Author: Marshall Schott
The fact this is all starting to feel sort of normal is nuts to me. It’s been so long since I’ve tossed a few back with friends at a local taproom, got an actual haircut at an actual barbershop, went anywhere in public without wearing a mask, and worst of all, collected the kind of data Brülosophy is known for.
The havoc COVID-19 has wreaked on humanity is not lost on me in slightest, but there’s little I wouldn’t give at this point to get back to normal living. Alas, that’s apparently not possible at this time, and since whining about things I have no control over will accomplish nothing, I’ll resist the urge to that here.
Due to the ongoing pandemic, we were forced to make some adaptations to our standard protocol such that we could continue to provide content while under quarantine. What we initially thought would last maybe a few weeks has now been going on for nearly 6 months, and in that time, many readers have shared their opinions about the changes we’ve made. To get a more cohesive picture of what folks think, we’d like to ask that you complete a brief survey.
The survey will be open through September 12, 2020, after which the data will be analyzed and used to inform how we approach things in the future. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to complete it!
| What’s Brewing At Brülosophy? |
Website Updates
Given social distancing and quarantine mandates, we’ve been unable to do not only what put us on the map, but what we love doing, and that’s serving beer to blind participants for evaluation. There’s been some brainstorming about safe ways to get back to collecting data, though it varies by series, so I’ll break it down a bit.
exBEERiments
Without question, the changes we’ve made to our standard xBmt protocol has been one of the toughest to swallow, as Brülosophy was built on our willingness to have people blindly participate in triangle tests. Unable to do this, we opted for a temporary approach where the brewer performs a series of semi-blind triangle tests instead. While some have found great value in this, others were quick to express the opposite sentiment. Frankly, I find myself waffling a bit, though admit to relating a bit more with the latter on this particular issue. However, in a world where personal contact is extremely limited, this seems the most prudent approach.
In thinking of ways we might get back to collecting proper xBmt data, it’s worth considering how relatively complicated administering a triangle test is. On top of ensuring each participant is served two samples of one beer and one sample of another, we actively monitor cross-talk between participants, help with any digital survey issues, and respond to pertinent questions, among other tasks. For this reason, it’s important for this series that the contributor be present during data collection, and we simply can’t think of a way to do this that doesn’t require inordinate effort (e.g., sending individual samples to multiple people) while keeping risk of exposure low. We’re open to any ideas!
The Hop Chronicles
Sadly, our last article for The Hop Chronicles (THC) series was published the first week of April. Rather than having Paul, the brewer for this series, share his completely anecdotal and biased opinion about different hops, we opted to put this project on hiatus until we’re able to have participants evaluate the beers. Seeing as THC is one of our more popular series’, this was a difficult decision that sucked to make.
Thankfully, the survey for THC is quite a bit easier to administer compared to xBmts, as tasters are served a single beer and asked to rank it in terms of various hop descriptors. A few months prior to COVID-19 hitting, we moved to publishing two THC articles per month, which was exciting for us and seemingly well received by readers. While keeping up with this schedule may be difficult while quarantined, it seems plausible to get back to pushing at least one THC article every month, collecting data on an individual basis rather than in a group setting. This is something we’re currently working on and hope to have figured out sooner than later.
Short & Shoddy
During the quarantine, I’ve pretty much taken over brewing for our Short & Shoddy series and have kept up with our once monthly publishing schedule. In the past, these beers would be served to tasters who, aware of the style but blind to the brewing approach, would complete a pretty standard beer evaluation. Since being quarantined, this evaluation has been squarely the responsibility of… me.
Now, I don’t mean to self-deprecate, I consider myself decent at evaluating beer, but what good does just one person’s opinion do? In my opinion, not much, which is why we plan to get back to sharing these beers with tasters as soon as possible. As with THC, the Short & Shoddy survey is rather simple and can be easily explained while social distancing.
Brü It Yourself
Oddly enough, the one project of ours that requires no data collection is the one we’ve struggled the most to keep up with. Go figure. For those who enjoy this simple format, rest assured we’ve got some interesting concoctions in the chamber!
Podcast Updates
With our catalog of hundreds of articles, COVID-19 has had minimal impact on our ability to continue producing episodes of The Brülosophy Podcast. Woo! While we initially made an effort cover past xBmts where data came from more than just the contributor/brewer, the fact this quarantine has gone on so long has made that less feasible. Suffice to say, future episodes will be focused on variables tested under these socially distanced conditions, though we like to think the information will continue to be presented in the manner our listeners have come to expect from us.
One cool development– we’re working on an entirely new show! We know how much our listeners enjoy digging into the nerdier side of beer science, and contributor Cade Jobe has a plan to help satiate this thirst for knowledge in a fresh podcast where he interviews beer/brewing scientists on research they’ve performed. We’re still working out some details and hope to introduce this The Brü Lab sooner than later. Stay tuned and let us know what you think about this idea in the survey.
Merch
Thanks to COVID-19, our plans to offer more merch such as glasses, hats, and new t-shirts got put on the backburner. However, we do currently have some of our classic t-shirts in various colors available through Amazon, the purchases of which serve to support our efforts.
Huge thanks to all of our sponsors, Patrons, readers, and listeners for continuing to support us during these crazy times. Stay safe out there and keeping drinking great beer!
Please don’t hesitate to share any thoughts or suggestions in the comments section below!
Follow Brülosophy on:
FACEBOOK | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM
If you enjoy this stuff and feel compelled to support Brulosophy.com, please check out the Support page for details on how you can very easily do so. Thanks!
14 thoughts on “What’s Brewing At Brülosophy? | New Survey, COVID-19 Updates, & More!”
Just for info, the survey only offered me questions 1 and 5…..dont know if it was me or you 🤔
If you mark “No” on the first question, which asks if you read articles on this website, it’ll skip all the question related to Brulosophy.com and take you to a question asking if you listen to The Brulosophy Podcast; if you mark “No” on that, it’ll automatically submit your survey. If a person doesn’t read or listen to our stuff, they can’t really provide feedback on it.
I can’t be certain this is what happened to you, but perhaps?
Since the mandates different from state to state, can you tell us what the limits are in your location(s)? For example, here in Oregon, we can hold indoor gatherings of up to ten people. At least in Oregon, there could be ten folks gathered for your standard triangle tests. I’m sure I’m over simplifying this, so it would be interesting to understand more about the restrictions your are facing. Thanks!
We’re all in different areas, and while each state has their different rules and regulations, our goal has been to reduce exposure as much as possible. That said, as things loosen up a bit, we will be getting back to collecting data.
Hey Marshall!,
First, thanks for everything Brülosophy provides to the home brewing community. I’ve utilized, and shared, the information from your site countless times over the past few years.
For the exBEERiments triangle test – what about using a commercially brewed beer similar to the style being brewed, as either a ‘palate cleanser’, or as a third example in a four-way test (A, A, B, C)?
Again, thank you for everything you, and the other contributors, do to help the home brewing community!
Props to you guys for keeping things going under the circumstances. I appreciate all you do, and am looking forward future developments.
Thanks for keeping things going guys, and thanks for reaching out to consumers of your content with this survey! Definitely looking forward to Bru Lab.
A bit of encouragement for you: this is one of the only surveys I’ve ever taken where I wish I could have elaborated more. I think this speaks not only to Brulospohy’s relevance, but to its structure as well.
My extra, unsolicited two cents:
– I most consume the podcast. In part, because you guys really knocked the production quality out of the park so quickly. It’s my preferred way to consume all the information on the site – I blame my attention span more than anything.
– I’m more flexible because of Short and Shoddy. I’m prone to cut boils short when the hop schedule or malt profile allows. You guys are more objective that me, but I feel a failed attempt would be the exception at this point. Recipes/tools/processes to make them more practical or perhaps something wild (literally) like a Lambic would re-invigorate my interest.
– The Q&A structure is great, to me. I like it separated – I know what I’m going in to. I like the content, as you’re effectively filtering out all the happenings of homebrew down for me. I always learn something: be it about brewing or the people who brew.
– I really lean on your product reviews (shout out to Spike and Jaded) – but recognize it’s not the heart and soul of the site. Kudos if you can resist the temptation given it’d be profitable and covid-free to simply review products.
– Really, the Podcast is great. There’s certain other ones with incredible content but challenging hosts.
I’d second the idea of commercial tasting. Similar to Zymurgy’s Commercial Calibration. I’d like to hear how others approach and sense a beer I can also get my hands on. I could see this also working well to other sensory topics: “800 Brulosophy Calibrators submitted their results, here’s the spider chart of malt character etc”. As an extremely novice “judge” (aka, no structured experience), I’d jump into this.
Thanks for the update. You guys are doing great work. The one gripe I have about your COVID-19 era exBEERiments is that the triangle test is bogus. You’re testing if YOU have the ability to distinguish between the beers, not if a pool of people (not really random, but a sample size of n>1 nonetheless) can do so. I admit I’ve been skipping that part of the articles and just reading the impressions. And sure, you’re not necessarily testing things that are going to vary as much; it’s not like it’s a person who can’t taste or smell diacetyl have the (shocking) result that they can’t taste or smell the diacetyl. I don’t mean to criticize–you can’t stop the flow of experiments but you also can’t get the beer out to the people to test it–it’s just the sad reality of our situation. Anyhow, keep up the great work!
One could argue, particularly seeing as our COVID era xBmts are of variables we’ve previously tested, that the within-person triangle test only serves to bolster the brewer’s impressions.
Regardless, we’re all heartily anticipating the return to normalcy too!
What I’ve never understood is how ‘smaller bubble size’ is possible when visible bubbles are only produced when escaping the beer at the point of pour or when agitated/gas equilibrium disrupted, up until that point presumably both methods dissolve gas at the atomic level. Given that CO2 is relatively inert in beer there would have to be a different gas dissolved to behave differently…?
Of course, yeast don’t just produce CO2, there are other gases in small quantities, but then I’m not sure how pure my CO2 Gas cylinder is….
Will you publish the results of the survey? It would merely be to satisfy my curiosity. I think you guys do a great job, both with the website and the podcast. While I am sure most people that come on here to take the survey are people that enjoy your work, we all have preferences. I would be curious how the podcast/article categories I prefer (I like them all, but prefer some to others) stack up against the consensus.
Given the number of requests to do so, that’s the plan
Whatever you guys are able to do during this time is great and brightens my day. As much as I appreciate the large data set of blind tasters, I have to admit that if I’m in a hurry, I skip dpwn to the brewer’s impression and read the rest later. Are the self-administered triangle tests nerve racking? And now that I’ve taken the survey, I am inspired to start listening to the podcast. Thank you, thank you, thank you!