I have to agree. I would *MUCH* rather have known repeatability, so I can expect certain numbers, regardless of their magnitude, instead of chasing another few % points for anything.
I agree, though I would add predictability so that it's reasonably likely new recipes will produce what the brewer is after.
I think it's normal and natural for new brewers to be focused on numbers--it's the one objective measure of what they're doing. I certainly was focused on them, everything from efficiency to ABV to SRM (less so) to....
I can't remember the last time I calculated efficiency. Instead it's more along the lines of "I should get something like this gravity number" as an indicator I've produced what I was after.
It was only after a while I became more concerned with how the beer tasted, and how others perceived it--as a measure of its quality--than the numerical specifics.
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This is somewhat of a tangent. There is probably nobody on homebrewtalk who is more focused on things like measuring variables correctly. I'm a scientist by training, and for better or worse it shows through in a lot of the things I do.
And yet....while that focus was evident to the extreme early in my brewing career, it has taken a back seat to....judgment and intuition. That is, brewing more as art, and not as much as science. If I'm trying to do a new recipe, I'm kind of using my intuition to guess what would work--hops, timing, mash temps, step mash, malts, fermentation temps, etc.
I know a lot of people use Beersmith and similar to model their recipes. I don't, and I have a current subscription to Beersmith 3. But I don't really care about SRM, the IBUs, and so on. And I've never put in my equipment profile. When I brew, my subconscious and intuition rule the day.
I *do* record what I do, so if I hit on something great I can reproduce it. But for me, this is more art than science.
YMMV.
