Troubleshooting Methodology for Homebrew is a short eBook intended for the novice to intermediate brewer or anyone interested in learning the basics of evaluating a beer. This book will help define many common beer flavors and aromas and their descriptions, both the good and the bad. Hopefully you find this helpful.
Below is an excerpt from the chapter: 'Identifying the problem: Putting It All Together
So now that we have all the basic knowledge we need to evaluate the beer, what next? Well, at this point you know how to evaluate a beer by aroma, taste, and feel. You have a general understanding of the most common flavors and aromas in beer in regards to malt, yeast, hops, and water. You have an idea of some common flaws. You also have knowledge about how to use style guidelines as a target for your beer evaluation round. You put all these components together to come up with what your beer is like right now, and honestly that part is harder than acquiring this basic knowledge. The hardest part is letting go of the idea of what you were shooting for or what the beer was supposed to taste like and really taking a look at the beer in an open minded and non-judgmental way. That is the hardest part because we always tend to go one way or the other. We either tend to be our own worst critic, or we fail to acknowledge the flaws or mistakes in our beer because there is no way we made a simple mistake. Judging your own beer openly and non-objectively is a lot more difficult than it seems. This is why many people send beers off to competition. Competitions tend to be fairly inexpensive, and you are getting blind feedback from someone who doesn’t know your process or what ingredients you used. They don’t have a stake in telling you that you did a great job. But don’t get me wrong, evaluating your own beer is a very important part of the brewing process. So use the information in this chapter and take your beer for what it is, not for what you wanted it to be or what it should have been. Be honest with the beer.
Below is an excerpt from the chapter: 'Identifying the problem: Putting It All Together
So now that we have all the basic knowledge we need to evaluate the beer, what next? Well, at this point you know how to evaluate a beer by aroma, taste, and feel. You have a general understanding of the most common flavors and aromas in beer in regards to malt, yeast, hops, and water. You have an idea of some common flaws. You also have knowledge about how to use style guidelines as a target for your beer evaluation round. You put all these components together to come up with what your beer is like right now, and honestly that part is harder than acquiring this basic knowledge. The hardest part is letting go of the idea of what you were shooting for or what the beer was supposed to taste like and really taking a look at the beer in an open minded and non-judgmental way. That is the hardest part because we always tend to go one way or the other. We either tend to be our own worst critic, or we fail to acknowledge the flaws or mistakes in our beer because there is no way we made a simple mistake. Judging your own beer openly and non-objectively is a lot more difficult than it seems. This is why many people send beers off to competition. Competitions tend to be fairly inexpensive, and you are getting blind feedback from someone who doesn’t know your process or what ingredients you used. They don’t have a stake in telling you that you did a great job. But don’t get me wrong, evaluating your own beer is a very important part of the brewing process. So use the information in this chapter and take your beer for what it is, not for what you wanted it to be or what it should have been. Be honest with the beer.
