I've always been eager to push boundaries and try something new (at least on my own terms), and I've never had much patience for doing the same thing over and over again in the name of learning. I like it just fine as a routine, because it allows my mind to be otherwise occupied. I can run the same reports and answer the same questions at work without a problem, but when there's a goal beyond the work itself, the wasted time and effort just chafes at me.
I used to give my second-grade teacher, Ms. Beneker, fits. We would get those math worksheets with thirty problems on them, and I'd never finish them. I would do enough to be confident I understood the process (if she was doing the first few on the board, doing them myself and getting the same answers was enough to satisfy me), then I'd get up and wander, helping my classmates. I was constantly getting yelled at to sit down and do my work, and by the time the lesson was over I'd done each problem multiple times...but only a few answers ever showed up on my worksheet. It was a constant battle. (Those worksheets where the answers give you clues to a joke or something worked better, right up until the moment I figured out what the answer would eventually be. Then I was wandering again.)
Brewing has been much the same for me. I don't have anything against extract brewing per se. Many, many homebrewers have gone their entire career doing extract brewing, my father included, and had great results. to the extent that my goal in brewing is to brew tasty beers, I'm perfectly happy brewing extract. But I have another goal: to learn. I want to learn everything I can about this, and I've heard so much about mashing and sparging and lautering and the like, and it seemed like the natural next step in learning about the art of brewing. (Note that my goal here wasn't to brew great beer, but to learn more about brewing.)
At the time I was reading Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing: Recipes, Tales and World-Altering Meditations in a Glass, as I mentioned in my first blog post. And oh, did that book light a fire in me to experiment! It's basically a big book of "here's a recipe for a classic beer style. Let's talk about all the ways you can alter it to make it unique!" I finally broke down when I hit his recipe for a Southern English Brown Ale (for those who aren't familiar, it's a relatively mild, sweet brown ale), and Mosher suggested putting a pound of toasted oats in to replicate the flavor of an oatmeal cookie.
It was as if the One Ring had taken hold of me. This recipe was my precious, and I must have it. I conceived of an improvement over Mosher's recipe: a pound of Special B in the grain bill. Special B is a dark, flavorful crystal malt reputed to confer caramel and especially raisin flavors to a brew. I would make no mere oatmeal cookie ale; I would be brewing an oatmeal raisin cookie brown ale.
The only snag: Mosher's recipe only came in partial-mash and all-grain versions; or at least, that was how it appeared to me. Thus began my downfall.
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