Franconian Beer Message Board
Weekend round-up...and what's wrong with |
| Posted by Mark Andersen on 2016-03-04 11:06:51 |
| Glad the Archie Bunker comment didn't annoy you too much because it wasn't meant that way as I think you understand. "The Archie Bunker of the beer world" is just another way of me saying that when it comes to beer you are very conservative (i.e. set in your ways). I think that's fair to say no? But also like I said I know very few people as passionate about these things as you such as traditional British cask ale (bitters and milds), Zoigl, etc. This passion has led to tremendous knowledge which I think (speaking for myself at least) we all benefit from. In other words, glad to call you friend to be perfectly blunt. And by the way, in every other way besides possibly your views on beer you're nothing like Archie Bunker from what I can tell. Hell you would be the first to call me out if I made any kind of bigoted or stereotyping type of statement and rightly so. Anyhow, enough of that. Oatmeal isn't really used all that much in American brewing either but as you already know it's everything goes with beer recipes here. In many cases it's a brewer with lack of ability and experience trying to find a shortcut to success but in many case, such as the aformention Founders Breakfast Stout, it's the case of a very successful and competent brewer just pushing the envelope in different directions. You're 100% right that there are massive, almost endless range of possiblities with the base ingredients. As for me personally I prefer to work with just the malt, hops, yeast, and water. It's more than enough for me but on very, very rare occasions it's interesting to experiment with something a little different although I've not gone beyond just using coffee to add a little zip to the occasional stout that I brew. Only done it twice and liked the results but not so much that I'm inclined to do it more than once in a blue moon. "Seriously I wonder whether some of these brewers like the taste of beer" I'm convinced that some of them really don't. But those brewers are the exception rather than the rule I think. There is one in Massachusetts in particular that have had that same exact thought about after visiting their brewery twice. Every beer they brew is massive in it's gravity with a variety of unusual grains (like Spelt for instance) and often loaded with adjunts like syrup, coriander, etc. Every beer is like this and yet despite the high gravity of these beers the two brewers at this place are skinny as rails leading me to wonder if they even bother to drink more than a bottle of their own beer per week. But more often than not it's more like Founders where they brew a range of fairly standard styles like Porter, Pale Ale, Brown ales, and IPA (granted often hopped to the gills), and so on with seasonal/specialty beers to supplement their standard offerings. In other words, brewers that are perfecly good at making just good beer but push the envelope in other directions because they can and why not and it's part of the crazy, growing beer explosion going on in the USA and elsewhere these days. Also like I said in my previous post. Let's not forget the widespread use of invert sugers in British brewing history. I suppose we can excuse it based on less sophisticated technology and knowledge of fermentation at the time but if you want to talk about cutting corners ..... |