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