How does your beer compare with commercial beer ?

[Leon103]

I think the beers I have sourced are as good as home brew not better. I have not tried any of those you list but most look like styles I don't like alot. Cheers for the answer though.

If they are just as good why don't you sell your homebrew instead of buying in others.

 

[simon12]

If they are just as good why don't you sell your homebrew instead of buying in others.

I plan to but have not registered with HMRC yet.

 

[samale]

@simon12 Sure, a few off the top of my head:

Rochefort 10
Struisse Pannepot
Westvleteren Blond
Struisse Black Albert
Lervig Three Bean Stout
Founders KBS
Pohjala Must Kuld
And literally everything by Cantillon

But I'm surprised that you're surprised, didn't you just say the same about the the commercial beers you sourced:

Or did I misunderstand the double negative there?[

Hi Steve could I ask where you source the list of beers. So I could try a few

 

[stigman]

I'm with Steve on this one I I buy quite a lot of commercial stuff, and can honestly say my homebrew is better than anything available at tesco. But you must be buying the wrong beers pal. I'd be over the moon if I could brew a dipa as good as cloudwater or verdant, a tripel as good as the Belgians, or a imperial stout better than buxton. Splash out a little and stop drinking cask from your local camra pubs.

 

[Drunkula]

I just had a can of those Tesco bitters you get 4 of for 99p and I was suprised how good it was. It tasted a bit like a beer and coke mix but it was definitely better than some of the Geordie kits I was brewing a few years ago. I'm not fully blaming it on the kits but I was surprised. I find shop beers so variable, though, even cans. We got 9 different cans in to review and some of them had that exact same taste where something was wrong and they almost tasted the same. And I've had some of the Lidl bottles be fantastic one week and awful the next, so comparing against them is a crap shoot.

EDIT: Just had a can of Greene King IPA and it's not that different from the 4 for 99p ones. I'm minesweeping all the stuff left from a party if you're wondering why I'm gumming such muck. Who the hell brought the 99p cans, though??!?! I bet they made a loud noise about throwing them into the ice trugs then swooped on all the proper beers.

 

[simon12]

Question for those who think there homebrew cannot or is not as good as commercial beers is why, is there something about the process you can't replicate, its not exact enough or it takes years of fine tuning a recipe or something else?

 

[phildo79]

I frequently think my HB is better than the majority of stuff available from the supermarket. Better than the stuff from a specialist offy though? Nah, not even close. There's a reason why beers from Buxton, Omnipollo, Mikkeller, Founders, Ale Smith, Firestone Walker, Hillstead, 3 Floyd's etc. cost a lot more. And that reason is because they are vastly superior to 99.9% of all other beers available.

 

[Sadfield]

Torn on this. @strange-steve and @stigman have a point, in that there are certain beers that homebrewers will struggle to replicate, due to numerous factors that don't translate from commercial to homebrewing.

However, that doesn't mean that homebrewers can't brew something that tastes different, yet is brewed to the same standards, without faults, as commercial brews.

I've drunk homebrew from brewers who have gone pro and now sit comfortably alongside some of the big names in UK craft beer, and can honestly say the their output was as good as amateurs. I've also been lucky enough to brew a homebrew Saison recipe commercially and had it served alongside beers from Cloudwater, Buxton, Beavertown, amongst others. Was the commercial version better than the homebrew? No. Was the commercial version outclassed by its peers. No. Was it as good as Saison Dupont. No.

I see plenty of homebrewers posting BCJP scores that put their beers in the "World class example of style" range.

 

[An Ankoù]

Well here we are again, the age-old argument. The way I see it, if your homebrew is better than the commercial beers you've tasted then you're buying the wrong beers. My brews don't come anywhere close to a lot of the great beers I've tasted.

Strangely modest. I've tasted some beers I would love to get near, let

Well here we are again, the age-old argument. The way I see it, if your homebrew is better than the commercial beers you've tasted then you're buying the wrong beers. My brews don't come anywhere close to a lot of the great beers I've tasted.

Hmm. A favourite beers list. I've been disappointed in failing to clone some of my favourites, too. But I wonder how many commercial brewers could copy the very best of your home brews.

 

[Ajhutch]

I’m not within a thousand miles of even average commercial beer in terms of consistency of process and I’ve never even tried to brew the same beer twice. Trying to eclipse commercial beer isn’t why I homebrew though, so I don’t really see the point in thinking about it in those terms

 

[strange-steve]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that homebrew can't be as good as commercial beer, but I reckon that most people who believe their beer is better than commercial beer (and there are a lot of homebrewers who think this) generally don't have much experience in just how good commercial beers can be.

 

[Lawrence22]

I believe my home brew compares well when compared to the most popular tap beers in my local pub, and a couple I have made are surprisingly beyond anything I thought I would ever make, but I have to agree with strange-steve there are some awesome beers out there that I land well short of.I particularly like Brooklyn Brown Ale (particularly on draught in NY) , Sierra Nevada do an IPA I had in US sadly not available locally which is awesome. Another one from the US was a weiss by Sin City Brewery in Vegas which again was way beyond anything I have brewed. There were also a couple of beers I had in brew pubs in Nuremberg which I really liked, can't remember what they were called.

 

[Brew Dad]

I got into homebrewing, and found this forum, because I wanted to be able to replicate the beers I found in pubs on my once frequent travels to the UK. Real ale/cask ale is exceedingly rare in North America. Imagine my surprise to find that the beers I missed, and longed for, are so often slagged off by UK homebrewers. Spitfire, Pride, Bombardier, Hobgoblin - yes please! Adnams, Theakstons, Black Sheep - nectar of the gods! (Greene King you can keep, though.)

I have only completed about 15 brews so far, the vast majority some form of bitter - four Landlord clones, a few others. While all have been drinkable, some pretty good, not one has replicated a proper real ale from a cask. On the other hand, I have done 4 or 5 North American style IPAs, east and west coast types, and every single one of the them is comparable to the beers I can get from top notch local craft breweries, maybe better. Conversely, the North American style beers I tried in London last summer were uniformly mediocre - Punk, Meantime, Camden Town, a few others. They all seemed like not quite right imitations, much like my homebrewed bitters.

Obviously, folks should brew and drink what they like. But this Canadian envies your access to so many good, traditional real ales, served in a cozy local or old school boozer.

 

[Clint]

My brews...
Mostly brown and black, various states of fizziness,cheaper,better than Boddingtons...
Are they better than commercial stuff? Your run of the mill lagers,bitters,smooth flow rubbish and that stout...I think so. The other stuff in fancy tins with mind boggling names...as good as some but there are those that stand out and which I'd like to emulate but these people are masters of their craft...
Taste is subjective though...a while back I brewed an AIPA...around 50 IBU with loads of cascade,Columbus and centennial...a bit of a user upper but I put it through the recipe builder and it ticked all the boxes. It turned out very well clean,crisp,great carbonation and loads of aroma and flavour. My mate who is a seasoned swiller of Boddingtons...pulled a face and commented on its bitterness...

 

[Sandimas]

I believe many bottled beers are pastuerised so, even though they're branded the same as their cask counterparts, they're not the same product. And sometimes the bottled beers are brewed in a different location to the cask e.g. Doom Bar cask is still brewed in Cornwall but the bottles are brewed elsewhere. Have to say I'm universally disappointed when I buy a standard British bottled beer, and this is the reason I started brewing.

Live beers inc Belgian beers are a different matter, they can be far superior to anything I can brew at home. Bottle conditioning of British beers hasn't really caught on, presumably because it's easy to get it wrong - a local brewery round here bottles-conditions but 50% of the bottles I've had from them have been gushers. Not good, especially when you're in a restaurant and the waiter brings one to your table, opens it and the beer goes everywhere.

 

[An Ankoù]

Am I alone in not having a universal admiration for Belgian Beers? Not at all fond of the Trappist beers (Chimay, Westmalle, La Trappe) The Karmelite and Benedictine (Maredsous), I do like, but the general genre of Abbey Beers tend to have what I call a "Leffe twang" from the yeast. Not sure whether Dupont Saison is French or Belgian, but it's quite sessionable. The others, whether they be Kwack, or a geuze or a Lambic are what I'd call novelty beers- OK for a glass, but not a session. My favourite is Duvel and Duvel triple-hop citra. But at 9% how long is the session going to last?
To get to the point, Cloning Duvel is my Holy Grail for this year and I have every hope of success.
I should add that this is a challenge to myself. Duvel is easily obtainable here and it's not expensive.

 

[marshbrewer]

I'm going to say no. Not even close.

But then my local keeps a good pint, has Bateman's XXXB & XB plus a guest (two in summer), so it's a tall order to beat that in my opinion. Add to that, I don't think it's possible to completely replicate well kept, quick moving, cask as home, unless your a raging alcoholic!

 

[chthon]

What I brew from my own recipes is pretty good, and I do compare across a whole lot of breweries and beers, where my first question always is: is it brewed and bottled well?

Using Untappd, I can say I have tasted around 350 beers, from Belgium, Holland, Italy, France and UK, and I am also a yearly visitor of the Bruges Beer Festival. So, in that respect I can state that I brew as well as professional brewers with my little kit. I also tend to keep 1 bottle of every brew for a year, to see what happens with. I must say that most of my brews age well. They are still tasty and tasting nice after a year.

Friends, neighbours and family also tend to react well to enthusiastically to my brews. That is, you don't see them make unconscious faces which tend to express "Oh no, not again". No, they are pleased to get some of my brew.

 

[Leon103]

For those who say that their beers are as good as or better than commercial beers, what is stopping you going pro?

 

[The Baron]

As with most other brewers I brew what I like which gives a slightly distorted view on my own beers. I do not really try to clone a exact beer but do use some clone recipes and adapt to a similar style of beer. Now to the question I think in my opinion most of my beers are as good if not better that the majority of pub beers but I will never be able to brew beers as good as real professional top brewers such as Northern Monk etc as they have the ability to use true professional kit and everything that goes with it and have that brewing thing that nobody can actually put their finger on. Also I do not do some of the styles that are being quoted as better commercial beers i.e Belgians, Duvel, double and triples which are really left to people who have spent a lot of time and research in the style.
Overall most homebrewers with some good experience behind them can and do brew equal or better beers than the majority of pub beers but specialist brewers can generally not be beaten as they are specialist as the name says but there is no reason to not strive to achieve