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My Franken Sommer Trip-2017

Posted by Nick B. on 2017-07-07 03:31:03

This argument has come up here over the years. My response is, do I have to be a car mechanic, designer, or mechanical engineer to be able to understand and describe why and how torque steer occurs with front-wheel-drive cars (with more powerful engines) but not rear-wheel drive cars? (OK, maybe not the best example, as I aced physics in college.) Do I need to be one in order to be considered qualified to describe why and how a BMW 118d drives better than a Smart? No, I think not. I think the daily, years-long experience of driving different cars enables one to be able understand and talk about such things. Bantering about the dimensional tolerances of how tight the pistons should fit into the engine block...there you're likely to run agin' some expertise. In my case, I started learning about the technical side of beer (diacytel, DMS, astringency, etc) nearly 25 years ago. Back then I was hanging around with actual brewers (and even more homebrewers...I once stewarded Fred Eckhardt and Michael Jackson at a homebrew comp...yay me!), and I don't recall them being anything but very enthusiastic about laymen learning about their area of expertise. I have a hard time imagining Franz Roppelt getting worked up about someone criticising his beer, justly or not. Just more musing...prost!

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My Franken Sommer Trip-2017 by AndyH on  2017-07-14 06:52:49