What are your contrarian/"unpopular" beer opinions?

[CGVT]

You don't need to boil your new aluminum pots to establish a "layer"

It is an absolute waste of time.

Take it out of the box, rinse it off, and brew on, McDuff

 

[ed007]

I hate sours. My palate can take everything except sours.

 

[303Dan]

I don't like beers served on nitro. At all. So many people seem to love them, but I haven't tried one that I didn't think wouldn't have been far better without it.

 

[akthor]

Overhopped IPAS are swill.

I don't use secondaries.

Always stay at least 30 days in primary.

 

[Sbe2]

If someone offers me a Busch light I will drink it

 

[Braufessor]

If someone offers me a Busch light I will drink it

Ha.... a dozen times over

 

[dstockwell]

You don't have enough hops or IBU's to call that recipe an IPA.

 

[steveoatley]

making a 5 L starter for a Lager is stupid.....

You are making a 1 gallon batch, to pitch into a 5 gallon batch ???

I make 1 L starters, no bigger than that

Seem real stupid to me, to risk changing the flavor of your lager with a gallon of DME.....
or worse, risk the infection of such a large starter

my 2 cents

S

 

[TheMadKing]

making a 5 L starter for a Lager is stupid.....

You are making a 1 gallon batch, to pitch into a 5 gallon batch ???

I make 1 L starters, no bigger than that

Seem real stupid to me, to risk changing the flavor of your lager with a gallon of DME.....
or worse, risk the infection of such a large starter

my 2 cents

S

FWIW, you're supposed to decant off the starter wort and only pitch the yeast cells, but yes a 5L starter is excessive... that being said I just pitched about 4 cups of pure yeast cake into a doppelbock...

 

[steveoatley]

but yes a 5L starter is excessive... .

thats my point..............

 

[Braufessor]

making a 5 L starter for a Lager is stupid.....

You are making a 1 gallon batch, to pitch into a 5 gallon batch ???

I make 1 L starters, no bigger than that

Seem real stupid to me, to risk changing the flavor of your lager with a gallon of DME.....
or worse, risk the infection of such a large starter

my 2 cents

S

I agree.

I make 1L starters also, and concentrate more on pitching yeast that is actively fermenting, and I pitch the entire 1L starter. (Now, If I am starting with a new pack of yeast, I make a 1L starter for 5 gallons of 1.040 kind of lager). I will harvest that yeast and use much more yeast in a 1L starter for bigger lagers.

There is a lot of really good information in the thread linked below about the value of pitching active yeast 12-18 hours after starter is made as opposed to building up a big starter, fermenting it out, crashing, decanting, etc..... Basically, if you are pitching active yeast in the exponential phase of growth, the doubling time of yeast is so short that it is not a significant player (provided you are starting with a reasonable amount of yeast).

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php?topic=20692.0

 

[ISUBirds]

My unpopular opinion: Sours suck!!! Blech! They're the beer antichrist!

I'm not a sour fan either. Glad I'm not alone! Tried a few different ones, just cant get into it. Call me crazy.

 

[stpug]

People who claim to love IPA's and extreme IBU's wouldn't know a good beer if it bit them in the ass.

There's truth to this.

 

[55x11]

My "unpopular" opinion (based on responses here): IPAs are NOT overrated.

IBUs are overrated. Too many DIPA push the boundaries of high ABV and IBU without achieving a good tasting beer.

But we are living through an amazing renaissance of Hops - new varieties are being bred every day, and IPA/APA is a fantastic vehicle for displaying hop aromas, flavors and their combinations. Much of innovation in craft brewing (especially in US) industry came from various types of IPA, let's not forget this.

Having said all this, I do enjoy a good IPA, but I also wish bars and restaurants and stores had more of less traditional styles. Variety is good.

 

[55x11]

My contrarian (or maybe not so contrarian) views - many informed by brulosophy, experimental brewing and my own experiments:

vorlaufing is not needed.
hot side aeration is overrated.
decoction is overly complicated and mostly not necessary with modern malts
viability starter for ~12 hrs works as well as 2-3-day starter, cold-crash, decanting
many small mid-boil hop additions are unneccessary, you can re-design recipe with early bittering and late aroma additions
you can store yeast for a lot longer than calculators say and still achieve a decent viability
boiling and cooling DME is not necessary for making a starter
DMS in covered pots is much more rare than in commercial systems
you don't need airlock the first few days of fermentation - just cover fermentor neck with foil
trub in the fermentor is fine
we (I am guilty of this myself) do too many weird flavor additions to beer recipe - fruit, peppers, spices, pumpkin, coffee, vanilla, etc. - this makes us lose track of what a well formulated and executed "beer flavored beer" with just hops, malts and water (plus yeast) can taste like.
we don't experiment with malt varieties (and traditional adjuncts - oats, wheat, rye, and even rice/corn that got a bad rap) as much as we do with hop varieties and crazy additions
making as good "small" or session beer, say at 4% is a lot more difficult than making an 8-10% ABV beer
the word "balance" is overused and need to be defined
session IPA is just american pale ale
just because one can make an imperial/double version of beer X doesn't mean one should
drinking a few beers a day, every day, slowly, with food is actually good for your health - way better than not drinking any alcohol at all and better than almost any other, higher ABV alcoholic drink, including wine, for identical alcohol intake
most of what we think as "traditional" styles are not traditional at all, and are re-invented or plain invented in the last 30-50 years - saisons, bocks, porters, trappist ales, IPA - looked and tasted in 19th century (or even early 20th century) nothing like they do now (or they didn't exist at all).

 

[TheMadKing]

My contrarian (or maybe not so contrarian) views - many informed by brulosophy, experimental brewing and my own experiments:

drinking a few beers a day, every day, slowly, with food is actually good for your health - way better than not drinking any alcohol at all and better than almost any other, higher ABV alcoholic drink, including wine, for identical alcohol intake
most of what we think as "traditional" styles are not traditional at all, and are re-invented or plain invented in the last 30-50 years - saisons, bocks, porters, trappist ales, IPA - looked and tasted in 19th century (or even early 20th century) nothing like they do now (or they didn't exist at all).

Agreed with everything until these two.. beer consumption and health is rocky ground at best. And most of those styles you listed are very old, especially bocks and trappist ales which have been around since the 1300's and 1600's respectively, and we HAVE the original recipes so we know they are similar.

Agreed that an american porter or saison is probably not the same as the english and french originals, but examples certainly exist of the originals for comparison.

 

[SteveH aka shetc]

InBev will make Northern Brewer great!

 

[captwalt]

"most of what we think as "traditional" styles are not traditional at all, and are re-invented or plain invented in the last 30-50 years - saisons, bocks, porters, trappist ales, IPA - looked and tasted in 19th century (or even early 20th century) nothing like they do now (or they didn't exist at all)."

I'm gonna have to agree here. While beer history and culture is just a hobby of mine it seems that todays process and ingredients are vastly different than they were even 100 years ago. This leads me to believe that the beer is also very different and comparing traditianal styles to our modern interpereatations of them is useless

 

[Bilsch]

My unpopular opinion is craftbrewers far too often use large quantities of hops to camouflage other major flaws in the brewing process.

 

[Zekk]

Mosaic hops are gross.

I don't overly care who owns the brewery if the beer tastes good.

 

[drksky]

*

* Water matters - a lot. It should be something a brewer pays attention to right from the first batch (as simple as just using RO water). Too many people tell beginners that adjusting water is "hard" and they should worry about it later.... no - they should do it right from the very beginning. UNTREATED Tap water with chlorine will ruin beer. Very hard water can ruin beer. It just is not hard to make sure that component is correct, or in the ball park. It is a disservice to convince so many people it is "difficult" when it isn't.

Fixed that for ya

 

[motosapiens]

drinking a few beers a day, every day, slowly, with food is actually good for your health - way better than not drinking any alcohol at all and better than almost any other, higher ABV alcoholic drink, including wine, for identical alcohol intake

I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally drink 30-90 oz of beer pretty much every single day, and I am FAR healthier than almost everyone. Probably has more to do with genetics and activity level and the sort of food I eat more than the beer, but whatever. I like beer and it makes me happy, and happy people are healthier.

My contrarian opinion is that brewing beer is pretty simple and easy and most of what people freak out about (sanitation, oxygen, various other bogeymen) is not worth freaking out about. Be reasonably prudent, but don't freak out.

 

[soccerdad]

I am FAR healthier than almost everyone

Oh Christ - The Golden Don snuck into HBT

 

[AZCoolerBrewer]

I don't know if anyone has said this already, but the yeast pitch rate calculators online aren't realistic. I made a 2 gallon batch of Ale To The Chief White House Honey Ale. If I had done a 5 gallon batch Brewersfriend says I should ise 5 and a half packs of Windsor yeast.

 

[m1k3]

An airlock is totally unnecessary. I cover the hole in the lid with a small glass dish. Foil would work too. I've done this for years.

 

[TheMadKing]

I don't know if anyone has said this already, but the yeast pitch rate calculators online aren't realistic. I made a 2 gallon batch of Ale To The Chief White House Honey Ale. If I had done a 5 gallon batch Brewersfriend says I should ise 5 and a half packs of Windsor yeast.

So your beer had an OG of 1.193?

Because that's what you have to put in for it to require 5.5 packs (60.5 grams).. You did something wrong man

mrmalty is a better calculator in general though.

 

[55x11]

Agreed with everything until these two.. beer consumption and health is rocky ground at best. And most of those styles you listed are very old, especially bocks and trappist ales which have been around since the 1300's and 1600's respectively, and we HAVE the original recipes so we know they are similar.

Agreed that an american porter or saison is probably not the same as the english and french originals, but examples certainly exist of the originals for comparison.

Alcohol consumption (in moderation, 2-3 drinks a day for men) reduces mortality by a whopping 30% compared to non-drinkers. There are numerous studies on this (famous "J-curve" of mortality vs. alcohol consumption, so-called "French paradox" etc.) - major theory behind why is that alcohol reduces risk of cardiovascular deseases and reduces stress - since heart disease and strokes are a major killer in modern society, regular alcohol consumption is good for you, according to research. Because of social aspects of increased drunk driving and social stigma of alcoholisms and binge-drinking among young adults, health policy experts don't necessarily want to advocate for an increase in alcohol consumption among non-drinkers. But statistically speaking, abstaining from alcohol is worse for you than smoking or being overweight. All of the positive health effects are just from alcohol (reservatrol effect in wine turned out to be fraud) - but low ABV drinks and slow drinking with food is crucial, so in that sense beer is much better than whiskey, vodka, tequila and other hard drinks.

As for traditional styles - Randy Mosher has a lot of research on this. see this interview, for example:

http://beersmith.com/blog/2015/11/15/historical-beer-myths-with-randy-mosher-beersmith-podcast-115/

Bock was never dark. Trappist Ales, Saisons/Farmhouse Ales (never brewed in Farmhouses) and most other belgian styles were "invented" after WWI. Porter ceased to exist in 1970ies except for baltic porter, and was re-defined again. Beers were often serverly under-attenuated. IPAs were aged for many months and sometimes years. Etc.

 

[motosapiens]

i just put a bunch of yeast in and don't worry about it. I can taste the difference between pitching one pack of liquid yeast vs using a starter or repitching, but i can't taste the difference between 250 billion cells and 350 billion cells.

And I don't care whether bock used to be dark or not. there are still plenty of lighter bocks in germany, but the darker ones taste better, especially when served in liter-mugs at the starkbierfest.

 

[Singletrack]

IPAs are better with some crystal color, residual sweetness, and some malty soul. Semi-fizzy, yellow, bone dry IPAs can be good, but the trend toward no tolerance for crystal in an IPA doesn't make sense to me. I like toffee red IPAs, and you should too.

 

[TX_Brewing]

Pumpkin beers are nasty.