Can we be a little more accepting of our differences?

[Chippy_Tea]

I'm not saying I'm quick with the Ignore button, but I only see four replies to this thread.

You'll soon be talking to yourself at this rate

 

[DocAnna]

At some point I’m going to catch up properly with this thread. However, I actually think this is a rather kind and generous wee corner of the internet. Oh there’s the occasional comment that’s a bit off but the very vast majority recognise our differences, including techniques, equipment and willingness to part with funds for shiny stainless steel (when plastic might be just fine!).
I do stay away from anything health related as there’s an awful lot of nonsense in those threads and I’ve no wish to get embroiled. Similarly there are bits of the snug which feel like men only bars of old …. So I just chose the bits to frequent.

 

[Clint]

It's a great place...I especially like the clever lot who make stuff with electric and computers...most absorbing when I could be considered thick as a whale omelette in that department.

 

[DavidDetroit]

You'll soon be talking to yourself at this rate

I was hoping everyone thought my joke was funny. Truthfully, I have had to remove a handful but it takes A LOT for me even to consider it.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I was hoping everyone thought my joke was funny. Truthfully, I have had to remove a handful but it takes A LOT for me even to consider it.

I added a like to your earlier post so i did get it was a joke

 

[Brewnaldo]

It's a great place...I especially like the clever lot who make stuff with electric and computers...most absorbing when I could be considered thick as a whale omelette in that department.

I agree with this. There have been a good few opportunities for folk to score points off me over my own stupidity and that they haven't is a credit to the discourse on here

Joking aside though, I don't think there is an issue at all on this site. Some of the non brewing stuff can get a bit "heated" although even that choice of word is probably melodramatic. I've never seen it descend into name calling or anything like that, and on the brewing side I have never received anything but help and support. I'd actually say it surprises me how little needle goes on here tbh.

 

[DavidDetroit]

clever lot who make stuff with electric and computers.

I'm with you--people putting stuff together and making beer robots that brew, answer the door and walk the dog.--out of my league.

 

[An Ankoù]

I was interested in this thread following something I was reading on another forum.

On this forum we are pussy-cats! Well trodden down and kept in order by our hard-working administrators. To get an idea of what forum unpleasantness can really mean, try this ten year old thread on Jim's brewing forum (it's fairly long so fetch a coffee - you don't expect short posts from Mr Wheeler - and keep the screen from the eyes of kids and "sensitive" folk!):

... Graham = Graham Wheeler (sadly no longer amongst us)
... pattro1ro = Ron Pattinson
... mashweasel = Kristen England
(So not "unknown" antagonists then!)

Old recipes from Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Home Brew Forum

The subject (brewery records, malt sources, caramel, and others) are interesting in their own right, which is how I came upon it. That forum has a long line of users who do not tolerate fools gladly. Most recently one I labelled a "Norwegian Troll": He doesn't seem to have reappeared since a recent temporary ban from that forum, but be warned, he is known to lurk on this forum!

After getting through those posts, try saying we're anything but not friendly on this site! If you think you can still say it ... I'll be waiting to hand out "flamings"!

Thanks for this link @peebee , just read this bunfight from cover to cover. What a thoroughly unpleasant character! Confirms the view I got from reading his early books. Nothing wrong with his earlier recipes, though, those published with Protz, nor with his homebrew advice and methods (apart from one or two rants about PETs and priming bottled beer, for example). I think it's a shame his recipes have "changed" in the later third edition- especially the hopping rates, which seem greatly reduced in many cases. I would still recommend (and have done on several occasions) a second-hand, earlier edition of BYOBRA for any newcomer wanting a good "primer" for home brewing. I know many recommend Palmer, but I think from zero to Palmer is a step too far.
Wheeler doesn't recommend any yeasts on the grounds (if I remember right) that unless you can get the brewer's own yeast, it doesn't really matter - or something like that. I think he's missed a trick here, but hey ho.

Well as I've got both editions out including the latest printing of the CAMRA bright and fluffy illustrated edition (another example of CAMRA milking the cash cow which is Wheeler) and as it's raining all day, and since it's a bank holiday here, I think I'll do a side by side reading and see what else CAMRA has done to ruin this seminal work.

I have a suspicion about the hopping rates which I'm going to look into. If it's true I'll come back to it in the book reviews thread.

 

[PhilBrew]

Hi @An Ankoù

Well as I've got both editions out including the latest printing of the CAMRA bright and fluffy illustrated edition (another example of CAMRA milking the cash cow which is Wheeler) and as it's raining all day, and since it's a bank holiday here, I think I'll do a side by side reading and see what else CAMRA has done to ruin this seminal work.

I have a suspicion about the hopping rates which I'm going to look into. If it's true I'll come back to it in the book reviews thread.

... you can read Graham's own review of the 4th edition (fluffy illustrated) of "his" book over there (link) ... no mention of CAMRA reducing hopping rates, but they do seem to have done a bad job in transcribing and missed some (late) additions out entirely, which may be the cause of the changes you're noticing

Cheers, PhilB

 

[An Ankoù]

Hi @An Ankoù
... you can read Graham's own review of the 4th edition (fluffy illustrated) of "his" book over there (link) ... no mention of CAMRA reducing hopping rates, but they do seem to have done a bad job in transcribing and missed some (late) additions out entirely, which may be the cause of the changes you're noticing

Cheers, PhilB

Thanks for that link. I'm going to give it a good looking at later. But there's definitely something going on with the hopping. A very quick comparison of 25 litres of Ringwood Best Bitter at 24 IBUs: my 1998/2001 edition p137 uses 40g Challenger at 7.7% alpha while fluffy 3rd edition reprinted 2018, p200 uses 29g Challenger with 7.6% alpha. Both have late hops: more in the earlier edition and the boil time is 90 minutes for both. Don't worry, I'll get to the bottom of this. They've also changed the grain bill slightly. Now it's true that Ringwood altered their recipes making them sweeter and less hoppy, but both recipes déclaré 24 IBUs. I'll need to check with the various editions of Protz' Almanac to find out what that meant. BUT, this de-hopping appears, at first sight, to be across the board. More investigation needed. I'll be back on this one.

 

[Nottsbeer]

Thanks for that link. I'm going to give it a good looking at later. But there's definitely something going on with the hopping. A very quick comparison of 25 litres of Ringwood Best Bitter at 24 IBUs: my 1998/2001 edition p137 uses 40g Challenger at 7.7% alpha while fluffy 3rd edition reprinted 2018, p200 uses 29g Challenger with 7.6% alpha. Both have late hops: more in the earlier edition and the boil time is 90 minutes for both. Don't worry, I'll get to the bottom of this. They've also changed the grain bill slightly. Now it's true that Ringwood altered their recipes making them sweeter and less hoppy, but both recipes déclaré 24 IBUs. I'll need to check with the various editions of Protz' Almanac to find out what that meant. BUT, this de-hopping appears, at first sight, to be across the board. More investigation needed. I'll be back on this one.

Hi An Ankou.....I had a recent conversation with Moto748 regarding the recipe for Big Lamp Bitter in these books. My edition (early print) had something like double the hop volume than that in the later print (i'd link the thread but I've no idea how!). I also noticed that the bitterness value noted in my book (30) was considerably lower than the calculated bitterness (54) for the used hops. At the time I put it down to different scales used, but obviously that wasn't correct! As I quite like a high IBU I went for the printed recipe (the beer was fantastic). Enjoy your investigations.

 

[An Ankoù]

Hi An Ankou.....I had a recent conversation with Moto748 regarding the recipe for Big Lamp Bitter in these books. My edition (early print) had something like double the hop volume than that in the later print (i'd link the thread but I've no idea how!). I also noticed that the bitterness value noted in my book (30) was considerably lower than the calculated bitterness (54) for the used hops. At the time I put it down to different scales used, but obviously that wasn't correct! As I quite like a high IBU I went for the printed recipe (the beer was fantastic). Enjoy your investigations.

Hi @Nottsbeer
There's a massive difference in hopping rates. It's not quite as bad as it looks because the first edition has Goldings at 5.3% alpha acid and the "fluffy" edition has them at 5.7%. Even so the difference is massive. In the earlier editions of his books, Wheeler gives compelling reasons for assuming a lower utilisation than industry standards and he settles on 20%. In the "fluffy" edition, a utilisation table is applied and with Big Lamp having an OG of 1038, the utilisation is considered to be 27.2% !!!
@PhilBrew went me a very interesting link to a conversation between Wheeler and others where he claims he had no knowledge of this book before it appeared on the shelves and that he had neither edited nor proof-read it. The "fluffy" edition claims to be an illustrated version of the 3rd edition rather than a new (4th) edition and so I've ordered a second hand copy of the original third edition, which was written by Wheeler, to see whether he had changed his mind about utilisation or whether this is something CAMRA has done on their own initiative.

If anybody has got a copy of the original third edition, I'd be very interested to hear what he has to say on this in the chapter on hops.

 

[Hop_it]

Hi @Nottsbeer
There's a massive difference in hopping rates. It's not quite as bad as it looks because the first edition has Goldings at 5.3% alpha acid and the "fluffy" edition has them at 5.7%. Even so the difference is massive. In the earlier editions of his books, Wheeler gives compelling reasons for assuming a lower utilisation than industry standards and he settles on 20%. In the "fluffy" edition, a utilisation table is applied and with Big Lamp having an OG of 1038, the utilisation is considered to be 27.2% !!!
@PhilBrew went me a very interesting link to a conversation between Wheeler and others where he claims he had no knowledge of this book before it appeared on the shelves and that he had neither edited nor proof-read it. The "fluffy" edition claims to be an illustrated version of the 3rd edition rather than a new (4th) edition and so I've ordered a second hand copy of the original third edition, which was written by Wheeler, to see whether he had changed his mind about utilisation or whether this is something CAMRA has done on their own initiative.

If anybody has got a copy of the original third edition, I'd be very interested to hear what he has to say on this in the chapter on hops.

I don't know if this will help, but I have a copy of the 3rd edition dated 2009. It is a Camra publication, so I'm not sure if this is the "fluffy" edition or not. But here is a scan of the section on hop utilisation.
Until reading the above posts, I wasn't even aware that anything significant had changed between different editions. I've made quite a few of the recipes in my book, and took everything at face value on the basis that it is exceedingly difficult to make a really convincing clone anyway, and if you have not tried the original for a long time (or perhaps even never) then it isn't that relevant. However, I often used to tweak the hop additions to suit my own tastes, so I was usually happy with the results.

 

[Galena]

I was interested in this thread following something I was reading on another forum.

On this forum we are pussy-cats! Well trodden down and kept in order by our hard-working administrators. To get an idea of what forum unpleasantness can really mean, try this ten year old thread on Jim's brewing forum (it's fairly long so fetch a coffee - you don't expect short posts from Mr Wheeler - and keep the screen from the eyes of kids and "sensitive" folk!):

... Graham = Graham Wheeler (sadly no longer amongst us)
... pattro1ro = Ron Pattinson
... mashweasel = Kristen England
(So not "unknown" antagonists then!)

Old recipes from Shut up about Barclay Perkins - Home Brew Forum

Only had time for a quick skim read but I have to go back to this one, cheers for the link.

 

[An Ankoù]

I don't know if this will help, but I have a copy of the 3rd edition dated 2009. It is a Camra publication, so I'm not sure if this is the "fluffy" edition or not. But here is a scan of the section on hop utilisation.
Until reading the above posts, I wasn't even aware that anything significant had changed between different editions. I've made quite a few of the recipes in my book, and took everything at face value on the basis that it is exceedingly difficult to make a really convincing clone anyway, and if you have not tried the original for a long time (or perhaps even never) then it isn't that relevant. However, I often used to tweak the hop additions to suit my own tastes, so I was usually happy with the results.

This is the right edition and thanks. He has certainly shifted his stance here. He still wants to have a standard utilisation for beers within a "normative" range, but he's moved from 20% to 25%, but then says that his recipes now refer to the utilisation table on p23. I can't wait for my copy to arrive to have a look at these recipes. On the whole though, it's all very muddled. It's as if he's being pushed into using a utilisation table that he doesn't really want to. Nowhere, does he say he's changed his mind about his stance that homebrewers don't get the same utilisation that commercial brewers do, but then he puts a high utilisation figure into his recipes. Bizarre. I'm going to see if I can find the second edition.

On the face of things, then, it looks as if it's not the case that CAMRA have played fast and loose with the recipes.

Anyone out there got a copy of the second edition?
Thanks again for the scan @Hop_it

 

[Hop_it]

This is the right edition and thanks. He has certainly shifted his stance here. He still wants to have a standard utilisation for beers within a "normative" range, but he's moved from 20% to 25%, but then says that his recipes now refer to the utilisation table on p23. I can't wait for my copy to arrive to have a look at these recipes. On the whole though, it's all very muddled. It's as if he's being pushed into using a utilisation table that he doesn't really want to. Nowhere, does he say he's changed his mind about his stance that homebrewers don't get the same utilisation that commercial brewers do, but then he puts a high utilisation figure into his recipes. Bizarre. I'm going to see if I can find the second edition.

On the face of things, then, it looks as if it's not the case that CAMRA have played fast and loose with the recipes.

Anyone out there got a copy of the second edition?
Thanks again for the scan @Hop_it

:hat:You're welcome. I hope you find what you are looking for.

 

[PhilBrew]

Hi @An Ankoù

At the risk of looking like some weirdo-Wheeler stalker (I'm not, honest, I've just got a handful of links to some "nuggets" from him stored in a browser favourites file ) ...

There's a thread there (link) where he was discussing the methods of calculating hop utilisation that he was considering providing in his Beer Engine software ... and judging by the dates of his posting in that thread (2008) and the dates of first publication of the 3rd edition (2009), he was developing Beer Engine between publication of the 2nd and 3rd editions

Graham's no longer around to tell us whether his work on Beer Engine effected the formulation of recipes he included in his 3rd edition ... though an educated guess would suggest it's very likely that it would have ... and a very useful (at the time) forum post over there (link) that helped users get to grips with using Beer Engine noted;

Before you start, go to the top of the screen and go into the 'Editors' menu. Select; 'Set Defaults' and press the 'Set to Tinseth' button, then press 'Save all as Defaults'. You will see the 'Hop Utilisation, Base Utilisation' figure is 39.75%. Close the 'Set Defaults' screen.

(IMPORTANT: If you are using Beer Engine to calculate and update one of Graham Wheelers own recipes; Select; 'Set Defaults' and set the 'Hop Utilisation, Base Utilisation' figure to 36%. Don't press the 'Set to Tinseth' button, or 'Save all as Defaults'. Close the 'Set Defaults' screen. This will ensure the figures from the recipe tally with the software.)

... so clearly Wheeler wasn't using "standard" utilisation figures for his recipes (in the 3rd edition). Might the differences you're noticing be due to CAMRA using "other" software ( or even Beer Engine using the "standard" figures/formulae) to re-formulate the recipes for the 4th (fluffy) edition, to Wheeler's overall recipe specs?

Cheers, PhilB

 

[An Ankoù]

Hi @An Ankoù

At the risk of looking like some weirdo-Wheeler stalker (I'm not, honest, I've just got a handful of links to some "nuggets" from him stored in a browser favourites file ) ...

There's a thread there (link) where he was discussing the methods of calculating hop utilisation that he was considering providing in his Beer Engine software ... and judging by the dates of his posting in that thread (2008) and the dates of first publication of the 3rd edition (2009), he was developing Beer Engine between publication of the 2nd and 3rd editions

Graham's no longer around to tell us whether his work on Beer Engine effected the formulation of recipes he included in his 3rd edition ... though an educated guess would suggest it's very likely that it would have ... and a very useful (at the time) forum post over there (link) that helped users get to grips with using Beer Engine noted; ... so clearly Wheeler wasn't using "standard" utilisation figures for his recipes (in the 3rd edition). Might the differences you're noticing be due to CAMRA using "other" software ( or even Beer Engine using the "standard" figures/formulae) to re-formulate the recipes for the 4th (fluffy) edition, to Wheeler's overall recipe specs?

Cheers, PhilB

Thanks @PhilBrew , I'm finding this small enquiry more and more interesting. I'll certainly follow those links to try to see what he was thinking. In his early edition he claims to have hit on 20% utilisation by trial and error and was happy that his hopping rates reflected the beers he was writing about. Indeed the Brupaks Guide to Hops (one of the documents God gave to Moses on Mt Sinai) uses Wheeler's formula, and with 20% utilisation! I wonder who got it from whom or whether they both arrived at 20% independently. For myself, I've always used the Brupaks formula and, when I did try Tinseth, was not happy with the results.
Thanks again for the links and I look forward to reading them.
http://mail.brupaks.com/BRUPAKS HOP GUIDE 2005.htm

 

[marshbrewer]

Does anyone know what hop utilisation Brewfather assumes for bittering? I can find a utilisation "multiplier" which is set at 100% but that can't be it!

 

[Galena]

Does anyone know what hop utilisation Brewfather assumes for bittering? I can find a utilisation "multiplier" which is set at 100% but that can't be it!

No, but why not ask him, he is usually very forthcoming.