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About Randy Mosher
• Artist since 1975
• Homebrewer since 1984
• Writer
• Brewery creative consultant
• Siebel Institute instructor
• Partner in two breweries
• Recipes for another
What I See Positive
• Desire for really great beer
• Attempts to be in control
• Plenty of ambition
• Complete surrender to the craft
• (Some) fantastic results
What I See Negative
• Limited familiarity with ingredients
• A lot of habitual choices
• Too style dependent
• Poor ability to visualize/model
• Process not always integrated
• Overcomplicated recipes
The Goal: All beer = Great Beer
• Clean
• Characterful/unique
• Fascinating
• Drinkable
• True to style if desired
Obstacles�For Brewers
• Need for tasting expertise
• Ingredient vocabulary challenging
• Old habits die hard
• Virtual beer is not so easy to drink
• Most people don’t know the
tools of art
• Styles = false security
What’s Needed�For Great Recipes
What’s Needed�For Great Recipes
• Tastesmanship
– Proper tasting technique
– Familiarity with vocabulary of beer
– Internalized vocabulary
– Constant practice
– Self-calibration
– Experience over time
Tastesmanship:�Vocabulary
• Tastesmanship
– Proper tasting technique
– Familiarity with vocabulary of beer
– Constant practice
– Experience over time
What’s Needed For Great Recipes
• �Familiarity with ingredients
– 80+ hop varieties, dozens of malts
– Taste, don’t read!
– Understand chemistry behind the flavors
– Did I mention taste?
What’s Needed For Great Recipes
• Hop aromas difficult vocabulary
• What the hell does “spicy” mean?
• Substitutions a fact of life
• Loads of new varieties
• Hard to get a grip on
the landscape
What’s Needed For Great Recipes
Beer History & Styles
• Everything you know is wrong
• Check the new BJCP guidelines
• Writers to believe
– Ron Pattinson
– Martyn Cornell
– Stan Heironymous
– Ian Hornsey
Visualizing Beer
• Make an imaginary beer in your head
• Color important, but…
• Color is not a flavor
• Strength & intensity
• Hop Strategy
• Yeast & fermentation
• Feedback to improve modeling
Creative Tricks: Art
• It’s your job as a brewer to
mess with peoples’ heads!
Creative Tricks: Art
• Dealing with intangibles
– Personality
– Synergy
– Memorability
– Depth
– The ability to move us
Creative Tricks: Art
• Aroma stimulates powerful psychological responses
• Qualitative: like & dislike
• Intertwined with emotional memory
• Incredible leverage for art, but…
Creative Tricks: Art
• Senses not isolated from each other
• Aroma + Taste = Flavor
• Connected in unconscious
• Visual, auditory, everything!
• Illusion is reality
Creative Tricks: Art
• Senses are highly non-linear, too
– Potentiation
– Masking
– Matrix
– Hugely variable person-to-person
Creative Tricks: Art
• Associations of style, name & identity
– Provides context, expectations
– How do they think about your beer?
– They want a story!
Creative Tricks: Art
• Create a great experience for
your audience!
– Understand the cultural context
– Set up expectations
– Tickle their lizard brain
– Prepare for subjectivity
– Deal with hardwired preferences
Creative Tricks: Art
• Artistic rules can help with
– Planning
– Process decisions
– Presentation
• Meant to be broken
• A conceptual toolbox
Creative Tricks: Art
• Purpose of beer?
AMAZE ASTOUND
WIN CONTESTS
GET CHICKS
HOT GUYS
SELF PLEASURING PILOT
ART NOVEL FLAVORS
KEEP THE BAND
TOGETHER WEDDING GIFT
SHUT UP & DRINK
HISTORY
RESEARCH
YOU DON’T WANT
TO KNOW
Creative Tricks: Art
• Clarity of concept
– The BIG idea
– The simpler the better
– Plain language, like label copy
– All decisions made to pay this off
Creative Tricks: Art
• Where do ideas come from?
– Styles and their derivatives
– Ingredient driven
– Non-beer categories: tea, ice cream
– Creative fantasies
Creative Tricks: Art
• A concise description:
– “An IPA that smells like the desert”
– “A truly crisp and refreshing dark beer”
– “The creamiest cream ale”
– “Brown ale that tastes like toasted cake”
– “A Pilsner that’s hop-drenched
like an IPA”
Creative Tricks: Art
• Unity, harmony
– All elements in composition
work towards artistic goal
– A deliberate approach
– If you don’t know what it’s doing
there, get rid of it
Creative Tricks: Art
• Surprise
– Push the audience a little—it’s your duty as an artist!
– What will surprise, delight?
– Take risks, and learn from them
– Don’t forget to frame their expectations
– What’s the simplest way?
Creative Tricks: Organization
• Contrast/Tension/balance
– Dynamic, not static
– Our attention wanders
– Make use of contrasting, oppositional elements
• Hop/malt
• Acidity/sweetness
• Sweet malt vs. roasty, toasty
Creative Tricks: Organization
• Clear presentation of ideas
– Have a hierarchy of components
– Too many things competing for attention can be problematic
– What’s most noticeable?
– Second most?
Creative Tricks: Organization
• Scale
– Use ingredients to have an actual effect
– Consider intensity in context
– 1 oz. Munich in stout = stupid
– Always be aware of thresholds • Sub-threshold OK, but…
Creative Tricks: Organization
• Think in blocks
– Manage complexity by breaking it down
– “Layering”
– Deconstruct those beers!
Creative Tricks: Organization
Creative Tricks: Organization
Creative Tricks: Organization
For Color
Only
Creative Tricks: Organization
Creative Tricks: Organization
Brewing Process
• What’s your hop strategy?
– Nationality
– Character
– Bitterness
– Aroma
– Old: 60, 30, 10, 0 minute additions
Creative Tricks: Organization
Creative Tricks: Organization
Brewing Process
• Prototyping
– No pilots in homebrew, mostly
– Blends as prototypes
– Spikes and extracs
Brewing Process
• Ingredients + processes
– Must be considered together
– Wrong process = poor results
– What’s the least complex to get job done?
– Think about protein!
Brewing Process
• Keep the craft level high
– Work to avoid off-flavors
• DMS
• Yeast & fermentation
• Water chemistry/hop harshness
• Oxidation in not just about oxygen
• Husky/grainy oversparged
Mechanics: The Easy Part
• Always: OG, BU, SRM, A/V
• Challenging: Attenuation, hop aroma
• Plenty of software, tools
• Don’t forget to adjust to your system
Mechanics: The Easy Part
• First: “Character/flavor” malts
• Second: Adjuncts for function
• Third: Base to hit gravity
• Finally: Adjust with darkest malts
Brewing from the Inside Out
• Make it memorable
– Vivid personality
– Something to talk about
• “Man, that’s a chewy blonde ale.”
• “That porter tastes like a milkshake”
• “I gotta have a third pint of that bitter”
– Seduction!
Brewing from the Inside Out
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