Homebrewers are MUCH better off gleaning information from their own homebrews and experiences than using any information dished out from that particular blog. They do a disservice to homebrewers and the entire homebrewing community. The sooner they disappear the better. Cheers!
The quickest way to f*ck up your beer and screw up your brewing process is to utilize brewing process changes gleaned from their webpages.
yup, if i were a brand new homebrewer, i would be swayed by the sleekness and size of their website into believing what they say.
there were lots of people claiming X and Y on early 2000s homebrew forums, but I would simply try to find as many additional opinions on the particular query i was asking, and see which people seemed most competent in their reasoning.
i feel like it could be a somewhat better if it was just marshall schott doing it. but the ones that really make me cringe are the exbeeriments done by all the new people. i simply don't think theyre very perceptive or bright. i think the triangle test is a dumb thing to hang on to. if you've been doing this thing for so many years now, just trust your tastebuds to be truthful.
I listen to their podcast and read the blog (and enjoy both).
I do agree they don't always do the best job explaining what a triangle test is actually testing & what their results actually mean. If 50% of the people in a test can detect a difference, that may be statistically significantly different from guessing (depending on sample size, alpha, etc... (let's not degenerate into arguing about what p-value we should be testing to)).
But if I'm one of the 50% that can't detect that difference then it may not be practically significant for me.
...I think Brulosophy has two potential problems. One, everyone has mentioned, you don’t know the qualifications of the taste panel...
Which is my overly long way of saying that, at least in part, it does come down to "Who are you brewing for?" If your target drinker can't detect a difference, then there's no point expending energy controlling that variable. If they can, then there is. Take the exBeeriments for what they are (one test yielding one result for one variable in one recipe against one set of tasters), and if you find the results strain your credulity, run a test and see for yourself.
i dont take them for that, i think they fail in that regard due to poor recipe choice which can obscure the results.
i dont brew for people who have very poor taste in beer, they might incidentally taste it and i dont care. my beer is 100% for me and i do have good senses, though i know some people have better than i.
this endlessly repeated "well why dont you do this then if you think youre so smart"
1. i admit i dont have the time/setup or even ability to drink that much beer making tests like this
2. i have tested variables as best as i can and recorded perceived results since i started. im pretty sure the vast majority of homebrewers have done so.
3. if this site wants to show something more than no.2, which they apparently do (its not just some "this is my personal brew log, take it or leave it") then they need to step up the quality of their experiment designs and better qualify the results. they want fame? then they can take criticism.
when i want answers on ingredients or processes i search forums like this for answers. exbeeriments are not usable except for a laugh.