Left/Right brain - which kind of brewer are you?

[philm00x]

I find myself doing the same thing, BD. I want to just pick ingredients at will to create my own recipe and then adjust the amounts so that they yield numbers within spec of the style.

[Brewbirds]

I lean to the right, never left.

BB1 is left and BB2 is right so we usually end up in crisis mode on brewday - does that make us frontal.

[monsteroyd]

I start out left, planning and researching ingredients, but dang if at brew time I don;t go all right and start adding this and tweaking that. You have to be a little left in order to keep everything sanitized, but I enjoy experimenting too. Oh by the way tossing a whole nutmeg into the LBK is not a good idea. Just sayin'

Monty

[Rebel_B]

Left brain brewer here, but confident enough to substitute similar malts and/or hops to use what I already have on hand.

[mashani]

@ mashani only brews when there is a high chance of of a lightning storm so his 'creations' can come to life...

[Kealia]

Count me like others:

Right-brain in terms of being creative with recipes, but very left-brain when it comes to actually formulating the recipes themselves.
I also measure to 1/10oz on my grains so I can easily tweak or reproduce when needed. If I could, I would count the damn yeast, too.

I have done a few frankenbiers when I had some extract on hand and found myself with time to kill, though. Some of this, some of that.....but even then I rote down exactly when I put in it in case I brewed the best beer ever. Which it wasn't.

[haerbob3]

a bit of both. Sometimes I just brew so of this grain some of that hop that sounds good. I play mad scientist/chef a lot. Other times everything is very exact. Such as developing a clone recipe. As long as the result is great beer I am a happy brewer

[gwcr]

I'm definitely a research and recipe brewer. I'll pick a style and find the ingredients that let me stay within those guidelines, so sort of creative there. On brew day, everything is pre-measured and ready to go ahead of time. No pinch of this or that for me. My thinking is if I don't know exactly how much of what I put in it, then how can I replicate/improve it next time?

[Ibasterd]

As I am still new to Home Brewing, I am still in the follow the rules exactly phase. I hope to try new recipes as I gain a little confidence after getting some more batches under my belt.

[berryman]

I mostly brew on the right side ( right is right - Right? )
I am fussy about sanitation though and I log everything I do and use for future reference.

[jimjohson]

wait you guys got a left AND a right side??

[jimjohson]

wait you guys got a left AND a right side??

[Crazy Climber]

@ CrazyClimber
You didn't tell us where you fall on this topic...

Definitely left brain.
For me, the planning is a lot of the fun. Scheduling brews in advance so that I have what I want in the pipeline at a certain time, formulating and tweaking a recipe in BeerSmith, naming the beer, designing the label, etc.

I'm a "type A" personality, and the science of brewing appeals to me. Don't get me wrong, the art of brewing is appealing, too.

I think that's why so many of us are as passionate about it as we are: it appeals to many different types of people, across the spectrum. Whether you're left brain or right, or somewhere in between, you can find something about brewing that satisfies you greatly.

[StatsandBrew]

Y'all know that bit that Jeff Foxworthy does where he says, "If you (do such and such) you might be a redneck."?

Well, if your brews have fermentation notes that look like this...



...you might be a left-brained brewer.


On the serious side though, how about that Fromunda yeast? 1.075 to 1.020 in just under 96 hours. Pitched dry.

[mashani]

I also measure to 1/10oz on my grains so I can easily tweak or reproduce when needed.

Now I never do that. I just measure to the ounce and don't stress about it. If that means I get a bit of variation if I brew the same thing again, I just consider that to be interesting. Especially with the darker grains, I don't think there is that much more variation then the differences between the grain I buy inherently has anyways (IE English Chocolate or Special B or similar dark malts may have 100+SRM difference anyways, and corresponding subtle differences in flavor, so no way to really make something with it exactly the same anyways from year to year). In that regards I just RDWHAHB.