Author: Marshall Schott

It’s hard to believe 5 years have gone by since I succumbed to peer pressure and started a little blog I figured would fizzle out in a few months. In the year or so prior, I’d been toying around with novel (to me) brewing methods and performing experiments as a way to keep myself interested in the hobby, the details and results of which I’d occasionally share in online forums. It didn’t take long for people who enjoyed this content to suggest I store it all in a single place to make it more easily accessible.

While initially hesitant, the final push for me came in the form of an invitation to beta test for a startup company called The Yeast Bay, as owner Nick Impelliteri wanted to make sure the results of our testing were available to the public. In February 2014, Brülosophy was born, the name being a play on the moniker I’d adopted a couple years earlier in online brewing forums.

My vision at the time was… well, I didn’t really have a vision. I very much enjoyed experimenting and sharing the results, but I knew nothing about what all was involved in maintaining a website. With the first Yeast Bay beta test involving a fair bit of time, I decided to share some other things I’d been messing around with on the website, namely my approach to harvesting yeast from starters and a method for quick lager fermentation. These ended up getting way more attention than I expected, and the idea that other homebrewers could potentially benefit from the weird stuff I was doing was pretty motivating.

As an ardent follower of most homebrewing blogs at the time, it occurred to me nearly all of them were recipe and opinion based, and those that did have more of scientific bent tended to delve quite deep into more technical details. While I absolutely loved all of this, I regularly found myself wondering– how much of what we believe to be true actually has a perceptible impact? 

It was this thought, along with my annoyingly incessant skepticism, that ultimately inspired me to start the exBEERiment project. I’d previously shared the results of some side-by-side comparisons, but I wanted to hone an approach that would shed more light on aspects of the brewing process many people seemed so certain about. In researching sensory analysis, I settled on the triangle test as a means of indicating whether people could distinguish between beers brewed differently, and relying on what I learned as a student of psychology, I adopted a familiar report writing format.

On June 2, 2014, I published the first exBEERiment on the impact kettle trub during fermentation has on beer. The response was bewildering. I couldn’t understand how my little blog post was yielding, no joke, nearly 80 views per day. As a rather social person, the interaction with others around the globe this led to was one of the coolest things! I knew then the exBEERiments would become a regular thing and began refocusing my brew day planning.

I started off publishing exBEERiment results about once per month, give or take, with other content sprinkled in between. The first company to reach out to me seeking a product review was JaDeD Brewing who’d come up with a new design they swore would significantly reduce wort chilling times. Even though I’d opted to purchase a standard IC from them a few months earlier, they were convinced I’d be blown away by The Hydra, and I absolutely was. I also dipped my toes into the whole homebrew tasting video thing, a project I put the kibosh on fairly quickly due to both the time requirements and my feeling that it was stupid. I realized our readers most wanted interesting exBEERiments and committed to keeping that the main focus.

Eventually, I began chatting with some like-minded folks and, wanting to keep the content coming, invited Greg Foster and Ray Found on board in early 2015, the latter of whom is responsible for the “xBmt” shorthand. We’d been publishing about 2 xBmt articles per month, but at a little over 1 year in, I proposed the crazy idea of increasing our output. With a fair amount of anxiety, we committed to pumping out an xBmt every single week, no small task considering it was just 3 of us at the time.

In May of 2015, Malcolm Frazer, who I’d been going back and forth with on Facebook homebrewing groups, joined the crew, then Matt Waldron came aboard later that year. With the growing contributor base, we had the time to introduce new projects, one being The Hop Chronicles, and the other Brü’s Views, which has since been canned.

A few months into 2016, Jake Huolihan, who’d been writing about his brewing experiments on his own blog, accepted my invitation to join Brülosophy. Fellow bloggers Matt Del Fiacco and Brian Hall joined a year later, both dudes I’d been chatting with since the beginning. On top of weekly xBmt articles, we committed to publishing additional content every Thursday. The train was chugging along.

The idea of making our content audible was something that came up pretty early on. I recall Ray encouraging me fairly often to consider starting a podcast, but my neuroses held me back. Finally, as I settled into a groove with the website stuff, I caved and agreed to give the podcast a shot, but only on condition that we make no changes to our website publishing schedule. After acquiring all the gear, teaching myself to edit, and learning what the hell an RSS feed is, The Brülosophy Podcast was born.

The first episode dropped in March of 2017 with an initial plan to produce new episodes every-other-week. The learning curve was steep, and it took some time for talking about the stuff we usually write about to feel natural, but it seemed to come together and by the end of the year, we were ready to go weekly, thanks in part to Jason Cipriani joining the crew.

I felt like the main goal of 2018 was to prove to myself this all could be done. In addition to everything going on with Brülosophy, I had a regular full-time job and a family to manage. Due to the investment of the other contributors, including Phil Rusher who joined in October, it all worked out.

Looking back, I’m still not entirely sure how we’ve gained the exposure we have. It’s been a fascinating ride, one that’s allowed me to make some of the best friends of my life and experience some pretty unbelievable things. Of course, it’s not been without some bumps and bruises…

When I first started the xBmt series, I had no clue it was going to be a big deal and my writing often reflected this level of ignorance. Even today, despite shifting our tone toward the more equivocal, I get called out for past results being presented as a tad too absolute. It’s totally true, I tended to get a bit cheeky in the past. We’ve since made an effort to be very clear about the fact our results are but a single data point from a single sample of tasters on a single style of beer– I must’ve said this thousands of times over the last few years.

As a person, I greatly value kindness and understanding, and I’ve always wanted Brülosophy to reflect this. However, we’ve occasionally engaged in foolish online banter about ultimately trivial bullshit, and my intermittent inability to recognize when what I think is hilarious isn’t being viewed as such by others has led to some interesting outcomes.

But we’re still here, and while I’m not a terribly proud person, I’m pretty happy with how things have turned out. Brülosophy has undeniably changed my life for the better, and I have everyone who reads and listens to what we create to thank for that. Here’s to another 5 years of having fun with beer!

| What’s Brewing At Brülosophy? |

The Brülosophy Podcast

Our first full year of weekly episodes was a learning experience, and while it worked out well, we’ve made some minor tweaks that we believe will only serve to improve the show. In the past, each episode would focus on a general topic where multiple xBmts would be referred to, which began to lead to a paucity of topics. To avoid this and ensure the content keeps coming, we’ve decided to make each new episode focused on a single specific xBmt, which has allowed us to really get into the details of certain variables. Judging by listener feedback, this has been a good move. Let us know what you think!

New Podcast Shows

There’s been some intra-Brülosophy talk about possibly starting up a whole new show or two, the idea being to provide listeners with even more content that’s not necessarily xBmt focused, but still with a Brülosophy spin.

The Brü Club xBmt Series

In addition to the weekly xBmts, we publish an article from one of our other regular projects every Thursday— The Hop Chronicles, Short & Shoddy, and Brü It Yourself, as well as the occasional product review. Starting in 2018, we introduced The Brü Club xBmt Series where members of The Brü Club get the opportunity to have an xBmt they performed published on Brulosophy.com. We’re currently working toward making this a regular monthly series and encourage anyone interested to join The Brü Club, which is currently free of charge.

Doppelgänger xBmt Series

Another idea we’ve been kicking around over the last couple years is a commercial beer clone series that integrates our standard triangle test approach. Some breweries have already expressed interest and we’ve even settled on a series name, so the bones are in place. If this is something you’d be interested in seeing, please let us know!

Get Rewarded For Helping Brülosophy

Multiple times per week, I’m asked by folks about accessing the password protected recipes on the site or the live Q&A sessions with people like Vinnie Cilurzo and John Palmer. These are among the many killer rewards we offer Patrons of Brülosophy, those who appreciate what we’re doing enough to pledge a small monthly contribution that helps us to continue producing all of the content we do.

Contribution levels range from $1 to $25 per month with the most popular being the $5 level, which earns numerous rewards including a unique discount to Yakima Valley Hops that’s always been worth more than the pledge itself– for example, supporters recently got $5 off each 1 lb bag of South African hops they ordered in January. Patrons at this level also receive access to our private Facebook group where industry experts answer Patron questions live every month ($3 reward level), as well as access to The Brü Crew private forum and monthly unpublished recipes ($1 reward level). For more details on all of the ways you can be reward for helping us out, head over to our Patreon page.

The HopBeat Newsletter

If you haven’t already, sign up for The HopBeat, our newsletter that goes out 1-2 times per month and provides an overview of what we’ve been up to. This is also how we let people know about Brülosophy exclusive deals and other cool things that might be going on.

We promise to never give away or sell your information, your email is safe with us.

UPCOMING EVENTS

The year is young and Brülosophy will likely be represented on other events throughout the year, we’ll be sure to let folks know as new events are added to our calendar.

Brew Your Own Bootcamp in Asheville, NC | March 22-23, 2019
I will be joining Drew Beechum and Denny Conn at the BYO Boot Camp in Asheville, NC on March 22-23 where we’ll be facilitating 2 sessions on experimentation in brewing. Each full-day class has only 35 openings and we’d love to see you there! Register before February 22 and use code BYOBOOTCAMPBRULOSOPHY to save $100!

Hop Harvest in Yakima, WA | 2019
No set plans at this point, but there’s been some talk about a potential collaborative party with Yakima Valley Hops that would include visits to hop farms, processing facilities, local breweries, and partying with fun people over 2 days during harvest season. If this is something that interests you, please let us know! Regardless, Brülosophy will almost certainly be hanging out in Yakima at some point in September, we’ll be sure to release dates as soon as they’re set.

Thanks again to all of our readers and listeners for making the last 5 years possible, we’re stoked to see what the next 5 years bring. Please, if you have any thoughts about what came up in this article, drop us a note in the comments section below!

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