BobBrews wrote:We don't have to go crazy but sometimes it's nicer to have a goal in sight to give us direction rather than just stumbling about?
I think not going crazy and having direction are two very important points.
Not Going Crazy
There are many simple experiments that any brewer can do that won't require any special skills, water, equipment etc, but that will give very quick and valuable information to a wide audience. For example...
1. Mash Gravity Figures - Whilst primitive, the figures being collected on this
here are already telling a story. Anyone can contribute to that experiment.
2. Active Sparging versus Full-Volume (Passive Sparging) - There are a lot of brewers out there active sparging who could be full-volume brewing. I've done several side by side brews on this and found bugger all efficiency difference. This needs to be tested many times on a small scale to get valuable results though. How do we do that?
Experiments like these are really easy as it doesn't even matter if everyone's hydrometers read differently. All we are looking at is percentages.
Water experiments such as the impressive one BBH linked above are at the hardest end of the scale and pose many difficulties. For example, the pH meter I recently bought, even when calibrated disagrees with my pH strips which do agree with my mate's very expensive pH meter
.
Other experiments are half-way between. For example, wort-splitting as joshua mentioned above followed by triangle testing can be used to give very valuable feedback on many taste experiments as it can answer the most basic question of all, "Can anyone taste any difference at all between the way I brewed these two beers?" Any brewer can answer that question. If all of them say no then we already know a lot. If there is a difference then describing it is obviously harder and in many cases, brewers like myself would struggle to put it into words.
Having Direction
I'm thinking that having just one experiment every three months or so would be limiting. Why not have a structure that allows members to participate in the areas that interest them when they want?
Enabling this probably boils down to how things are laid out on the forum. Let's look at two examples...
1. BrickBrewHaus's Experiment - This is an advanced experiment. BBH has designed it already and conducted it once. It will be of great interest to a niche of brewers. So, should he start a new thread? Should he reserve the first few posts of the new thread to post updates? Where should he post it? How should he title it so as a reader knows it is advanced? Can the forum structure be set up so as his work and the work that anyone else contributes can be quickly found by anyone looking for such information?
2. Active/Passive Sparging Experiment - Here we have a simple experiment but no design. Do we design it here or start another thread straight away? All the questions asked in 1 above re thread placement, title etc apply here as well.
Setting up a structure where things won't get lost and are easily found is something we should bear in mind. BIABrewer has been looking at this on other areas of the forum. For example, if you look at
this forum, you'll see that it now has 'Announcements' as well as stickies. Maybe this additional 'structural' layer can be used to our advantage here?
I've edited Post 2, 3 and 4 with what has been mentioned so far. Let me know if I have missed anything.
Donya
,
PP
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