I cant do it!

[brick_haus]

Drink most commercially produced beer that is! I started brewing my own only 3-4 months ago and have (in my opinion) had great success. My wife and I used to enjoy going out to the local micro's and enjoying the locally brewed beer. Now, they all seem inferior and I just dont enjoy them as much as before. I cant wait to get home to have a homebrew. My life is ruined! Now what am I to waste my time and $ on? Flowers and chocolate?

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

4 months and you're already putting out better beer than good microbreweries? Clearly you should quit your job and become a professional brewer. You're a prodigy!

 

[kallen]

Time in a brewery is never time wasted. Either brewing the beer or drinking it. I prefer my beers over just about anything I pay money per pint for. But getting out trying new breweries, and different beers makes be more rounded as a beer drinker and a brewer. And it lets me know that I am a better brewer then some people who have sunk more then $300k into a brew system. Is that smug? Maybe. But its all about personal preference, I have only drank 3 bad beers. Shocktop Pumpkin Spice, Hamm's, and my neighbors Chocolate Stout made with baking cocoa.

 

[brick_haus]

Thought about quitting my job but if I were to become a purveyer of fine beer I would have to tolerate loudmouth people that misunderstand someones joy of personal success and turn it into a reason to attempt to make themselves feel better by tearing others down (in their own mind). It's the mean spirited people like the aforementioned that I choose to keep my finely brewed beer away from such individuals, as alchohol only makes matters worst.

A prodigy indeed!

 

[Revvy]

Ah, the enthusiasm of the new zealot. You're missing out on some amazing beer if you choose just to drink your own. Like Kallen said, trying new beers and especially new styles is how you become a better brewer. I've probably drank MORE commercial brew since I became a brewer, ESPECIALLY discovering styles I've never had before. I've been drinking craft beer since the mid 80's, and only been brewing in the last 10 years, and it's been since I've homebrewed that I've actually consumed a broader range of styles.

For pretty much all those decades of drinking craft brew I drank pretty much only IPA, Pale Ales, Porters, Stouts, Browns, California Common Beers and Reds. I drank a lot of them, I drank them from breweries around the world, and considered myself a pretty knowledgeable beer guy.....but my palate or my exploration was pretty limited to that narrow band of pretty common beer styles.

But since taking up this hobby, and wanting to learn to brew more and more styles, I've DRANK more and more styles.

Just off the top of my head; Wits, Bocks, Vienna Lagers, Doppelbocs, Maibocs, Cream Ales, Pilsners, Dortmunders, Lambics, Oktoberfests, Munich Dunkel, Schwarzbier, Blonde Ale, Kölsch, Rye Beer, Ordinary Bitter, ESB, Scottish Wee Heavy, saison, Biere De Garde, Barleywine, Flander's Red, Belgian Dubbel, Belgian Tripel....AND just in the last couple years actually started enjoying BMC beers which I snubbed since being old enough to drink.....I can say that these styles for me are ONLY as old as my brewing has been. If I hadn't brewed, I probably never would have tried half of them.

And I've brewed maybe only 1/3 of those styles.

I know it's the enthusiasm of the newly converted, but you really think your beer is better than ALL the amazing beers on this planet, and you REALLY want to shun them?