Slashdot Mirror
Free (As In Speech) Beer, V2.0
AgentPaper writes "Three years ago we discussed an open source brewing project in which a Danish brewer made his beer recipes available for public consumption and alteration. The concept has taken off, first with the 'Free Beer Project' in Denmark and now with Flying Dog's 'Collaborator' Doppelbock in the US, which was created via input from home brewers across the world. One version of the Collaborator is commercially brewed and available for purchase (and is darned tasty), but you can download the same recipe and labels, brew it yourself, and submit your mods back to the project."
Beer is a craft. It isn't the same as software because the same program (recipe) won't always produce the same result. The program I wrote yesterday will run the same any time of year. Beer, on the other hand, cares when I make it. Around here, we don't brew between May and October.
The conditions under which the brewing occurs are part of the "program", and the same program certainly should always produce the same results. If you don't have control of some of your initial variables, then you will get varying results, whether you're talking software or beer.
Oh no... it's the future.
As far as I know, all the ingredients required to make amphetamine are legal. Mixing them is not, though.
I've been home brewing for nearly 20 years.
In my experience:
1. Most brewers (home and professional) have always been willing if not eager to share their recipes with other brewers.
2. Those brewers who do zealously guard their secret recipes usually don't make very good beer, and you wouldn't want their recipes anyway.
I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure running around shooting at people is also illegal.
Here in the UK there are amny book available with recepies for many 'Commercial' brews. My local Brewery will even sell you some of the very same yeast thay they use. With a bit of arm twisting, you can sometimes even buy some of the Malt they use. Hops are easily come by in any Home Brew shop.
On trips around many such establishments, you can easily glean what ration of hops : malt : etc goes in a particular beer.
So why can't you make beer with the same taste?
Water.
IMHO, this has a big effect of the actual taste of a beer. This is why regional breweries in the UK ( and other plaves) produce ales with such distinctive tastes.
Even the brewers of that apology for beer in the USA (Bud) treat the water so that wherever it is brewed it tastes the same. Then they go and ruin it by adding rice. It is not beer. I digress.
The differences in the water for beers is as important as it is for proper (Malt) Whiskies.
The peaty soft water of an Islay Malt makes a very different drink than a Highland Brand.
My wife, who grew up in a Communist Eastern European country (yes, I bought her on the internet) spent most of her life with food and drink that is made at home. As an American IdiotTM, I grew up suspicious of any food that didn't come wrapped in plastic or aluminum.
I can even remember as a kid, wanting to go to McDonalds and my mom saying "I'll make you a nice hamburger here at home" and I'd be really upset because I preferred a skinny, greasy Golden Arches meat cookie to the fat, lovely fresh burger my mom would make. Needless to say, there's not much I wouldn't give for another burger (or anything else) made by my mom.
I can tell you, after the years I've spent married, that's changed. When I have that deep gnawing need for sustenance, I go look for an unlabeled jar in the basement first. There are few things edible or drinkable that I'm not certain could be done better at home, with love, than in a factory by workers in white overalls and hairnets.
Have you ever had home made root beer or fig preserves? Just thinking about all these things has me drooling on myself as I sit here at 7am.
You are welcome on my lawn.
On the other hand, it's damn hard to find a better beer than what you make at home. Perhaps other homebrewers have had the experience of drinking almost solely their own beer for a year or two, then going somewhere and having a beer you used to think was the bee's knees only to find it a flavorless, depressing swill. Or going somewhere and drinking a beer that you used to find good-but-overwhelming (Dogfish Head 90 minute?) and finding it a whole lot more easy to drink.
But wouldn't you just love to be the beta tester?
Listen, we might looking at this for a different perspective... Can you make beer cheap??? Absolutely.... Can you do that to match the exact quality of a true premium... That is allot harder...
Realistically, from my experience to get the same quality and consistency of true premium ales/lagers there are allot of things required. Excluding lagers, the cost of yeast starter prep work, mash tuns, water purifying/ph correction/mineral corrections... Even with ales you must keep the at the optimum fermentation range of 65F during the entire primary ferment. This takes equipment, time, and cost which all most be figured in. Also, keep in mind that the cost of time is a big one. Also, it must spend several weeks in the secondary being monitored for clarity, and depending on the type of grain might need additional clarification related items/procedures. Once again... Time and Expense... Third, the time and expense to bottle as I general do not like artificial CO2 because for most premiums it alters the unique living beer taste... I could go on, because I hope you are seeing my point... Making beer is easy... Making true high end beers (which is where the true savings is) is not...
In short... I do this because I do believe it makes a difference and I appreciate the added quality of taste, but I really do not pretend by saying that I save money by doing it. I am constantly reminded with the amount of equipment, and the space it takes up, that saving much money is unlikely...
Do you go to the movies? If so, do you factor in the price of your time along with the tickets and popcorn?
When drinking beer, do you factor in the time it takes to drink it, as well as the cost of the beer itself? How about going out to dinner? Do you tack on an additional $100/hr for your time?
How do you pay yourself? It seems like it would get a bit circular. "Hey, Self, here's the $100 I owe you for the last hour. Don't spend it all in one place, you know you have payroll coming up in an hour!"
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
My Grandfather used to make homemade rootbeer. From what I remember it was quite a bit better than the store bought stuff. We also make a lot of home made food, that most people would just get out of a can. Home made soups and sauces taste quite a bit better than what you get at the store, and are a lot more healthier. Even the low sodium soups at the store contain more salt than most people would put in a home made soup. Real home made food just tastes a lot better. Sadly, I think a lot of people don't realize, or forget just how much better home cooking is.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Like all hobbies, it takes time, but you can sure save money, and can also make beer every bit as good as commercial offerings. Of course it takes skill to make really great beer, but it's very doable. Money-wise, I haven't spent a cent on equipment in over a year, and have probably spent $100 on grain, $30 on hops, $20 on CO2, and $40 on propane. For a YEAR, drinking 2-3 glasses per day. I ferment underground, or in a closet where the temp is already ok. I bought yeast once and only once, a couple years ago. An important note to this is that I have a limited range of styles I make, and that does help keep costs down. I call BS on the carbonation thing. CO2 from a tank does not in any way change the flavor of a beer. If you under-age it because the keg can carbonate faster, that most certainly can affect things though. I quit bottling everything except mead and some really strong stuff (and then only a few bottles meant for a year or two down the road) due to time considerations quite some time ago, and I'll tell you it tastes the same.
One of the biggest challenges to improving your brewing is brewing to style.
It depends on what your goal is. If you want to enter a competition that scores based on adherence to style, then yes, brewing to style will improve your beer. If your goal is just to make good beer, then style doesn't really matter.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.