If You Don't Fail, You Aren't Innovating

[Owly055]

A great title isn't it? I scanned down my Email and came across the daily Ziff Davis Publishing email (computer tech magazines) and came across this article title by Mark Samuels... a tech writer. The title summarizes my personal philosophy to a Tee....

Innovation in brewing is how progress is made. There are those of us who don't rock the boat, for whom "innovation" might be trying a different hop, or malt, or who might dare to build a recipe from scratch, and there are those of us who constantly push the boundaries, not just in brewing, but in every endeavor we turn our hand to.........That would be me. We have "failures" and brews that don't measure up to our hopes and expectations. I'm not blowing my own horn here..... I've made many mistakes, and failure is a constant companion, but so is success (less so)... But failures lay the groundwork for success, and create a foundation of understanding.

My childhood hero wasn't JFK, or some movie star, it was Buckminster Fuller, as those who remember him might imagine. A truly great man who not only thought outside the box, but lived outside the box. He looked at everything through different eyes than those around him. His writings, which I ready voraciously, covered many topics, from philosophy to engineering, and he lent a fresh perspective to everything he touched on. He succeeded, and he failed, but he kept pushing the boundaries of thought to the end of his life.

If you don't fail.... You truly are NOT innovating. Success is gratifying, failure is educational...

H.W.

 

[kh54s10]

IMO in brewing there are degrees of failure. I have made some fairly innovative brews. One used Spaghetti Squash. (It was great! friends agreed) My failures were that they were not as great as I hoped. None have been failures bad enough that I had to dump them. I will innovate with the intention to succeed. If I fail I will not really take that as a good thing. I will try to learn from it though.

 

[snow16]

I agree with you. But I'll add that I think it's very important for new brewers to become comfortable with more 'traditional' brewing methods and ingredients before 'rocking the boat'. It's important to learn how different base malts, specialty malts, hops, yeasts and water profiles work and interact before brewing a beer infused with some exotic ginger and dry-hopped with horseradish and elderflower. I'm all for experimentation, innovation and thinking outside of the box, but I think that a lot of people (commercial brewers included) forget how much is possible with just the basics.

 

[Owly055]

I agree with you. But I'll add that I think it's very important for new brewers to become comfortable with more 'traditional' brewing methods and ingredients before 'rocking the boat'. It's important to learn how different base malts, specialty malts, hops, yeasts and water profiles work and interact before brewing a beer infused with some exotic ginger and dry-hopped with horseradish and elderflower. I'm all for experimentation, innovation and thinking outside of the box, but I think that a lot of people (commercial brewers included) forget how much is possible with just the basics.

Great Comment......... Innovation must be "informed" to have any real chance of success. Even innovation that involves going where no man has gone before. Sometimes (rarely) there is no path to follow.... nobody with knowledge and experience who has tried something. My very first all grain brew grew out of my kombucha experiments, and used kombucha as the "strike water"........ it was NOT a huge success but not a failure, mainly because I had been forewarned about ph, and was prepared to compensate. The product was a nice beer, but lacked the sour character I had been shooting for. Being innovative, and being stupid are two entirely different things.

H.W.

 

[kh54s10]

I agree with you. But I'll add that I think it's very important for new brewers to become comfortable with more 'traditional' brewing methods and ingredients before 'rocking the boat'. It's important to learn how different base malts, specialty malts, hops, yeasts and water profiles work and interact before brewing a beer infused with some exotic ginger and dry-hopped with horseradish and elderflower. I'm all for experimentation, innovation and thinking outside of the box, but I think that a lot of people (commercial brewers included) forget how much is possible with just the basics.

Ginger is one that I want to try. I had worked on a recipe using ginger. Now I have to look it up. And something really strange to go with it...

 

[snow16]

I'm sure ginger would be fantastic in beer! I was just trying to think of crazy ingredients and that's the best I could come up with at the time...

Anyway, yes 'informed innovation' is exactly what I was getting at.

 

[muels]

Carefull with all that "innovative" talk, you may be contacted by Bells.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[Owly055]

I'm sure ginger would be fantastic in beer! I was just trying to think of crazy ingredients and that's the best I could come up with at the time...

Anyway, yes 'informed innovation' is exactly what I was getting at.

I've brewed with fresh grated Ginger......... it didn't come up to my expectations, but it was NOT a dumper by any stretch of the imagination. Ginger would be a good ingredient in a lightly hopped beer made with pilsner malt.

I've toyed with the idea of using some of the ingredients used in stouts in much lighter body brews..... Coffee for example, or Oysters, They make an Oyster Stout, but the heavy body beer buries the adjunct............ How about an Oyster Pilsner? Why not? Because nobody has done it!!


H.W.

 

[supermutantbrewmaster]

IMO in brewing there are degrees of failure. I have made some fairly innovative brews. One used Spaghetti Squash. (It was great! friends agreed) My failures were that they were not as great as I hoped. None have been failures bad enough that I had to dump them. I will innovate with the intention to succeed. If I fail I will not really take that as a good thing. I will try to learn from it though.

I would love to see the spaghetti squash recipe. My wife loves spaghetti squash so it would be fun to make a beer out of it.

 

[unionrdr]

I have to agree that with innovation must also come an informed train of thought. Least the train go crazy & derail into dumperland. Like the E German kottbusser, being at least 515 years old, not much original info is left. So a bit of informed experimentation is in order to get at least a passable result. Sometimes, having little informed input forces speculation. But this must be tempered by restraint if any success is to be hoped for. In other words, adding to many things at once can likely be a recipe for a funky failure. Or it might turn out pretty decent..but not quite what you intended. But, the path of true genius often crosses that of lunacy. That crazy part of our nature, properly controlled & disciplined can be a powerful tool. Along that path true genius lies, in my years in this world being "on the outside lookin' in" as pop used to say.

 

[RM-MN]

I've brewed with fresh grated Ginger......... it didn't come up to my expectations, but it was NOT a dumper by any stretch of the imagination. Ginger would be a good ingredient in a lightly hopped beer made with pilsner malt.

I've toyed with the idea of using some of the ingredients used in stouts in much lighter body brews..... Coffee for example, or Oysters, They make an Oyster Stout, but the heavy body beer buries the adjunct............ How about an Oyster Pilsner? Why not? Because nobody has done it!!


H.W.

There is the possibility that someone has already tried that and it came out so bad that they won't talk about it.

I've also found that when you get too innovative and write about it on here you will get some pushback from people who think that the traditional way is the only way or that you shouldn't tell the newbies about non-traditional methods.

 

[unionrdr]

You got that right! Sometimes, talking about something I've done more than a few times getts razzed by some that think it can't work, bad info, etc. But I've found that there's more than one way to solve the same equation sometimes. But this thread seems to be THE place to discuss such things, & that's good! :hs::hs::hs::hs::hs::hs:

 

[Owly055]

You got that right! Sometimes, talking about something I've done more than a few times getts razzed by some that think it can't work, bad info, etc. But I've found that there's more than one way to solve the same equation sometimes. But this thread seems to be THE place to discuss such things, & that's good! :hs::hs::hs::hs::hs::hs:

Brewing is an endeavor that can be approached in many ways......... There is no "right" way, yet there are people who seem to think that if you don't brew it the traditional way, your beer will be garbage...... They of course are so locked into tradition that they cannot accept that anything non-traditional could work, and if they did try it, it wouldn't work for them. The single infusion mash was once an innovation....... Now it is the standard. BIAB was once an innovation. The 20-30 minute mashes RM and I are doing are regarded with suspicion, and many traditional brewers seem to believe that we must be making crap beer, there was even a comment the other day implying that we were not being truthful! The flat earth society is alive and well!!

H.W.

 

[passedpawn]

I'm sure ginger would be fantastic in beer! I was just trying to think of crazy ingredients and that's the best I could come up with at the time...

Anyway, yes 'informed innovation' is exactly what I was getting at.

Ginger saison. I made it, it was super excellent.

 

[passedpawn]

Brewing is an endeavor that can be approached in many ways......... There is no "right" way, yet there are people who seem to think that if you don't brew it the traditional way, your beer will be garbage...... They of course are so locked into tradition that they cannot accept that anything non-traditional could work, and if they did try it, it wouldn't work for them. The single infusion mash was once an innovation....... Now it is the standard. BIAB was once an innovation. The 20-30 minute mashes RM and I are doing are regarded with suspicion, and many traditional brewers seem to believe that we must be making crap beer, there was even a comment the other day implying that we were not being truthful! The flat earth society is alive and well!!

H.W.

You might be surprised what has been tried. Be careful making sweeping statements about brewing innovation. You are standing on the shoulders of a lot of other brewers who have probably been there.

 

[Ike]

I will try to remember this quote as I am pouring out a full batch of "Ike's Patented Band-Aid Flavored Scottish Ale" later tonight.




Beforehand, though, I will be bottling my Raspberry Requiem, which so far seems to be my best beer yet, so it's a 50/50 kind of night!

Ike

 

[VladOfTrub]

"If you don't fail.... You truly are NOT innovating. Success is gratifying, failure is educational..."

If you fail, you can truly end up dead. Then, others can learn from your failure.

 

[Owly055]

You might be surprised what has been tried. Be careful making sweeping statements about brewing innovation. You are standing on the shoulders of a lot of other brewers who have probably been there.

There is no doubt that many if not most things have been tried in one form or another. Unfortunately much is not documented. The experiences of many people have not been recorded. The 20 minute mash RM and I were working with had no doubt been tried...... but where do you find record other than here? Innovation is not necessarily confined to doing something that has never been done before. Doing something that is not recorded or generally known, expanding on what others have learned, is also innovation. None of us sits in a dark isolated world of our own and comes up with new ideas, we put things together based on what we have observed, experience, or read. We may put the ideas of others together in new and novel ways.... which is also innovation.

H.W.

 

[unionrdr]

Exactly so. Then why is it when I've done that over the years, people yell at me or berate me like I'm some kind of moron? The funny part is, some of them say the same thing I basically did at any given moment, but in different words. Also make me or somebody else sound like they're wrong all the time. That's always a dead giveaway for a former debate team member. Gotta check my priming water again...

 

[day_trippr]

Must....not....respond....

Cheers! ("Where's my cardigan sweater?" )