Author: Marshall Schott

I say fairly often that as much as I love brewing and beer, the community is what really drives my passion for this hobby. Over the last couple of years, the unexpected opportunities that have arisen out of my work on Brülosophy have been quite incredible and really opened my eyes to whole new perspective on this amazing community. From local brewers going out of their way to participate in an xBmt to those emailing me encouraging words from the other side of the globe, and even the critics who ceaselessly give me stuff to think about. Today I’ll be sharing some rad developments that have come out of this badass community.

Collaboration With House Of Pendragon Brewing Co.

A few years ago, my buddy Tommy Caprelian made a decision to change careers from banking to brewing. He did it right by getting an education at Siebel Institute and learning the tricks of the trade at a local established brewery before peeling away to start House Of Pendragon Brewing Company, a nano pushing out 1 BBL batches. With a vision for growth, a kickass work ethic, and beers of supreme quality, Tommy recently transitioned to a beautiful 15 BBL brewery. What an accomplishment!

As an experimentation loving supporter of Brülosophy who now has a little more wiggle room in his brewing schedule, I’m thrilled to announce House Of Pendragon Brewing Company as a collaborative member of the Brülosophy crew! This has been something we’ve been working toward for the last couple months and has finally come to fruition, I am very excited to see how this progresses. There are a few primary benefits to this setup in addition to fostering community: we’ll be able to test variables previously out of reach due to scale, such as the impact of fermentation temperature on larger volumes, but it will also increase the participant pool since data collection will occur in the HOP taproom. With that said…

We are going to start collecting data for the very first collaborative xBmt this Saturday (3/12/16) as soon as the taproom opens. Participation is free, so if you live in or are traveling through the Fresno/Clovis area, stop by to lend your palate to beer science and enjoy some great craft beer!

Brazilian Homebrewers Conference 2016

Unfortunately, due to my busy family and work schedules, I had to respectfully decline invitations to speak at homebrewer conferences in New Zealand and Brazil. But all was not lost! It took a bit of calendar finagling, but Malcolm will be representing Brülosophy at Brazil’s 3rd annual homebrewers conference happening later this month! We’re currently collaborating with John Palmer and Ronaldo Ferreira, a local homebrewer, on some really cool ideas. Stay tuned for a synopsis of Malcolm’s experience in Brazil accompanied by heaps of pretty pictures.

HomebrewCon 2016 in Baltimore, MD

I attended my first HomebrewCon, aka National Homebrewers Conference, last year in San Diego and had such a great time! Before getting into all the stuff Brülosophy will be up to at this year’s conference, do yourself a favor and GO REGISTER NOW! Seriously, I’ve never been in a setting so full of people as passionate about and invested in this hobby as me, from well known authors and bloggers to folks you swapped stories with online, you’ll find yourself nerding it up with a killer cast of characters. It’s not cheap, but if you can swing it, I’ll bet you won’t regret it.

This year, I’ll be participating in two different seminars, one with Malcolm called Modern Perspectives on Traditional Methods: Applying New Knowledge To An Ancient Craft, as well as a Homebrew Bloggers Roundtable with my friends Derek Springer, Ed Coffey, and Matt Humbard of the Five Blades Brewing, Ales Of The Riverwards, and PhD In Beer blogs, respectively.

It’s impossible for me to go anywhere without asking people for data. While Malcolm will be brewing beer to share during our seminar,  we’d written off the idea of collecting data for an xBmt since flying from California to Baltimore with kegs would be a pain in the ass. That is, until Philadelphia, PA resident Ed Coffey offered to help us out by collaborating on what I believe will be a very fun and interesting xBmt! Ed has agreed to abide by my neurotic expectations when it comes to brewing and documenting xBmt batches, and he’ll bring them to HomebrewCon 2016 where we will indeed be seeking participants. If you’re attending and want to participate, you can follow Brülosophy on Facebook or Twitter to know exactly when we’re in collection mode.

Congratulations To Contest Winners!

I recently ran a brief contest over on the Brülosophy Facebook page offering 3 opportunities for people to win a free My Kind Of Science t-shirt in the color and size of their choosing. I want to congratulate the following rad folks for their entries and support of Brülosophy:

Federico De La Torre
Jason Kapica
Steven Churning

I plan to run similar contests randomly in the future, if you want a chance to win cool shit for doing nothing more than clicking your mouse, go follow our Facebook page now!

Changes To Survey & Statistics

In an attempt to provide only the most meaningful and relevant data, we’re constantly looking at ways to improve things. A part of this means reducing the length of the survey in order to make it easier/quicker for participants to complete, which consequently leads to increased samples sizes. Regular readers may have noticed that for those xBmts with statistically significant results, we go on to report data from a brief comparative evaluation completed only by those participants who were correct on the triangle test, which includes their ability to accurately select the sample that had the variable manipulated following revelation of the nature of the xBmt. The astute may also have noticed how this information has been incredibly inconsistent with tasters proving unable to reliably determine the exBEERimental beer from the control, despite being able to distinguish the unique sample in a triangle test. Adios! The coolest part about getting rid of this question is that the variable will never be revealed to tasters, meaning there’s no chance someone who has already completed the survey will accidentally let someone else in on it. We will continue to include a question on taster preference.

After some discussion with a concerned reader about the statistics we’ve been using, Brülosophy’s resident statistician, Justin Angevaare, suggested we make a relatively minor adjustment. Whereas we’d previously been calculating an approximate p-value, we recently started using the exact p-value. Justin provided the following simple explanation:

Wheras the approximate p-value can be calculated assuming that, under the null hypothesis, the estimated proportion will follow a normal distribution with a mean equal to 1/3, the exact p-value can be calculated using the binomial distribution is found as the probability of having observed at least as many correct tasters, if the population proportion is in fact equal to 1/3. 

Apparently, given our typical samples sizes, this is the more appropriate approach that will reduce the likelihood of error.

Thank You For Your Support!

Finally, I want to take a minute to thank all of the incredible folks who have supported Brülosophy, providing this type of content as often as we do does not come cheap, we truly wouldn’t be able to continue doing this if it weren’t for you! While this certainly includes awesome brewing related companies like Love2Brew, Gambrinus Malting, and NikoBrew, it’s the readers who really are the gas to our flame. For those interested in throwing support our direction, there are a few ways to do so, the easies of which is bookmarking and using our affiliate links when you do your online shopping, you’ll notice no difference in your experience and we’ll get a small commission on your purchases. For those looking to get a little something in return for their support, we regularly sell t-shirts via Teespring such as the My Kind Of Science option currently available.

Any revenue generated goes right back into making Brülosophy a more fun and interesting website! And for those who’d rather forgo the aforementioned avenues of support, your presence here is certainly more than enough. THANK YOU!

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