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So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

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Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#271

Post by kurthr »

walrus01 wrote: post #2

My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore. It was interesting 7-8…

I totally agree... it's like over-roasting coffee beans. You trade bitterness of flavor but get consistency. That's a legit process control approach to manufacturing. And consistency of brewing beer is a huge deal... it's not that hard to make a decent home brew (it helps that it's usually fresh like home baked bread), but it's REALLY HARD to make the same beer (that people are coming back for and paying money) batch after batch. You need control not only of ingredients (and the damn things change), but also the yeast, time @ temp... and cleanliness!

It's a lot easier to add lots of hops.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#272

Post by [deleted] »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #66
walrus01 wrote: post #2

My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore. It was interesting 7-8…

This might have been true a few years ago, but even in my middle of the road rust belt city you can get a huge variety of beers now. There are entire breweries dedicated to sours alone! Even within the IPA genre the crazy hopped to death west coast IPAs from the early 2010s seem to be getting pushed out by New England IPAs, milkshake IPAs, and a smattering of super weird stouts.

[deleted]

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#273

Post by chihuahua »

TravHatesMe wrote: post #220
specialp wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think IPAs have made for peak craft beer and it is going down. You are right about IPAs being easy to cover up poor brews. I brew, and people are really surprised when I tell them one of the hardest possible beers to brew would be a Budweiser clone, and one of the easiest is an IPA. Most IPA's have a very simple single malt and mash cycle, and it is essentially a hot tea made with hops. Then most of them are fermen…

Do people honestly enjoy a 100 IBU beer? I never understood the hype around strong IPAs. What percentage of consumers honestly enjoy it and what percentage are riding the bandwagon. I have often heard "ah this isn't bitter enough" when someone is drinking a high IBU beer.. is this some way of flexing on others? I enjoy beer but not these crazy IPAs. To each their own I suppose.

Whenever I pick from a beer menu that shows IBU for each beer, I pick one of the 3 with the lowest IBU number. I don't care at all for the competition where people yell "Oh your beer has 100 IBU? Well mine has 110!"

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#274

Post by golergka »

munificent wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle where the IPA thing is just out of hand. My uncharitable pet theory is this: A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition. Most people that aren't really into beer don'…

I don't know much about beer, but this reminds me so much of whisky peat and record-breaking Octomore releases.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#275

Post by randomdata »

electricslpnsld wrote: post #66
walrus01 wrote: post #2

My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore. It was interesting 7-8…

This might have been true a few years ago, but even in my middle of the road rust belt city you can get a huge variety of beers now. There are entire breweries dedicated to sours alone! Even within the IPA genre the crazy hopped to death west coast IPAs from the early 2010s seem to be getting pushed out by New England IPAs, milkshake IPAs, and a smattering of super weird stouts.

> middle of the road rust belt city you can get a huge variety of beers now. There are entire breweries dedicated to sours alone!

Heck, I live in a small rust belt town of 2,000 people and we even have a brewery dedicated to sours alone. Travel 20 minutes up the road to the next town over, with a population of not even 1,000 people, and you'll come across a major – as in their production capacity is pushing the limits of what can be reasonably considered craft – craft brewery. Although not necessarily always available, they have 35 beers in their catalog. I'm not sure any of them resemble the west coast-style IPA we're talking about. If you include hazy, milkshake, etc. takes on IPAs then 9 of the 35 are considered IPAs. Still not a lot of emphasis on IPAs in general.

As an aside, this "rural" craft beer industry is rather interesting. The primary business model seems to be set up production where operations is cheap and then ship the product into the city. That sour brewery is basically a tech company, selling the vast majority of their beer online. Although that major craft brewery I spoke of does put a lot of effort into beer tourism, attracting people to their facilities, as well.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#276

Post by Foobar8568 »

walrus01 wrote: post #2

My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore. It was interesting 7-8…

I hate most IPAs I tried, enjoy most double IPAs, what gives? Doesn't make much sense to me...

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#277

Post by tomcooks »

munificent wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle where the IPA thing is just out of hand. My uncharitable pet theory is this: A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition. Most people that aren't really into beer don'…

I wonder where women are allowed to compete, according to this world view of yours. Hair care and nail polish? Or cooking maybe? Ah no wait, knitting is THE TRADE for women in your opinion.

Maybe this thing you complain about isn't something that people do, not just (American)(young)(white)(rich) males.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#278

Post by hnick »

munificent wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle where the IPA thing is just out of hand. My uncharitable pet theory is this: A certain class of men (sometimes women, but it's almost always men) get interested in something and then desire to make it part of their identity. That in turn means they want to convey that they are more into it than other people. Their passion expresses itself as competition. Most people that aren't really into beer don'…

I think spicy food (as in, more Scovilles) is an obvious analogue there too.

I don't judge since taste is subjective, but I made the decision to cut back on chilies a few years ago when I realised it was getting in the way of enjoying the food. Up until then it was almost a personal challenge just to see where I could push it, for no real reason.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#279

Post by stock_toaster »

munificent wrote: post #195
scrumper wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fun and clever little label for a trend that's quite obvious when it's pointed out! Someone upthread mentioned stinky cheese, dry wine, and peaty Islay Scotch. Those things don't yet have absolute metrics - it'd be amusing to see what happens if they ever do.

The future is now. For wine, there's the "Total Polyphenol Index": https://www.decanter.com/learn/advice/tannin-scale-ask-decan... For peat in Scotch, the "phenol parts per million": https://www.theyorkshiregent.com/whisky/the-scotch-whisky-pe... Not sure if someone's found a way to game cheese yet.

ppm (phenol parts per million) is usually a reference to a "pre-distillation measurement" though, not the resultant distillate or the final aged product. Different run cut points (head/tails) heavily impact the amount of peat flavors that make it into the final distillate, as well as age (barrel time), cask activity, and.. probably barrel char too?

So while there is of course a rough correlation with ppm to final "peatiness", some scotches with slightly higher initial ppm may not end up tasting quite as "peaty" as some with slightly lower initial ppm may.

It does seem like PPM is being used "as marketing" in a few places these days though, which is probably to your point, and possibly a sign of things to come. :/

----

A more common thing I see/hear is people bragging about scotch age and price. Older is not always better! Too old, and you can certainly lose some delightful peat characteristics present in younger ages, or get too much cask influence.

Re: So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery (2014)

#280

Post by Xelbair »

walrus01 wrote: post #2

My personal taste complaint with a lot of people who open a brewery... Everyone seems to think that more hops = better beer. There are so many other possible flavors and types to a beer than some type of IPA that is absolutely overloaded with hops. But that seems to be a very common type of thing to brew. When I open something and am assaulted with the aroma of hops, it's not appealing anymore. It was interesting 7-8…

Exactly - craft beer has been taken over by IPAs over here - and variations about them.

I personally love stouts and porters - yet there is a severe shortage of them. There was a 'whiskey/bourbon barrel aged RIS" craze short while ago, but it was all the same.. and they were available only in brewery pubs.

When i go to store the beer wall is full of IPAs, another one is full of lagers(I'll pass on them).. and maybe 2-3 types of stouts/sours/porters are mixed with IPAs.

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