"Beer Masters" Amazon Prime videos

[MickDundee]

And all seemed to mill their own grain

Yeah, and I noticed in the first episode the Dutch guy didn’t seem to know how to use his drill on the mill.

 

[Leon103]

Yeah, and I noticed in the first episode the Dutch guy didn’t seem to know how to use his drill on the mill.

They told us that there was only a little budget to buy us kit, and that would have been fermenters as all beers are brewed in a week.

 

[Begbie]

How are they getting their ABV figures so wrong? I could understand up to 1% for not reading a hydrometer accurately, but they all seem to be using refractometers. Could that be the problem i.e. reading the FG is not ideally done with a refractometer?

 

[nickjdavis]

I managed to get through 2 episodes and 10 minutes of the third before giving up.

At the start the British pair said that they wanted to show that there was more to British brewing than warm flat beer (words to that effect)...then in episode 2 they state they've never brewed a Triple and then in episode 3 that they've never brewed an Abbey style beer....what sort of beers have they been brewing...virtually everyone I know soon has a crack at a Trappist style beer once they start brewing. The Belgians balls up their Triple (its like a home game for them FFS!!!!) and the Dutch pair seem to have a process that results in random ABV output.

It seems to me that these folks actually have relatively limited brewing experience and if all the beers were brewed in a week as intimated by Leon above, I hate to think where the Italian couple were able to store their FV's as they only seemed to be brewing in a small flat/apartment!!!

At risk of being politically incorrect, the highlight moment of what I watched was in episode one, where one of the Dutch team proclaimed..."as lesbian girls we like our power tools"....unfortunately that set off my imagination in the totally wrong direction.

 

[MickDundee]

At the start the British pair said that they wanted to show that there was more to British brewing than warm flat beer (words to that effect)...then in episode 2 they state they've never brewed a Triple and then in episode 3 that they've never brewed an Abbey style beer....what sort of beers have they been brewing...virtually everyone I know soon has a crack at a Trappist style beer once they start brewing. The Belgians balls up their Triple (its like a home game for them FFS!!!!) and the Dutch pair seem to have a process that results in random ABV output.

It seems to me that these folks actually have relatively limited brewing experience and if all the beers were brewed in a week as intimated by Leon above, I hate to think where the Italian couple were able to store their FV's as they only seemed to be brewing in a small flat/apartment!!!

I’ve never brewed a tripel and I’ve been brewing for 6 years. I’ve also only ever had 2 attempts at Abbey beers (both were early on in my brewing journey) - a Belgian pale that was just about passable and a Dubbel that was a disaster and took me 2 years to get through. I reckon I would have excelled with the first and final rounds but struggled with the Tripel, Abbey and Dark Strong categories.

I think the mistakes (the oxidised one and the beer with the off flavours) were more to do with the rushed nature of the show (and the fact they were trying to over complicate things to show off) than the inexperience of the Brewers - I also suspect that a couple of the “pairs” never really brewed together before the show (one of them is really a Brewer and the other has volunteered to be a glorified labourer to get their friend on the show), despite what they might have claimed, otherwise Nicolas would have known how to measure the grain and use a drill on a grain mill in the first episode.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I’ve never brewed a tripel and I’ve been brewing for 6 years. I’ve also only ever had 2 attempts at Abbey beers (both were early on in my brewing journey) - a Belgian pale that was just about passable and a Dubbel that was a disaster and took me 2 years to get through. I reckon I would have excelled with the first and final rounds but struggled with the Tripel, Abbey and Dark Strong categories.

I think the mistakes (the oxidised one and the beer with the off flavours) were more to do with the rushed nature of the show (and the fact they were trying to over complicate things to show off) than the inexperience of the Brewers - I also suspect that a couple of the “pairs” never really brewed together before the show (one of them is really a Brewer and the other has volunteered to be a glorified labourer to get their friend on the show), despite what they might have claimed, otherwise Nicolas would have known how to measure the grain and use a drill on a grain mill in the first episode.

I think you’re right that some of these partnerships are quite new, probably in order to qualify for the competition. I almost wish they’d shown all the qualifying rounds - as well as seeing our own in action (@Leon103 / @Hoddy ) I’m sure there would have been plenty of characters and plenty of howlers!

I am quite surprised by the number of ABV errors, weighing errors, syiluck sparges, and all the off-spec/off-flavour issues for such a small number of brews. It makes me wonder if I would be the same under the same conditions - Sitting here in my front room I can’t imagine so but I’m at a loss to explain it

 

[nickjdavis]

It seems to me that anyone making good beer under the circumstances has done well....I wonder how often the brewing process was halted by a production team saying..."can you just do that again please...we didn't quite capture that properly"...also, if 5 beers are fermenting at once then I guess that the temperature control that most of us take for granted is going to be totally out of the window, which again puts a huge constraint against the production of a consistently good beer.

I know that brewing is not like baking/cooking/paitning/pottery/dressmaking (all the other typical "craft" competition TV shows) and there must be constraints to producing an equivalent sort of TV show/competition but, given the overall brief is that the final winning beer will be commercially produced, it seems somewhat of a pity that the format seems somewhat detrimental to the creation of a good beer and that the brewers are handicapped right from the very start.

 

[Begbie]

When talking about it to the wife last night, she suggested that some of the 'mistakes' could be staged or edited to provoke discussion, just as we're doing here. However, unlike the garbage that she watches, it's difficult to edit a brewing programme to make it look awkward or cause some controversy...unless they start having flings with each other later in the series.

I think they are just inexperienced home brewers like myself, who just happen to make mistakes - not the 'best of the best' as they're made out to be. I'll continue to watch as it is quite interesting, and saves me from the usual TV torture.

 

[Leon103]

I think you’re right that some of these partnerships are quite new, probably in order to qualify for the competition. I almost wish they’d shown all the qualifying rounds - as well as seeing our own in action (@Leon103 / @Hoddy ) I’m sure there would have been plenty of characters and plenty of howlers!

I am quite surprised by the number of ABV errors, weighing errors, syiluck sparges, and all the off-spec/off-flavour issues for such a small number of brews. It makes me wonder if I would be the same under the same conditions - Sitting here in my front room I can’t imagine so but I’m at a loss to explain it

There were no earlier rounds.

It was a written application. Pass that turn a phone call. Then I think we had another call/WhatsApp call. I think that's how it went. It was beginning of the year so can't remember much.

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

I wonder how often the brewing process was halted by a production team saying..."can you just do that again please...we didn't quite capture that properly"

I’d hope they’re not doing that and just using what they have captured properly! Also that they’re showing you in a good light and not at that moment when you pour the wort into your boil kettle having left the tap open!

 

[MickDundee]

There were no earlier rounds.

It was a written application. Pass that turn a phone call. Then I think we had another call/WhatsApp call. I think that's how it went. It was beginning of the year so can't remember much.

No actual sampling of your beer at that stage? I assume that would have come after the phone calls, so effectively they were checking how suitable you were to be on the telly before they checked the quality of the beer?

They did a good job picking Federica, like! She’s definitely suitable for being on the telly!

 

[Hazelwood Brewery]

There were no earlier rounds.

It was a written application. Pass that turn a phone call. Then I think we had another call/WhatsApp call. I think that's how it went. It was beginning of the year so can't remember much.

It seems a bit light when I compare this show to something like Masterchef although not many of their dishes take two weeks to cook and then need to “rest” for a month. How did you learn about it?

 

[Leon103]

No actual sampling of your beer at that stage? I assume that would have come after the phone calls, so effectively they were checking how suitable you were to be on the telly before they checked the quality of the beer?

They did a good job picking Federica, like! She’s definitely suitable for being on the telly!

They didn't want to sample any beer. Basically we were at the stage of going down to London to do a few days shooting, they wanted to do interviews etc that would be used in the programmes.

There were a lot of unanswered questions though and the price as changed, there was no mention of keeping the profit from making the brew. You can probably guess who the sponsor is from the choice of guest brewery in episode 1.

 

[Leon103]

It seems a bit light when I compare this show to something like Masterchef although not many of their dishes take two weeks to cook and then need to “rest” for a month. How did you learn about it?

Saw an advert online so me and hoddy put in for it. But living about 5 hours away didn't sit well with the producers, which I can see their point. Plus we were asking a lot questions and shadowing doubt over the format. They seemed keen to have small breweries as contestants but that doesn't seemed to have come off.

 

[nickjdavis]

I’d hope they’re not doing that and just using what they have captured properly! Also that they’re showing you in a good light and not at that moment when you pour the wort into your boil kettle having left the tap open!

I guess howlers happen naturally enough but how did the guy in episode one mistake grammes for kilograms in the recipe....surely they would have looked at the pile of grain going into the mash and think..."mmm...doesnt look quite enough there"?

I'd like to have seen a little bit more of the brewing processes used by the contestants, the rationale behind their recipe design (bear in mind i only watched 2 episodes so dont know if things were different in 3,4 and 5). The Dutch girls for example...made statements about how they were trying to avoid a banana bomb in their Triple but there was no explanation of how they planned to do that...whether they would choose a yeast that wasnt estery or a fermentation temp that would avoid banana esters....just that little extra layer of detail that might have added a bit more interest.

As for mistakes.....not weighing out grain properly, or not being able to attach your drill to your malt mill are small fry. Try doughing in on a Braumeister and then realising that you haven't fitted the bottom filter and plate (or on one occasion simply forgetting to put the malt pipe in!!!)....or completing the mash and finding that you forgot to reattach the lifting bolts to the malt pipe when you last cleaned it so you cant get the malt pipe out to sparge. We've all done such stuff...including leaving taps open when transferring beer and wondering why your feet are getting wet!!!!

I think the program could have been so much more than it is...instead it seems like a half hearted attempt to cash in on the boom in this hobby and doesn't truly highlight the superb quality of beer than can be produced in ones kitchen or garage.

 

[MickDundee]

Saw an advert online so me and hoddy put in for it. But living about 5 hours away didn't sit well with the producers, which I can see their point. Plus we were asking a lot questions and shadowing doubt over the format. They seemed keen to have small breweries as contestants but that doesn't seemed to have come off.

Totally shocked they didn’t want to taste any of the beer first.

It wasn’t particularly well advertised, and I would think most home Brewers brew alone, so I wonder if they didn’t actually get that many applicants so only needed to get rid of a couple of pairs - with you being 5 hours apart from your brewing partner you would have been an easy one to get rid of.

 

[nickjdavis]

One of my local fellow Suffolk homebrewers joined up with a local commercial brewer and entered....not sure they got past the initial application phase.

 

[MickDundee]

I guess howlers happen naturally enough but how did the guy in episode one mistake grammes for kilograms in the recipe....surely they would have looked at the pile of grain going into the mash and think..."mmm...doesnt look quite enough there"?

Things like that reinforce my theory that Sven was the only brewer in the pair and roped in his best mate as his labourer/assistant without any prior brewing knowledge.

 

[Leon103]

Things like that reinforce my theory that Sven was the only brewer in the pair and roped in his best mate as his labourer/assistant without any prior brewing knowledge.

Bit like the British pair

 

[MickDundee]

Bit like the British pair

I’ve starting following all of the contestants on Instagram since I watched the show - it looks like the British pair are both brewers, but also that they don’t regularly brew together.

It looks like the bearded guy is still just doing it as a hobby(he’s retired so guessing he probably doesn’t want another job), but the other guy is in the process of setting up a brewery (and has been since June). Both their Instagram feeds have a lot of brewing content pre-dating the show.

I’d suspected the the French lads weren’t both Brewers but both their Instagrams are all about brewing.