Author: Marshall Schott w/ Josh Weikert

I occasionally get asked where the name for this site came from, not so much the Brü- as the -losophy part. It’s really just a play on the online moniker I adopted a few years ago, Brülosopher, which I haphazardly settled on due to its allusion to two things I spend a lot of time thinking about: brewing and philosophy. During graduate school, I delved into the worlds of many of history’s incredible thinkers, ultimately coming to value the writings of the great existentialists, those who incessantly questioned “reality,” acknowledging the absurdity of the human condition and how the incongruous experience of feeling larger than life despite knowing an endpoint exists drives the whole of human thought, behavior, and creativity. As trivial as making beer is in the grand scheme of things, it became my outlet for critically thinking about and testing ideas many held as truth. Based on communications I’ve had with brewers, it seems many these days are less interested in blindly accepting the conventional wisdom offered by those in authority, rather seeking new ideas and novel perspectives.

However, some brewers continue to stick heartily to convention, which alone is respectable, but can become slightly annoying when they rip others apart for thinking differently. From beliefs regarding what makes a “real” lager to convictions about regional naming conventions, dogma is alive and well in the brewing world.

I recently came across a website that more or less shares this mentality, the Beer: Simple Blog, where Josh Weikert shares his thoughts on beer and brewing in an honest and humorous way. Earlier this week, Josh published an article that struck a chord with me on a topic Ray addressed in last year’s Dogma Is A Funny Thing. Relevant and admittedly personally validating, I did something new by asking Josh if he’d be cool with me sharing his article, not only because I think it’s a fantastic read, but to introduce more folks to his great work. I trust it will resonate with others the same way it did me. Here you go.

Dogmatic Brewing

(or, What Rudyard Kipling Can Teach Us About Beer)

By Josh Weikert of Beer-Simple.com

Dogma (n.): a belief or set of beliefs that is accepted by the members of a group without being questioned or doubted.

That’s the Merriam-Webster definition of “dogma,” and I never realized how much we run into this as brewers – until I started offering brewing advice to brewers. We’re a pretty dogmatic bunch, it turns out. Which sucks, because “Dogmatic Brewing” sounds like a pretty cool name for a brewery…

Since I started writing Beer Simple, I’ve offered in the Brewing posts a number of recommendations, suggestions, and commentaries on brewing. Not that I expect that every one is a gem that needs to be adopted – far from it, in fact. Brew your own way. I heartily and happily acknowledge that I’m not a biologist, chemist, professional brewer, or metallurgist. I like to think I’m just the friendly neighbor, chatting over the fence. “Say, Bob, you ever think about putting that sprinkler on a timer? Works well for me.” Like that.

But often, the response isn’t just that someone isn’t interested in the advice (which is perfectly fine, of course – your beer, your rules!). It’s that what I’m saying simply can’t be right. But why not? Shouldn’t the proof be in the Pilsner, so to speak?

DOGMATIC BREWING

I’m sure it’s not just me that runs into this stuff. We all do, don’t we? When talking methods, or ingredients, or tools and tips and tricks? Every brewer has their process and their habits, and even though someone tells you that it isn’t strictly necessary to turn around three times and spit before adding your flameout hops, you just always have done it, so you don’t necessarily want to change.

I get that. That’s fine. We’re all a little idiosyncratic that way – otherwise, we’d have a more “normal” hobby.

But even though we all have our own process, I’m certainly not hostile to those who suggest that there’s a better way. I might decline to adopt their idea, but I’m not going to aggressively deny its validity. And yet that seems to happen frequently, when I share something from my brewing process. Not just that they prefer not to change – but that I’m wrong for even suggesting it. To take a recent example (my OneStep addiction), you’d think based on a lot of the comments made that I’m running a mineral-caked shitpile of a brewery that produces nothing but rancid and infected beers since – as we all know – it’s IMPOSSIBLE for a product to clean and sanitize. And yet there’s my equipment: no more calcified than anyone’s. And there’s my beer: hundreds of batches without a single infection. We “all know” it can’t work. But it does. That’s a contradiction we need to reconcile.

That’s the issue, really: that “we all know it” mentality. Remember in Men in Black when Tommy Lee Jones’ character talks like that? He mentions lots of mistaken beliefs from our past that we all just “knew” to be accurate, and then asks, “I wonder what we’ll know tomorrow.” I’ve always liked that. It reminds us that we should be critical of our stereotypes – that persistence or pervasiveness of a belief shouldn’t be sufficient to justify that belief. Empirical verification should be our goal. That truth isn’t arrived at by majority vote.

So why the resistance to new or heterodox or unusual ideas when there’s support for their validity? Answer: we’re prone to dogmatism. And we shouldn’t be. It’s a very bad habit to get into, and it’s limiting us as a homebrewing community. As Winston said, “To improve is to change – to perfect is to change often.” I’m always happy to hear brewing advice. If I think it’ll make my brewing day shorter, easier, or better, I’ll give it a try.

ACORNS AND LIONS

And I’m not talking about adding things to the process. That’s getting us into a whole level of cause-and-effect that I’m not set up to test for (but please go see the good work over at Brülosophy!). No, I’m talking about taking away – getting the leanest, neatest, SIMPLEST, most-parsimonious brewing process I can. If I tell you that adding hops in five additions is the only way to get great hop aroma, then I understand if you doubt me – after all, maybe it’s only one of those five that really creates that great hop aroma. But if someone tells you that they only ever add hops in the whirlpool, and that their beers win GABF medals for hop-forward styles, then you might consider taking that under advisement.

It’s like the old story about the Englishman who scattered acorns everywhere he went. When asked why he did it, he informed his questioners that it was “to keep the lions away.” “You fool,” they said, “there aren’t any lions in the whole of the British Isles.” “GOOD GOD,” the man yelled, “it works even better than I thought!” So I understand skepticism if, for example, I tell you that I add a quarter teaspoon of baking soda to dark beer mashes to improve the roundness of my malt flavors – maybe they’d be nice and round without it .

But if I tell you (as I did) that you can use OneStep alone to clean and sanitize without fear of infection, the only reasons to doubt me would be if (a) I’ve only brewed a few beers, some of which got infected, or (b) I live in a bacteria-and-wild-yeast-free house. If neither of those things are true (they’re not), then aggressive denial of the factual basis of my claim seems to be unwarranted. But that’s just what happened: in at least a dozen places, I was told that what I was suggesting simply couldn’t work.

But it has. Or I’m a pathological liar.

I’m not, though. I’m not advocating the spreading of acorns. Addition by subtraction – finding out what practices may not be essential or unavoidable, through multiple assessments of repeated trials – is incredibly valuable, but we throw that away when we reject advice on principle rather than on merit. Don’t be that guy. Or rather, don’t be this guy…

MR. BEER’S ESTABLISHED ELDER

You all remember my friend Mr. Beer, right? Turns out he has at least one friend who’s something of a bigwig in the brewing industry.

I was already planning on writing about brewing dogma this week anyway, but then something so perfectly-timed happened that I couldn’t believe it: I was accosted this week by someone who was straight up offended by my questioning of brewing dogma. I was perusing my mostly-beer-and-politics Facebook feed and doing the usual commenting, liking, and sharing that that entails.

I ran across a comment that wondered why beer enthusiasts don’t seem to be all that enthused about lagers (at least according to the RateBeer rankings). One of the respondents thought that it might be because RateBeer users prefer intense beers which, “by and large, lagers aren’t.” As someone who brews a lot of lagers, that caught my eye. Sure, there are lots of light-ish and boring-ish lagers, especially as a percentage of beers on offer in the marketplace, but I wasn’t convinced that it was lagers per se that lacked intensity, but rather the kinds of lagers that tended to be brewed. So, in the spirit of social media, I made what I thought was a conversational observation.

I said I wasn’t sure about the idea that lagers are just inherently not-intense. Maybe it’s just that there are fewer lager styles, and thus a smaller proportion that tend to be “intense” – but maybe the same proportion of lager styles fall into the “intense” category as Ale styles. And after all, with the possible exception of some Belgian styles, it isn’t the yeast family per se that makes a beer intense – it’s ABV, IBUs, etc. Sure, you get Imperial IPA and huge stouts in Ales, but we Lager folk have Baltic Porter and Eisbock, and some others that could be considered “intense,” and since they’re part of a smaller subset…

You’d have thought I questioned the notion that the Earth orbits the sun. What followed was an impressive display of dogmatic reasoning. No evidence, no empirical support – just the repeated assertion by this person that everyone knows that lagers aren’t intense, and a litany of ad hominem attacks, appeals to authority, and other logical fallacies. First there was name dropping of this individual’s relationship to a Prestigious Brewing Institution. Then it was reference to his/her frequent judging visits to a Prestigious Brewing Competition. Then it was that I was clearly the only person who believed my claptrap. But here’s the thing: at no time did this individual actually provide any support for his/her position. And I wasn’t even saying that I was right – just that I wasn’t sure, and maybe there was something to investigate. But that was enough to have my sanity, sincerity, intelligence, unrelated professional acumen, and beer knowledge not just questioned, but outright ridiculed.

This was someone who should know better. As he/she repeatedly referenced, this was someone who contributes to a prestigious brewing institution, is a professional brewer, and judges at prestigious brewing competitions. How dare I, someone of no beer standing, question something that “every brewing scientist and a majority of beer bloggers knows.” On the strength of what evidence did “all beer scientists” know this? None, none whatsoever. In fact, this person refused to even engage on the limited evidence that I offered.

And let’s not forget: I wasn’t staking out a position here. I was just suggesting that there might be something worth considering. But for doing so, I was a target for ridicule, passive aggression, and belittlement.

In other words: classic alehole behavior.

A PLEA FOR REASON

And so, I ask this – and not for my sake, but for others and your own, and I hope it doesn’t sound too preachy:

Don’t be that person. Don’t be dogmatic. Look for evidence, and empirical support, and opportunities to learn and evolve.

Don’t swallow every single suggestion or recommendation you hear (because God knows there’s a lot of bad advice out there), but don’t be hostile to people and their ideas, either. As the poem says,

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming you for it, then you can trust yourself when all others doubt you.”

True – you can trust yourself. You’re a competent brewer. However, Mr. Kipling warns us in the very next line:

“BUT MAKE ALLOWANCE FOR THEIR DOUBTING, TOO.”

In other words, embrace the openness that brought you into craft beer and homebrewing in the first place. Be willing to be wrong, and to be right if you think that others are wrong.

Be kind. Be considerate. Be the kind of people other people think beer people are.

If we aren’t, then we’re driving new beer people away and undermining our own brewing success. It’s just not worth it.

Keep it simple.

Josh Weikert is a university lecturer and writer who has contributed to Brew Your Own magazine and blogs at Beer: Simple. He began homebrewing in 2007 with the help of his brother-in-law and has since won awards for every style in the 2008 BJCP guidelines. Josh is passionate about the homebrewing community and will be giving a lecture on building a lasting homebrew club at the 2016 National Homebrewers Conference in Baltimore, MD. You can read more of Josh’s awesome content over at his blog, Beer: Simple.

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