTUALLY taste. If you can do that, and it takes practice, you can be the best person to evaluate your beers.

Theoretically every batch should improve on the last, and that's what keeps me coming back.

That said, if you don't like the act of brewing and don't enjoy the day and the process... Maybe you should consider a different hobby. I for one, love my brew days. They are when I get to turn off my cares for a few hours and focus on my process and getting everything just right. Brewing is my happy place. I actually enjoy brewing more than I enjoy drinking it sometimes, and I'll give beer away to neighbors just to be able to brew more often.

 

[VikeMan]

I don't agree that the brewer can't effectively evaluate his or her own beer.

I didn't say that a brewer can't effectively evaluate their own beer. But I did say they are the worst person to do an objective sensory evaluation (in isolation). Other people, particularly people with no relationship to the brewer, and who are not providing the feedback face to face, are more objective. This is a generalization. There may be brewers out there with a terrific palate, no ego, and no self doubt. I haven't met them.

I once ran an (anonymous) survey of homebrewers. Of those that felt they had enough information to form an opinion, 69% believed their homebrew was better than average. 25% believed their homebrew was about average. 6% believed their homebrew was below average. Cellar blindness is a real thing in home brewing.

Only the brewer knows exactly what it was supposed to taste like, only the brewer knows the process, and the only hard part is separating what you WANT to taste from what you ACTUALLY taste.

For the OP, I'm assuming that he wants to duplicate (Paulaner) Münchner Hell, or more generically, make a great Helles. Either of these ideas is understandable to an impartial judge. I agree that if the brewer wants to make something unusual, maybe something he/she can't even describe effectively, then outside opinions wouldn't help much. But even then, they are more likely to objectively identify things that would be flaws in any beer, regardless of the brewer's goals (unless the goals include intentional flaws).

 

[bracconiere]

i cope by drinking more of it, lol, you know to drown my sorrows....

 

[Spartan1979]

I'm kind of a boring brewer. 75% of what I brew is what I've brewed before and I'm happy with what I get. I mostly brew German styles since it's hard to get good examples here. If I want an IPA, I'd rather just go buy it at the store or from a local brewery. If I was living in Munich, I'd probably just buy Helles. There are so many good examples and they're cheap. That's how I cope.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

What TheMadKing said. Go over your notes, make some adjustments and brew again keeping good notes again. Every ingredient of course is a variable as well as your process.

 

[Transamguy77]

We as brewers are our own worst critic when it comes to a beer that does not turn out how we would like, most of the time it’s still a good beer just not what we are shooting for.

Like others have said I will try a recipe a couple of times and make a change and write it down so I know how to make it going forward. And maybe in between I’ll make something I know I like so I still have something to drink.

 

[Bramling Cross]

Blending. Blending solves everything.

On a more serious note, over the years I've learned not to think of a brew session as a discrete point with a discrete result. Most of my recipes have been evolving for decades (if only modestly) and I can't help but think of each rendition as part of an ongoing process.

Moreover, while the quality of ingredients available to homebrewers has increased phenomenally, there's still a huge range of variance within our grist and hop bills. While it's great to have goals as a homebrewer, it's important to be reasonable about them. Trying to hit the Platonic Ideal of your style of choice from the shifting sands of available ingredients might not be the most reasonable approach a brewer can take.

Another important area to come to grips with is your own stupidity and how it affects your expectations. Last Fall, I once again smashed face first into my own stupidity while evaluating a new UK brown ale that I had been working up for a couple of years. Flavor, aroma, mouthfeel, everything was spot on...except the color. As I sat with the design page of Beersmith open, trying to figure out how to dial back the color without affecting anything else about the beer, the penny finally dropped: I hadn't been envisioning a brown ale at all. Rather, I had been envisioning a brown porter but I had been stupidly thinking about it as a brown ale. I changed the style to brown porter and congratulated myself on fixing my error without changing the actual beer.

In short, I don't really think of setbacks as discrete points, they're just a data point within the larger process of becoming a better brewer.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

There are not setbacks. There are only learning opportunities.

 

[Ralphie0523]

Setbacks are a part of creating something. It takes lots of iterations to get to exactly what you want. My best home brewed beers I consider as examples of styles I simply don’t have good examples of for purchase (as in European beers) or trendy/experimental styles that I have made to my tastes like hazy or Brüt IPA. I did this because I wasn’t able to get a

I have also started smaller batches for experimenting and honing the recipe to be ready for scaling up. I typically go through 2-4 small batches before I properly scale up. Even then there are changes due to the natural variation in our ingredients (extract potential, alpha acids, etc.) that force changes with recipes at the largest scale.

Expecting perfection on a first attempt is what we think when we have planned so much, but reality unfortunately has other plans. It is disappointing, but you also now have an opportunity to brew again and compare side by side. Aging will be a factor but you at least have a point of reference. Do you need more malty flavor, more hop presence, or is the yeast character not what you expected? There are many levers to pull to bring you closer to the goal.

 

[Brewmasher]

I agree with blending when you catch a mistake early that can be fixed with a mix. Later in the game it is harder to pull off.

Not every batch will be your best. Set these aside as “everyday” or “table” beer. Use these at parties when most drinkers are not so critical. As the saying goes, never look a gift horse in the mouth! Aging either improves flavors, your tastes change, or a combination of the two. The relatively worst beers become “cooking” beer. I have never purposely dumped a beer.

A batch that didn’t turn out as expected is a starting point for the next try. I have learned to trust my own experience over what you read in books or the internet. Relax, develop your own style of brewing the beer you like, rather than go by the opinions and methods of others. People have been brewing good beer for centuries, before sanitation, scientific analysis, or even the discovery of yeast. Don’t take it too seriously.

 

[monkeymath]

Thanks so much for all your contributions to the thread!

Many posts have focused on how to learn from failure and improve a brew in subsequent iterations. It was very encouraging to read, thank you!
However, this was not actually my intention for this thread - but I take it you all fall squarely into the category "Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
You are quite a disciplined bunch, I must say! (Except for you, @bracconiere ! )

As I said, I don't really want to go into the specifics of "how do I make this better?" - there are dozens of threads specifically about replicating German beers, and I do not want to replicate those threads about replication, and I certainly do not want to discuss LODO. But because many of you have made an effort to help and I honestly appreciate these suggestions, I will derail my own thread a bit now.

I had a second glass last night and I must say that, once the sky-high expectations are out of the way, it is a fine beer. As @VikeMan suggested, I tried to break up the individual components to see what went wrong.
The beer is straw-colored and clear, although not absolutely crystal clear. I haven't tested it side-by-side, but it looks pretty much exactly like a Münchner Hell. However, the head is quite bad: the bubbles are quite large and the head dissipates quickly. Most commercial examples have rather poor head retention, but at least initially it should have a nice, creamy head.
In the nose, the aroma from the malt is a bit too strong and overshadows the classic lager character a bit, which could have a bit more sulphur. It has a nice lightness, somewhere between floral and hay-like, from the hops. Overall, the aroma is nice. If the malt was dialed back a bit and the components were more balanced, it could even be great.
Unfortunately, the malt aroma and flavour is a bit off: it is quite full, bready and caramelly. It lacks the typical raw graininess that I look for in a Helles. I had actually already anticipated that problem when I first tasted the malt on its own (it was 100% Weyermann Floor Malted Bohemian Pilsner). I tasted it side by side with some regular Weyermann Pilsner and Crisp Maris Otter and felt that it was somewhere in between the two. Maybe I should also drop the decoction step, but that's something to take care of once the grain bill is dialed in.
I think my main criticism is simply the intensity of the flavour, which gets in the way of its smoothness, which I find to be the most important aspect of a Münchner Hell. I think if I had diluted it to an OG of 11.5°P (from 12°P), you could serve it to unsuspecting beer drinkers that ordered a Helles and they would not notice. That would also partially mitigate the slight "sensation of alcohol" that you get: it is not "hot alcohol" by any means, but you clearly feel that you are drinking an alcoholic beverage. Augustiner, which clocks in at 5.2%, also has a bit more of that compared to other beers from the region. I should also pitch more yeast next time.
I'd say the bitterness (calculated at 18 IBU) is at the upper end of the spectrum, which is exactly where I wanted it. The hop aroma and flavour (mostly herbal, hay-like Hersbrucker Spät, with a touch of Opal for woody depth) is very fitting, both in character and intensity.

So that's already a couple of things to try (larger starter, lower OG, swap some or all of the base malt). Besides that, I find it entirely possible that LODO techniques are indeed the holy grail to brewing Bavarian lagers. But LODO seems to be an "all or nothing", and at this point I just do not feel the impetus to change my whole process and equipment just so that I can accurately reproduce precisely those beers that are most easily available to me.

Cheers,
Daniel

 

[TheMadKing]

I didn't say that a brewer can't effectively evaluate their own beer. But I did say they are the worst person to do an objective sensory evaluation (in isolation). Other people, particularly people with no relationship to the brewer, and who are not providing the feedback face to face, are more objective. This is a generalization. There may be brewers out there with a terrific palate, no ego, and no self doubt. I haven't met them.

I once ran an (anonymous) survey of homebrewers. Of those that felt they had enough information to form an opinion, 69% believed their homebrew was better than average. 25% believed their homebrew was about average. 6% believed their homebrew was below average. Cellar blindness is a real thing in home brewing.



For the OP, I'm assuming that he wants to duplicate (Paulaner) Münchner Hell, or more generically, make a great Helles. Either of these ideas is understandable to an impartial judge. I agree that if the brewer wants to make something unusual, maybe something he/she can't even describe effectively, then outside opinions wouldn't help much. But even then, they are more likely to objectively identify things that would be flaws in any beer, regardless of the brewer's goals (unless the goals include intentional flaws).

My experience with beer judging and competitions has shown me that "objective sensory analysis" is a myth without a trained sensory science panel with common language and a calibrated sensitivity profile for each panelist.

The answers you'll get from other people will vary so widely that they are effectively meaningless unless there is a flaw so glaring that you can easily taste it yourself. The subtleties of tasting result in 10 people describing the same beer in 10 different ways, which means the only way to get useful data from another person is to taste the beer yourself and either agree with the opinion or reject it because you can't taste what they are describing.

It does provide some benefit for sure, but after many competitions I've fallen back on my own palate as the only one I really trust. I'm my own worst critic though, so maybe that helps. I've also found that sitting down with a score sheet and running through my "judging routine" of tasting and smelling results in a more complete self assessment.

 

[OldDogBrewing]

Sometimes you just can't do better due to equipment restrictions or maybe regarding the materials, if this is the case, I just move on

If I think is a matter of changing some details, maybe using a darker malt o less of that and more of this, I just change what I think it needs to he changed and I try again

 

[Pappers_]

The other side are those wonderful times when a beer turns out to be surprisingly fantastic and you pick up on that one thing you did that seemed to make a difference. And then the keg kicks and you are back in the depths of despair . . . LOL