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Orange peel gets used a fair amount but I'd like to avoid it tbh. It's sort of cliche and lazy. I like to avoid overdoing it with herbs and spices. Quince seems interesting but probably difficult to source. I've had some beers pink pepper that were really nice, but I think it needs something to balance it out. |
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Apr 22, 2022 06:45
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| # ? May 28, 2024 14:56 |
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Escape From Noise posted:Orange peel gets used a fair amount but I'd like to avoid it tbh. It's sort of cliche and lazy. I like to avoid overdoing it with herbs and spices. Quince seems interesting but probably difficult to source. I've had some beers pink pepper that were really nice, but I think it needs something to balance it out. Quince is kinda just the taste of "sweet", like persimmon in a way. I'm not sure any subtle quincyness would survive brewing, but I also don't know poo poo. It's not really French, but what about long pepper instead of pink pepper? Might be interesting. What about a smoked beer, but instead of wood smoke, use Gauloises? |
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Apr 22, 2022 06:52
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I've read reviews saying it leaves a tart apple characteristic. It needs to be cooked though otherwise I think it's tannic. I don't really like chili beers and it's not really french. I like the flavors you can get from pink peppercorn. I mean I may change things around but it's the only thing I've thought of that I think really works. I don't really know how well smoked malt would work with French saison yeast. Edit: tobacco in drinks is extremely poisonous. Escape From Noise fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Apr 22, 2022 |
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Apr 22, 2022 07:04
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what about tea? maybe white tea and pink peppercorn?
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Apr 22, 2022 07:11
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oh poo poo I just brewed a saison today. maybe I'll dry hop it with white tea and pink peppercorn that sounds good
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Apr 22, 2022 07:11
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I mean that sounds good maybe but white tea is more Chinese I think. I dunno. |
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Apr 22, 2022 07:13
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Apparently, Saffron is used pretty often in French cuisine but that's some expensive poo poo. |
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Apr 22, 2022 07:15
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I wonder if you could dry hop with well rinsed capers. Well, I guess wet hop since they'd be wet. |
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Apr 22, 2022 07:40
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Duh, fuckin lavender. Doesn't get more French than that. Probably be gross as hell, but hey. Works in lady grey tea. |
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Apr 22, 2022 07:44
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If I used lavender I'd probably put it in the boil and it'd probably be dry. I dunno. I just want to avoid using a lot of herbs and spices. It's really easy to overdo it. |
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Apr 22, 2022 08:29
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If I learned anything from Dexter's Lab, it's that the essence of French can be boiled down to "omelette du fromage". Clearly, this will be the ideal french beer. |
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Apr 22, 2022 15:53
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DaChurl posted:If I learned anything from Dexter's Lab, it's that the essence of French can be boiled down to "omelette du fromage". Unironically less gross than the garbage pumped out by Omnipollo, Brewski, Brew Dog, et al. |
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Apr 22, 2022 16:15
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DaChurl posted:If I learned anything from Dexter's Lab, it's that the essence of French can be boiled down to "omelette du fromage". Je m'appelle le Tick! J'ai une grande plume, et deux têtes! |
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Apr 22, 2022 16:15
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Leftovers from the networking event last night for lunch. Not bad for free food, but I had to defrost a tomato slice with my hand. Weird vibe for the day. |
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Apr 22, 2022 18:03
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A bit of a gamble but thinking maybe instead of starting a production brewery I could start a sour beer brewery/blendery and just buy wort from bigger places and ferment/sour it in my own warehouse space....hmmm |
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Apr 23, 2022 01:40
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This Cory Wong / Dave Koz album is really good, and it's just driving home to me that usually a career in performing arts is a lot more about finding a path to pay rent than it is about fulfilling your artistic vision. When I dropped out of music school, my teachers were congratulating me because, they said, now I could enjoy music for the rest of my life. That seemed profound to me at the time, but now it just seems pedestrian. You get a job doing something you can tolerate and that people will give you money for, and you seek personal fulfillment in other ways. There have been times in my work when I feel very personally fulfilled, but chasing that fulfillment has been elusive: I always have to come back down to the drudgery and seemingly pointless bullshit that for some reason my employers value. Even with my hobby projects, as soon as I start trying to fulfill other peoples' desires, I start to lose interest. Like this project I'm doing right now, I have all these users, and they are asking for changes I just don't give a crap about. I'm doing it because I like to make people happy, but as it's becoming clear that I will never make them happy, it's getting more and more difficult to stick with it. This is my free time. Yesterday I helped the Irish dance school tear their beautiful floating floor out of the preschool, and they mentioned how Riverdance builds a new floor every time they change venues. Can you even imagine? But building a new floor every 3 nights is worth it to the Riverdance company that they're willing to pay someone to do it, over and over. That can't be fulfilling work on its own. Thanks for coming to my sermon, please put a dollar in the basket and we'll buy some groceries for those guys in tents up the street. |
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Apr 25, 2022 16:32
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I get it. I only get to make a beer I really care about every so often. Most of the time I'm chucking lactose and a bunch of new world hops in the boil or secondary because you gotta slop the pigs. |
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Apr 25, 2022 17:36
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I feel this so hard right now. I've been burned out on my work for years, but it pays the bills and my coworkers are mostly pretty nice and having health insurance is great. I've been daydreaming a lot lately of just saying gently caress it and starting an Etsy business but I know I'd start hating crocheting if I had to do it as a job instead of just making whatever I think will look interesting on whatever timeframe will keep me happy and stop me from reaggravating my tendonitis. It's the same reasons I never tried to pursue theater as a career even though I absolutely loved it all through highschool. Actually succeeding as a working actor is all about networking and constant auditioning and wildly unpredictable schedules in either a handful of big cities or constantly on the road touring. All of that just sounds miserable to me. Highschool theater was great because it was a regular schedule of shows that you were guaranteed a part in and you spent the whole year with the same group of people, getting closer as friends. It was perfect for me because it forced me to talk to my classmates often enough to actually get comfortable around them and make friends. I've been telling myself for years that I should get involved with the local community theater scene so I can reconnect with all the fun bits without any of the pressure trying to make it a career. But it's hard to work up the will to out myself out there and commit to less time at home, which has gotten exponentially more pronounced now that I have a kid. I dunno, I wish I could end this on a positive note, but my brain has been messed up around this whole concept for a long time and while antidepressants and therapy have helped some, I still feel like I'll never find the right balance of doing what I enjoy and having a stable income. |
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Apr 25, 2022 22:42
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Do what you love under certain systems and every day of your life is an unending toil. |
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Apr 25, 2022 22:59
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Like legit ask me if I've enjoyed chemistry, physics, talking to people, knitting, weaving, spinning, dyeing, or anything related to textiles in the past ten years. It's what I love, sure, but you don't always enjoy what you love, either. |
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Apr 25, 2022 23:00
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DaChurl posted:I feel this so hard right now. I've been burned out on my work for years, but it pays the bills and my coworkers are mostly pretty nice and having health insurance is great. Nothing about this struck me as not positive. Seems to me you're just sort of  -ing, musing about the constraints of being a parent, and, like, recognizing that your hobbies are a source of joy, or at least comfort.
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Apr 25, 2022 23:21
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this is coming from a position of pretty significant privilege: i have a job that pays well enough that i can pay my bills, spend a decent amount of fuckaround money, save some and my wife can work part time (she does a whole bunch of non-work stuff like volunteering and whatnot and she's just always hated the 9-5), i have a good work/life balance, and i like my job well enough. hobbies are great because you don't have to be good at them, you don't have to do them all the time, and it doesn't matter if you keep them up or not. i make beer cause it's fun and i get beer. i make poo poo out of wood cause it's fun and challenging and i'm not great at it, but it doesn't matter that i'm kinda poo poo at it. as a wise dog once said, sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something
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Apr 25, 2022 23:59
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cruft posted:Nothing about this struck me as not positive. Seems to me you're just sort of Thanks for that. My brain has been a real dick today (and yesterday and last week) so everything has been tinted in this aura of suck and I spent the whole day sitting at my desk thinking about how I didn't want to be there and not accomplishing anything. Now that I'm home with a baby and dogs and that guy I married and dinner things don't feel so dire. Gonna see my therapist on Thursday. Hopefully that helps. |
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Apr 26, 2022 00:48
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Cardi BYOB posted:Like legit ask me if I've enjoyed chemistry, physics, talking to people, knitting, weaving, spinning, dyeing, or anything related to textiles in the past ten years. It's what I love, sure, but you don't always enjoy what you love, either. That's a good way of putting it. Brewing is pretty physically exhausting, but I do enjoy it when things are going right. I guess there's a real sense of accomplishment from milling the grain to a finished pint. I guess I hate the part where I get told to make another batch of that smoothie sour IPA thing, not only because I hate the way it tastes and for what it represents, but bottling it is a major pain in the loving rear end, but the boss wants loving bottles! There's something I do really enjoy about getting to make something that's all mine. My idea, start to finish. My recipe, my concept, my techniques. I think that's why I got so mad when, at my former place, the boss suddenly decided that like half the bottling run of my biere de Mars would be labeled as a collaboration with some trail running club that we'd talked about making a beer for months ago, and I kept asking about getting it on the schedule, but he kept putting it off. Suddenly it was felt like I'd lost a bit of imagined ownership, as silly as that is. By the time I had put in my notice he was having them bottle the kuromitsu Belgian dark strong from loving kegs using the lovely manual wine filler and I was almost too done with that place to care but it sorta pained me all the same. |
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Apr 26, 2022 04:07
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Well. My last post proved to be somewhat prophetic. Today had a late meeting. It was mostly about the beer event but also some stupid bullshit about the French saison again. They want it to be "more special" but they also want it to be a flagship. They also want to really focus on that mix juice IPA I loving hate. A bright point was the higher up boss realizing there's a lot of communication issues and I'm getting lots of different information from different people, so I'm never sure what I need to do until the last minute. That said at some point they started talking about what we should do next and they wanted me to make something like Johana or Abashiri Beer. For context, both make bullshit like this:   Mostly they're light lagers or possibly ales (I'm pretty sure) that have been filtered to get rid of the yeast, then sweetened with artificial coloring and flavoring added. They keep asking me to make this poo poo, so far my way to avoid it is saying we don't have a filter and that if we did that without filtering we're risking exploding bottles from secondary fermentation. Well the assistant restaurant manager asked how much a filter was and I said expensive. Easily 100k. Then he was like "Maybe we could just add the coloring." Thanks bud! He's about my level in the company, so it may not come to anything, but it made me really realize even more that I need to get my rear end in gear about opening my own place. I didn't get into this line of work to make loving artisanal 
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Apr 26, 2022 13:50
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Escape From Noise posted:
Yeah it just looks like malt liquor at that point, not even beer. I'm sorry the situation is deteriorating man. Hopefully you can still get some satisfaction while you're still there. I'm just annoyed because it's the slow part of the slow/busy loop my job has, but it should be moving faster! I have projects that are thisclose to getting closed out, but the customer is dragging their feet reviewing documentation. Also I got up early planning to get hot cocoa forgetting the hot cocoa place is closed on tuesdays so now i'm sleepy and cocoa-less 
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Apr 26, 2022 14:33
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KitConstantine posted:Yeah it just looks like malt liquor at that point, not even beer. I'm sorry the situation is deteriorating man. Hopefully you can still get some satisfaction while you're still there. It may not go that direction. We'll see. This place treats me alright but they definitely do not understand the industry or limitations and our overall volume. They're making this heavily fruited and dry hopped beer a flagship. I've tried to explain this is going to cause major issues but they're dead set. Also my boss is like turning his nose up at selling to certain places because they don't have enough customers. It's a 10 liter keg. Also, who cares if they don't sell it fast? They bought the entire keg. Why would you restrict your sales like that when we're so small? Sorry about the hot cocoa. I was gonna make black chickpea coconut curry, but I had that headache inducing meeting. Bleh. |
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Apr 26, 2022 15:35
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Overheard in a hole in the wall Izakaya down a back alley in Osaka: "Come around back after closing with a van in case something rolls off the dock, and if anyone asks, my name is Take-cash-i." |
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Apr 26, 2022 16:10
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Oh no, coworker's dad is having heart problems after knee surgery and I can hear her talking to family and fighting tears and I want to go give her a hug, but I also want to give her space to talk to her family oh no |
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Apr 26, 2022 16:23
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It sounds like he'll probably be ok but they transferred him to a cardiac hospital and this is scary as all hell. If she decides to stay at work today I'm going to by her a cookie or something good lord. |
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Apr 26, 2022 16:27
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DaChurl posted:It sounds like he'll probably be ok but they transferred him to a cardiac hospital and this is scary as all hell. If she decides to stay at work today I'm going to by her a cookie or something good lord. As someone who's dad had a quad bypass last month I vote definitely get her a cookie heart problems are well-understood but scary af 
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Apr 26, 2022 16:31
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He's awake! Trying to convince coworker to not even bother trying to work today. |
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Apr 26, 2022 16:59
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That sounds very rough. Wishing the best for your coworker. |
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Apr 27, 2022 05:20
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I'm just frustrated. This poo poo always follows the same pattern. First it's make this for us but then fill out the schedule with your own stuff, then there's the beer designed by committee and/or owner who doesn't know brewing at all, which becomes the only one they really care about, then every idea I have needs to be "improved" with random poo poo, which because they don't know beer, just means random fruits. I like good fruit beers, but they're not sustainable in flagship beers or as a constant release thing. |
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Apr 27, 2022 05:23
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I was listening to the 3rd RTJ tonight and they were talking about killing your masters and I had a prolonged and serious thought about the possibility of workers sharing details about their bosses privately so we could kill one another's bosses (locally!) because if there was ever a rash of boss murders in a city and their own goddamn employee's were doing it, especially if they listen to Pat the Bunny and/or Run the Jewels, it would probably not take a lot of time to figure that out. I don't know what I'm getting at other than the streets will run red with the blood of the ruling class if that isn't too political for byob. I'll eat a probe for this poo poo, I don't care. |
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Apr 27, 2022 07:00
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Kind of really wish my coworker would stop saying poo poo in meetings like "EFN doesn't like this but we could maybe do x" like yeah. I loving hate lactose beers and poo poo but I'm willing to do my job but now when I bring up issues with production of said beers the boss thinks I'm trying to weasel out of making that beer instead of pointing out major flaws in the plan. |
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Apr 27, 2022 13:28
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Escape From Noise posted:I'm just frustrated. This poo poo always follows the same pattern. First it's make this for us but then fill out the schedule with your own stuff, then there's the beer designed by committee and/or owner who doesn't know brewing at all, which becomes the only one they really care about, then every idea I have needs to be "improved" with random poo poo, which because they don't know beer, just means random fruits. I like good fruit beers, but they're not sustainable in flagship beers or as a constant release thing. It may be a luxury you don't have, but if they are in principle okay with you padding out with your own stuff, keeping that work under the radar as much as possible might work for you. Like, okay, I'll make your creamsicle IPA and give you loads of information about it any time you ask, but if you ask about how the Escape From Nut Brown is going, I'm just gonna shrug and say nothing more than "I think it's going to come out well, time will tell!" I mean I know you have a lot better handle on your own situation than I do. It just bugs me that you're having such a rough time and I want to feel like I offered some assistance despite knowing like 5% of the story. I guess what I'm trying to say here is I'm pulling for you! |
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Apr 27, 2022 13:35
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I mean don't love these beers, but I'll make them. I genuinely try not to complain about the beer itself. It's just that they want me to make this beer as a flagship that's a pain and results in massive losses because it's heavily fruited and dry hopped. There's a reason flagship beers tend to be simple. I'm not saying we stop making it altogether. I'm just saying we need to make it less regularly while also making simple tent pole styles. Basically, I think as a brewery in this day and age you have two strategies you can go with (obviously there are variations): 1. The Omnipollo, Brewski, Pipeworks, 450 North, Gigantic, etc. route. Constantly make new beers on the bleeding edge of trends. Rarely make the same beer twice. For many of these go loving batshit with ingredients. No amount of lactose, fruits, and vanilla is too much! You could also be more conservative, but always new stuff. 2. Have a core lineup of 2-5 (2 or 3 is probably best imho) flagship beers you always have in production. At the same time offer a rotating selection of seasonals and one offs to keep people interested. My company has decided that the best strategy is to focus on two fruity beers that appeal to "young women" (most of the guests at our restaurant. I get they really mean non beer drinkers), trying to sell those in bottles while doing a few keg only releases, until those two beers "make us famous", then expand outwards from there. So to review we're betting everything on two beers making us huge profits in bottle sales for a 500 liter brewery with 6 fermentation vessels (the milkshake sour IPA comes out to like 300 liters of finished product when bottled) instead of working on building a basic catalog to lay a solid groundwork. Then if those two beers become huge we won't be able to keep up with demand due to our limited size to a non craft beer drinking market who won't understand limited supply and will just leave. Brilliant. Edit: I appreciate it cruft! It's just a lot of dumb poo poo. Corporate! Escape From Noise fucked around with this message at 14:21 on Apr 27, 2022 |
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Apr 27, 2022 14:15
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Escape From Noise posted:Kind of really wish my coworker would stop saying poo poo in meetings like "EFN doesn't like this but we could maybe do x" like yeah. I loving hate lactose beers and poo poo but I'm willing to do my job but now when I bring up issues with production of said beers the boss thinks I'm trying to weasel out of making that beer instead of pointing out major flaws in the plan. Tell them this random person on the internet you know (me) likes milk stouts and lactose beers and they agree with EFN's concerns about the process. Lactose is not a fit for every flavour profile and it is not a magic bullet to make beers more popular Escape From Noise posted:I mean don't love these beers, but I'll make them. I genuinely try not to complain about the beer itself. It's just that they want me to make this beer as a flagship that's a pain and results in massive losses because it's heavily fruited and dry hopped. There's a reason flagship beers tend to be simple. I'm not saying we stop making it altogether. I'm just saying we need to make it less regularly while also making simple tent pole styles. As a consumer of many beers and also long-time corporate wage slave, option 2 is by far the most sensible and safest corporate plan to pursue IMO. Option 1 is for "industry disruptor fail forwards" types, and for a 500l brewery is IMO not likely to be a viable long term business plan, unless the aim is primarily for on-site supply to the restaurant (aka a guaranteed customer) and the restaurant is not reliant on the beers as a main draw. I think your place need to decide whether the brewing arm is primarily to prop up their on-site restaurant and outside sales are not a core concern, or if the intent is for brewing to become an independantly profitable arm that sells externally. Option 2 is far more likely to result in a large independant brewing arm than Option 1, in my (uninformed and industry ignorant) opinion 
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Apr 27, 2022 14:59
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I think the new beer all the time route is viable, especially at a smaller scale, especially if you're able to set up reliable clients. A lot of "new" beers are an old recipe with minor tweaks. But I also think you need to poo poo or get off the pot. Even if you have two beers you constantly produce, you also need to keep innovating, even if your innovations are very small and not big bombastic Brewski style fruit and lactose bombs. Betting everything on one of two beers making your reputation is foolhardy at best. But I think you're right about the outcomes for sure. Either is fine but they're kind of all over the place
Escape From Noise fucked around with this message at 15:28 on Apr 27, 2022 |
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Apr 27, 2022 15:22
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