The Cult of Effortlessness

[jambafish]

This is going to be a long post and it's both a rant, of sorts, a revelation, and a note to newcomers, like myself. I just posted this at NorthernBrewer as well.

Today I racked my IPA into the secondary and, as I stood there nearly helpless as the tubing popped off the annoying racking cane and splashed beer onto my clothing, the floor and into the secondary, the following thoughts came to me.

This IPA marks my second beer. My first batch had issues and questions at every turn. The starter overflowed, it turned over in the sink, then it appeared to settle into death. Brew day was a disaster. I broke the thermometer that day only to have the second thermometer stop working while the wort was cooling. We cooled the wort too much, forgot to sterilize the carboy, then placed it in a room where the heating went out, which resulted in a stuck fermentation. I bottled three weeks ago, and it’s just beginning to taste remotely like beer. The directions from Northern said it would be ready in 1-2 weeks after bottling, but most people on the forms suggest something more like 3 months.

My second beer has been better. I brewed a starter like a pro, then let it sit out with tinfoil over the top until it looked good, then went to brew. I cleaned everything, sanitized everything, boiled the water and was just about to dump in the first ingredients when I noticed that, while the directions say 2 bags of 2oz hops and 4 bags of 3 oz hops, I had 4 bags of 1 oz hops and one big unmarked bag of hops.

I panicked, wrote Northern an ugly email, and postponed my brewing until the following week. A phone call with the Northern rep on Monday made me feel like an idiot. “What’s the problem,” he said, “The big bag is 12oz of hops. It’s a HUGE bags of hops, right?” Yes, I said. “That’s 12 OUNCES of hops right there. What’s the problem?” Oh, I said, my mistake. I hung up and felt like an idiot. It wasn’t until later that I came around to thinking rationally. They mis-printed the directions and sent me a bag of unmarked hops and I’m just supposed to know how many ounces of hops are inside?

Everything went like a charm on brewing day. Oh, except that I still don’t know how to get the malt out of the container in order to meet the hop schedule. Oh, and my latest thermometer, the digital one which has magnets and sticks to metal, it suddenly took a dive off the 1 inch lip of the boiler and plunked into the cooling wort so that AGAIN I couldn’t measure the temperature when I added it to the carboy. Not to mention it wasn’t sanitized.

Aside from that, everything went great. I was covered in liquid because one of the hoses popped off the spigot for a moment, but everything else went great. I put a muslin bag on the end of the tube to catch rogue elements and filled a bag inside the carboy that would not drain and would not pull out (it ended in my forcing it and a countless ounces of beer out of the carboy). No other problems though. That is, until this morning when I racked to the secondary and ended with a kitchen dripping with StarSan and beer, both from when the tubing popped off the siphon and when I tried to pour some into the SG tube.

Oh, and I lost part of the airlock, dropped the bung on the floor and it bounced outside into the mud. Oh, and because the racking tubing is so goddamn stiff and insists on rolling up it rolled and began splashing beer like a fountain inside the secondary and oxidizing everything while I was busy re-cleaning the bung.

Whatever. I’m again covered in beer. I’m dripping with cleaner and StarSan, my primary is an absolute mess with trube everywhere, my blowoff tube, bung and blowoff jar are caked. My tape, on which I was going to write the date and SG was suddenly all stuck together and had to be trashed. And while I cleaned up the secondary and popped in the newly sanitized airlock, only then did I notice that my test cylinder, which had been through the cleaner and sanitizer, and now contained the sample of beer I was waiting to taste, was also filled with blue and black chunks of mildew which had formed in there without my notice.

After soaking everything in Oxyclean because that was all I had, I scrubbed and scrubbed my primary and then filled it with more Oxy and let it sit 5 hours to loosen all the gunk which I still had to scrub and scrub out. I spun the tubing, scrubbed everything, turned it all upside down, moved the secondary to a warmer location, and heaved a sigh of relief that it was all done. I then made a list of the new stuff I need to purchase before my next brew day. Only then did I begin to research the alcohol content of my beer and write it all down for later use.

As a new brewer, I’ve often wondered why there are so many brewers online talking about their process, or why YouTube is littered with homebrewers showing how to make a starter, how to rack, bottle, clean, take readings, cap. . . literally every part of brewing. I have watched countless hours of brewers racking to the secondary to see where it is I’m going wrong. I’ve watched the “how to make a starter in X minutes” videos. I’ve watched a **** ton of videos, and I’ve read from books, from magazines and from the Northern.

In each the vibe is one of ease. Relax, drink a homebrew, everyone seems to say as they rack and bottle a stellar IPA during the course of a brief video. Relax, drink a homebrew the posters say on these forums. Don’t worry. It’s easy. Etc. Etc.

So my thought it is. It suddenly dawned on me why there are so many people making videos and the like. The thing about homebrewing that is not apparent to the beginner is this: In the homebrewing community there is a very prominent “cult of ease”. That is to say that effortlessness, in this community, is a fetish. I’m not sure how this came about, but it’s there. The one thing that links all of the videos and forums and books together is the saying RDWHAHB. Watch the videos and it’s always the same, “I’m just here in my kitchen and oh, let’s rack that beer to the secondary while I speak in a calm voice and show you how little effort and thinking goes into making great beer.” Nothing is spilled. Nothing forgotten. Nothing dropped. Nothing popped off, spraying, dripping, or otherwise ****ing up. Just some dude sipping a brew and getting it done.

Basically, think of a painter wearing white or a mechanic wearing white (my old SAAB mechanics wore white) to get across the simple easy professional approach. I have to say that homebrewing has a little of that same fetishistic approach to the craft. Surely, after making lots of beers, I’ll be much better and will perhaps be able to have an error free brewing, racking and bottling system down, but for now it’s not that easy.

I worry, I forget, I spill, splash, slip, rush around and lose things. I consult the Internet, these forums, my books. I’m overly cautious and still not cautious enough. The directions are wrong, the packaging mislabeled. I run out of cleaner and use too much sanitizer. My brewing space is a mess. My kitchen slippery with chemicals. And my thermometers, all of them, are broken.

If you are new to homebrewing, like I am, don’t be daunted by overwhelming effortlessness of it all. One day we’ll have all of the pieces together and can begin making more complex brews and crushing our own grains etc., but for now I say don’t relax and, of course, you don’t have any homebrew just yet, so have a cup of coffee instead and sweat the details. This **** is not all that easy. It takes concentration, timing, the ability to take readings, some strength to lift and carry water. You’ll find yourself needing odd items no one talks about, like a trash can for brew day to put your trash into, a bucket for cleaner and one for sanitizer, sometimes string for the grain bag, perhaps a strainer for the funnel, tape and a sharpie for the carboy.

You’ll find yourself fighting the directions, getting information coming from every direction, and the polar opposites of advice on just about every aspect of the process. You’ll need to find your own way, and you’ll probably do it better than I, but still, you’ll need to find your own course and not worry about making it seem easy or painless or even, at times, enjoyable. Making beer is work. It’s rewarding, but it’s work. It takes time and patience and money, but one day I hope we too will join the cult and find ourselves on these forums dispensing advice and reminding newcomers to relax and drink a homebrew.

 

[Rockape66]

Welcome to the world, Lad. Always plan for Mr. Murphy. He's always hanging around. Always use the "KISS" principle. From my days of anti-terrorism/hostage rescue training: "Slow is smooth/Smooth is fast". The more you can relax; the smoother things will go. Have a plan, and follow the plan.
Welcome to our obsession. You'll do fine.

Slainte, Mack

 

[weconway]

Nice post. I am a serious amateur cook, and I always laugh when the Food Network's latest cleavage-with-a-food-processor (not that I'm complaining) makes an incredibly difficult dish look easy and clean (with no dirty dishes).

Every time I brew a batch, I try to incorporate a new process and a new piece of equipment (or 5...Northern Brewer loves me). I want to always learn something when I make a batch.

I brewed my 6th batch last night, and the first where I was trying to go quickly. It was not nearly as fun as my 5th. Lesson learned.

For me, every time I brew a batch I make notes in my brewing log as to what I can do or get to make my process easier. I research areas where I didn't feel comfortable and work to improve one or two parts of my brew day. Ease takes time and a crapload of practice. As long as you don't expect to be a master brewer your first time out, you should be fine.

 

[just2brew]

I personally have never had good luck with kits and prefer to obtain ingrediants per recipe I'm following. It makes you in charge of what you want, there for elimating odd directions. Proper cleaning and sanitizing habits are easy to get into and just take a few brew days. Everyone has to find their own way and that is why every book or method on brewing is different. You have to find what works for you.

I'd also like to recommend buying a second bottling bucket to keep a batch of starsan in. Being able to pour it into fermenters and submerge siphons and hoses makes the proccess much easier.

P.S. Stay away from the youtube videos, everything looks easier on TV...
This forum is loaded with information!

 

[EllisTX]

Holy smokes Batman!! I understand your sentiment. I think the RDWHAHB principle is based on the fact that if you plan ahead and do things as planned it will work. What will be, will be. All the difficulty can be reduced with planning. It is definitely rewarding to drink something you waited a month on that tasted better than anything you've bought in your life as a BMC drinker. At least it was for me. Good luck and RDWHAHB

 

[Revvy]

I think the RDWHAHB principle is based on the fact that if you plan ahead and do things as planned it will work.

No actually the RDWHAHB idea is that IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE WHICH YOU WILL BECAUSE YOU ARE HUMAN, not to panic, and not to assume that your beer is ruined.

It's not that things are "effortless" those videos and articles and everything isn't to show you that mistakes don't happen, just to show you how to do things. And it just happens that with experience and practice, a lot of complicated seeming actions, won't be....like learning to ride a bike...it takes time...

But us telling you to relax is just that. Because you WILL make mistakes, We ALL make mistakes. But the point is NOT to sweat...because guess what? For some strange reason, the yeast that have been making beer for over 4,000 years, and long before we were a drip down our momma's leg, still manages to make good if not great beer, despite all the stupid things we sometimes do to it.

So the lesson is the same one from hitchikers,

Your beer is hardier than most new brewers THINK it is....If you get out of the way it, and if you preform even the most basic of sanitization, your beer will still turn out.

It's really hard to screw this brewing stuff up, so there's no sense dwelling on it.Stressing out about it, loosing sleep on it. It's a hobby for chrissakes.

If you set yourself up with the idea that you WON'T make mistakes, then you're gonna freak out about every little thing...

But RDWHAHB is realizing that everything is fine, and will be fine....THIS is RDWHAHB....it's not that it's effortless, or that it's about planning (which is important) it's this;

I'm going to give you my serious answer to your question, about when you should stop WORRYING about infection. The answer is you should never WORRY about infection, or really anything else about this hobby. Because that is what it is, it is a hobby after all, and a really hard one to screw up.

Now it doesn't mean you ignore proper sanitation practices, and cut corners, or that you don't be careful about things, it is just that you stop thinking of your beer as a weak newborn baby.

It may appear that there's a ton of infection threads, BUT if you actually read the content of the threads, and not just the title, you will realize that there's not a lot of actual infections, just a bunch of scared new brewers who don't realize how ugly fermentation can actually be.

Just like you, I bet, they think that their beer is a lot weaker than it truly is. Just the opposite, it is really really hard to get an infection.

And infections RARELY happen to the new brewers who are so paranoid that they think the mere looking at their fermenters will induce an infection.

Most of the time on here the beer in question is not infected. It's just a nervous new brewer, who THINKS something is wrong when in reality they are just unused to the ugliness that beer making often is.

It creates sort of like the hypochodria that med students often get when they start learning about illness, they start to "feel" it in themselves.

There is a lot of info here on "infections" https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/has-anyone-ever-messed-up-batch-96644/

This is one of the best posts on the subject....

If you pitch enough viable, healthy yeast to do their job, it's hard to contaminate your brew to the point it isn't drinkable. Trust me, I've had an infection in my brewery, and I had to work really hard to get it! In my case, it was on the fourth generation of re-using yeast which I had not washed properly (I was still a n00b back then). Every time you reuse yeast you are growing the level of contamination by 100-1000x, so I learned the hard way you have to be very careful going beyond 1 or 2 re-uses of yeast.

BUT A new brewer following sanitary procedures using new equipment is very unlikely to have ruined beer. The worst thing that may happen is your beer will go sour after 4-6 months of room temperature storage. I doubt your beer will last that long.

You'll find that since beer has been made for millenia even before anyone understood germ theory, that even just the basic fact that we have indoor water, clean our living spaces and ourselves regularly and have closed waste systems, and a roof over our heads, that we are lightyears ahead of our ancestor brewers.

And despite the doomsayers who say that ancient beer was consumed young because it would go bad, they forget the fact that most of those beers were usually HOPLESS, and that the biggest reason hops were placed in beers was for it's antisceptic/preservative function.

So even if the beer had to be consumed young, it still must have tasted good enough to those folks most of the time to survive culturally for 4,000 years, and not go the way of pepsi clear or new coke. I'm sure even a few hundred or thousands of years ago, people were discerning enough to know if something tasted good or nasty...

Go take a look at my photo walkthrough of Labatt's first "pioneer" brewery from the 1840's https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/labatt-pioneer-brewery-128740/

Wood fermenters, open cooling pans, open doors, cracks in the logs and beams letting air in, and not one bottle of starsan in sight.

The way I figure even just having some soap and water, basic 21st century hygiene, and a basic understanding of germ theory trumps how it was done from Gilgamesh's time through Louis Pasteure's....

In most places we don't have to even worry about boiling our water before drinking it.

Best advice I have for new brewers, If you brew from fear, you won't make great beer!

You might make drinkable beer, or you might make crap...but until your realize that your beer is much hardier than you think it is, you will find that this is much more enjoyable of a hobby.

But infection worry, It is NOT something we have to freak out about, like new brewers do...It's just something to be AWARE of and keep an eye out.

But it's kinda like when you have a brand new car, you park at the far end of the lot away from everyone else, you are paranoid about getting every little scratch on it...Then you are backing out of the garage and take off a mirror, or get a ding on the bumper, then you no-longer stress out about it, because you've popped the cars cherry...If you do pick up a bug, you just treat it and move on.

And the reason I have collected THESE stories is to counter the fear and fear mongering that often happens.

So rather than looking for infections under every bed or in every brew closet, focussing from fear on the negative, I think it's better to look at examples of just how hard it is to screw up our beer, how no matter what we can do to screw up, it still manages to turn out fine.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/wh...where-your-beer-still-turned-out-great-96780/

And there is a cushion of co2 protecting your beer, so unless you or a bird take a crap in your fermenter, opening it up to take hydrometer readings will not lead you to automatically have infections...

Just relax about infections, and mistakes, and enjoy brewing.

We've sunk body parts in our fermenters and still the beer has turned out great as the stories above illustrate- No matter how absolutely boneheaded we are, the beer usually get's the best of us and manages to survive...so there's no point in stressing out over every little mistake....because you WILL make them.

 

[passedpawn]

OK, I thought your post was huge. But then revvy...

... it will get easier. Much. Keep at it.

 

[SD-SLIM]

WOW Jambafish, you have had a bad run....but it kind of reminds me of my first few 5 gallon batches, I got some curve balls, made some mistakes, but in the end good beer came out of it all.
Fast forward a couple of years and I still have hickups but I know in the end it will still be good enough to drink....my advice: lay out everything you need, portion it all correctly in bowls, take your kit directions and create a timeline on the side of the directions that doesnt have all the detail just a timeline example (60 minute Northern Brewer Hops, 30 minutes German Spalt Hops, 15 Minutes Irish Moss, 0 minutes German Spalt Hops)...this will help you visually prepare for additions and should make working with kits less frustrating...after you master these then you eventually move up to all grain, and if you think you got headaches now just wait until you brew this way...you will never go back, but it is more work and more stress. Summary of what I am trying to say, is that after you make that perfect beer you will never regret brewing your own!

 

[bovineblitz]

Mise en place greatly improved my enjoyment of brewday.

 

[jonmohno]

Brewing a beer that turns out good or even great is like that feeling when you get on base from a good hit in baseball,Its really more satisfying knowing you did it and did it well despite the times you struck out or did average and could have done better. When you really make a good beer so much that its as good as the best craft brew you had its like damn i just hit a homerun and now i know what to do,lets make more.

 

[jiggs_casey]

You’ll need to find your own way

Great post! I think this one line sums up the entire hobby though. If you have a room full of people who homebrew, you are going to have a room full of people with different approaches to homebrewing. It's all good...

You will have to try and try again to find what method works best for you. :rockin:

 

[dfc]

Lay off the crack and you'll be fine.

 

[Pilgarlic]

I really appreciate this post. What I like most, I think, Jamba, is your humility and willingness to put it all out there, warts and all. That humility will serve you well in more than just brewing. But as to the brewing, it really does get easier. If that weren't the case, you wouldn't see all these people who REALLY LOVE brew days. Today I bottled a batch during the mash. A year ago, that hour of available time would have been "sweat, stew, fidget, check it, recheck the recipe, look something up on line, phone a friend for advice" time. You'll come to trust all of it, and yourself and how you fit into the process. Mostly, though, I wanted to say thanks for that post. All of us can, I'm sure, relate to much of it.

 

[dfc]

This thread will do you some good.

 

[Monstar]

I see what you mean, it can be frustrating at first. I think the point of RDWHAHB, like Revvy said, is to not lose your s*** when something does indeed go wrong. It doesn't mean its easy to do all the time every time, it just means that in all honesty its very hard to screw up your beer, so chill out!

RDWHAHB, it gets easier every time, bro. Welcome to the best hobby ever.

 

[cms]

That's rough, man. Like others already said, mistakes are going to happen. Bad luck is going to happen. Your beer will be good in the end and the sticky mess will be okay, too.

I recommend simplifying the process - here are a few thoughts:

Get a meat thermometer from your grocery store. They're nearly impossible to break and will be a good backup in case you run into other problems (I broke my thermometer on my first brew, also). They're short and register pretty slowly, but in a pinch, it's totally fine. Plus you can use to to tell when your turkey is ready.

You need to figure out why your tubing keeps coming loose! That should happen so much (I'm sure you tell yourself the same thing as you're mopping up the messes). Is it the right size? I couldn't get the tubing off my bottling wand and autosiphon with less than a knife or a blowtorch. Spigots (barbed ones, at least) tend to be 'looser', but shouldn't be coming loose. If your tubing is the right size then you may want to get some hose clamps.

For the things that drop and get dirty, I have learned to fill a sink with starsan before brew/secondary/bottling days - I have a double sink in my kitchen so that works out great. If you don't, then maybe a home depot bucket or a wallpaper tray. But the point is to have a vessel full of sanitizer to be able to quickly fix up the stuff that inevitably drops or get gunky.

My first couple kits, I just opened the bags of ingredients and dumped them in (my first batch, I added the hops after the steeping grains but before the extract - whoops!). I had a little digital food scale but didn't think to use it. Since then, I've gotten used to using it to weight out each addition and put them in custard cups, lined up next to my stove. That way, I know that each time the timer goes off, I dump the next bowl of stuff into the pot. Some people go further and put each addition in little bags and label them.

As far as helping manage the boil-time additions, besides the previous paragraph, I would not set a timer for the 'whole boil time', but rather the time to the next addition. So if you plan to boil 60 minutes and add hops at 60, 15 and 5, I would start the timer for :45 after you add your first addition (usually just hops), :10 after adding your second (which in my case is some hops and half a whirlfloc tab) and then you're done. I have forgotten, in the heat of the moment, to start a timer after dumping my bowl of stuff, but it's not the end of the world. The downside here is that you're going to lose some precision in your boil time - you may boil for an extra minute or three - that's where RDWHAHB comes in... A few minutes, a few grams, a few germs... You are not going to ruin your beer. Beer CAN be ruined, but it's not as common as you may think. Did I mention that I forgot to sanitize ANYTHING on my first batch? I thought PBW was a sanitizer and I wondered what the starsan bottle was supposed to be for. It was fine.

Hang in there...

After a while, you will be cruising through brew days without a care in the world. It may be after a few more crazy/messy brew days, but things will get better.

 

[gdev]

Don't confuse RDWHAHB with effortlessness. Just because we believe in RDWHAHB doesn't mean we are lazy or somehow don't care about our process. Most of us have refined the process over many crappy brew days like you've had and so like anyone that is good at something it comes off as effortless. Do you have a friend that brews that can go through the process with you? Youtube and this forum can be great helps but nothing beats having a friend brew with you and help you avoid some pitfalls along the way.

 

[LostBavarianMan]

I just brewed my 4th batch and I believe in RDWHAHB. Now that I have HB I can relax with. Thursday was batch 4 and I drnk a 6 pack of my Canadian Ale aye during the brew process and I relaxed. I got into brewing knowing I was gonna screw up. But this forum has helped me relax and not worry. But Cudos for the wonderful rant. keep on brewing and RDWHAHB

 

[EllisTX]

No actually the RDWHAHB idea is that IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE WHICH YOU WILL BECAUSE YOU ARE HUMAN, not to panic, and not to assume that your beer is ruined.

Most of the point I was trying to make was in my next sentence. "What will be, will be". I wasn't saying that if you plan enough there won't be any problems.

 

[TTB-J]

Epic rant! Reminds me of when I first started trying bread making from scratch. My kitchen looked like it was just completely covered in flour. It would take me half an hour just to get all the crud off my hands, and another hour or two to clean up all the bowls I used. And after carefully measuring all of the ingredients, raising the dough and kneading and baking and washing, the bread tasted about half as good as the fresh baked bread I could by for a couple of bucks at the grocery store right down the street. Relax, don't worry, have a ciabatta roll?

At the end of the day, making beer comes down to making yeast happy. Give it sugar, give it a nice clean place to live in for a couple of months, and don't make it too hot or too cold. If you can do that, no matter how many ways you screw up along the way, and I've done just about all of them, you will amazingly make good beer. And by you, I mean your yeast will do it for you and you get to claim all the credit!

 

[jambafish]

Okay, so thanks for all of the information. And yes, Revvy, you completely won me out in sheer length and information. Loved the photos!

I do understand RDWDAHB in all the myriad of ways, but until I actually have HB then it's going to be an ideal more than anything.

My intention was never to give up, but to try and make this an enjoyable and painless process . . . like in the videos Mise en place is a good idea, and I seriously need to follow it more rigorously than I do now.

Regarding the timer, the last time I brewed I found an awesome countdown clock online. Once my water got to temperature, I started the countdown. Beforehand I had set aside the hops and malts behind post-its showing: 30min, 45min, 50min, 55min. I tried also to get everything set up in terms of the wort chiller, etc. But there were some fails I can probably overcome with time. In terms of racking to the secondary, I'm ordering more tubing and one day I'll figure out how to make it a painless process.

Thanks again for all the good thoughts and positive constructive ideas for improvement. I have no doubt it will come easier at some point, but I'm not stopping because the beer I want to drink hasn't been made yet.

As I said in my nothern posting, by my 4th brew I'll have been through hell and back. You'll see me on YouTube racking my 5th, a cask conditioned candy-infused Belgian imperial stout, from the comfort of my couch.

 

[statseeker]

I've seen some of the videos online as well. I think the misconception is that everything will solve itself. In reality, it's not the process that will solve the problem, it's you're level of resolve and organization that will ultimately get you through. Beer is definitely hard work, but it's rewarding work. I've made three huge mistakes in my brewing and 1 about three times before I learned to pay attention and read the recipes much more closely. None of the beers turned out bad at all. They just could have BEEN better. But that gives me more incentive to retry those recipes with the knowledge I've gained from the mistake. Once I try them again, they'll BE way better. I dont think the endgame is being able to brew a doppelbock from your living room. I think it's being able to brew the doppelbock knowing that you wont make the same mistakes you have in the past, you've streamlined your process, and you're confident that things will turn out the way you want them to. The work doesnt go away. The reward just gets sweeter over time.

 

[jonmohno]

+1 But the work doesnt go away if you look at it like work, like learning anything you know what to do to make it more tolerable. Even though brew day is longer, thats when i relax compared to all that cleaning with botteling. Maybe its just that hop aroma that makes me more relaxed,ha.

 

[tallybrewer]

Hehe, a light bulb went off, did it?

My first batch was from an extract kit from the lhbs. When I bought the kit, they asked me if I wanted a case of bottles (which I did). After reading papa charlie's book I felt much better about taking the plunge & brew day went off without a hitch. When bottling day (night) came, I sanitized my case of bottles, and as I got down to the last dozen or so, my eyes got wide as I realized that I had about twice as much beer as would fit into one case of bottles. It was 10:30pm; lhbs was closed. So I ran to the grocery store & bought some 2 liter bottles of soda, emptied them (knock yourself out, kids), santized them & finished bottling.

The next day I emailed the lhbs to report my back-of-the-envelope calculations that I should need just over 2 cases of bottles. The one word reply I got back was "yep". No assurance that if a newbie buys a starter kit, an extract kit & a case of bottles that they will alert them to the need of a second case.

Then it hit me. Go with the flow. No set of instructions will tell me how to always avoid difficulty. Use your common sense. At the beginning of a process (brewing, bottling, whatever), sit down, consider what you are about to do; visualize it. Trust yourself to either know what to do or to figure out what to do when it hasn't been spelled out for you.

Hmm. Seems like that last paragraph could be applied to a lot more than brewing, eh?

 

[TheSeether]

Thanks to the OP I LOL'd and coworkers wanted to know what was so funny.
I have to say I've never had it that rough and I wish you well in your future endeavors.
I have had many a complex hobby prior to getting into brewing and I think a good deal of the traits cultivated in those hobbies carried over to brewing. Have a plan and then plans behind the plans. Failure to plan is planning to fail. My previous hobbies certainly found me just as exasperated and definitely more financially burdened than brewing has treated me.

 

[jds]

I think brewing and, to a slightly lesser extent, cooking are a lot like learning to dance.

People who are good at it and have done it a long time make it look simple. When they explain it, it sounds simple. You read up on dancing. You watch people dancing. You watch videos on Youtube of people dancing. Seems simple enough -- you can do this.

Then, the music starts up, you forget the steps, walk on your partner's toes, go the wrong direction, and feel like a fool. Nevertheless, you were DANCING. You just have to practice to make it look easy and smooth.

Same for brewing. Read, watch, and learn as much as you like, but you will be all thumbs the first few times you do it, until everything clicks.

But, at the end of it all, you'll have something to drink when the music stops. Good luck, OP. You'll get there.

 

[chaydaw]

I think brewing and, to a slightly lesser extent, cooking are a lot like learning to dance.

People who are good at it and have done it a long time make it look simple. When they explain it, it sounds simple. You read up on dancing. You watch people dancing. You watch videos on Youtube of people dancing. Seems simple enough -- you can do this.

Then, the music starts up, you forget the steps, walk on your partner's toes, go the wrong direction, and feel like a fool. Nevertheless, you were DANCING. You just have to practice to make it look easy and smooth.

Same for brewing. Read, watch, and learn as much as you like, but you will be all thumbs the first few times you do it, until everything clicks.

But, at the end of it all, you'll have something to drink when the music stops. Good luck, OP. You'll get there.

Love this analogy. Well Put!

 

[kaiser423]

I think brewing and, to a slightly lesser extent, cooking are a lot like learning to dance.

People who are good at it and have done it a long time make it look simple. When they explain it, it sounds simple. You read up on dancing. You watch people dancing. You watch videos on Youtube of people dancing. Seems simple enough -- you can do this.

Then, the music starts up, you forget the steps, walk on your partner's toes, go the wrong direction, and feel like a fool. Nevertheless, you were DANCING. You just have to practice to make it look easy and smooth.

Same for brewing. Read, watch, and learn as much as you like, but you will be all thumbs the first few times you do it, until everything clicks.

But, at the end of it all, you'll have something to drink when the music stops. Good luck, OP. You'll get there.

Yup, very good analogy.