User talk:Killing Vector/Archives/2007/April

Beer Articles
Stlemur, for the last few days I've been processing a backlog of COI reports. When I ran across the one regarding BeerAdvocate and uncovered 131 external links to this site, that created the impression of mass spam. Now that we've looked into it, we see that you are a longstanding editor with many valuable contributions. For sure we are assuming good faith. The problem here is that WikiProject Beer apparently set up its own rules of notability in conflict with existing guidelines. That's why outside editors are coming in and causing havoc. I urge you to take your notability concerns to the talk page at Wikipedia talk:Notability and get them resolved. As it stands now, any beer articles that fail WP:N or WP:CORP, may be deleted, and any links that fail WP:EL may be removed. Jehochman (Talk/Contrib) 13:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Home Brewing
I wonder if you could explain this obsession with home-brewing you seem to have? Home brewing is a hobby. It is not part of the beer industry. It is done for personal pleasure, yet you seem to think without mention of it, an article is incomplete. Please look at the big picture instead of your personal interest and recognise that the world at large does not share your interest and so, do not need to come up against home-brewing on every article they find. And please stop the edit warring. Mikebe 21:16, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but those assertions: that I'm "obsessed" with homebrewing, and that the "world at lerge" doesn't share an interest in it, are simply false. It is a prominent activity in the US, but I don't live in the US, I live in Britain, where homebrewing has lots of history; in fact for a long time, as I'm sure you're aware, there was little distinction between homebrewing and commercial brewing. So too elsewhere in Europe; all these farmhouse ales (sahti, saison, kvass) are predominantly produced at home today.


 * Finally, I'm not edit warring. --Stlemur 21:32, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I think the point that you make about the long tradition of home brewing in the UK (it has an uninterrupted history back to Saxon times) is a good one. I also believe that it is something that is worthy of being discussed in far greater detail in the wikipedia. As are the equally ancient home brewing customs in Finland and Norway. The modern homebrewing boom in the US deserves mention, too. The best place to do this, I believe, is a separate article, where there is room to fully explore the history of homebrewing across time and geography. Should anyone wish to write such an article, I would only be too happy to provide all the material I have on the subject. (For example, I have statistics on the number of private brewers in the UK.) Homebrewing is not irrelevant or unimportant. Just something separate from commercial brewing. Look, I've been a homebrewer myself and - given the necessary time and space - still would be.Patto1ro 17:22, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * According to the American Homebrewers Association, they have 11,700 members. Let's say that is only have one third or even one quarter of home brewers in America. This would make home-brewers 0.01 percent of the American people. I'm sorry, but that is not even insignificant, much less "prominent". Secondly, your home-brewing editing activity often involves the BJCP, so your concern is not just home-brewing, but the role the BJCP plays in it.


 * To say that the world-at-large has an interest in home-brewing is naive. Home brewing is a hobby, and in Europe, a small hobby. I am very active in beer activities in my country and in Belgium and I don't know a single person who does home-brewing or even has ever talked about it. You are, I am afraid, sadly misinformed.


 * Your editing rarely involves adding information to the articles that you defend the bjcp or beeradvocate on. You don't actually contribute anything to the articles, other than to see that mention of these organisations stays in. You can call that what you like, I call it obsessive.


 * What does mention of the BJCP bring to these articles? Does it illuminate something? Considering that it is virtually unknown in America (with only 3,000 members how well known can it be?) and absolutely unknown outside the US, what, exactly, is the point in mentioning them in as many articles as possible?


 * About your edit warring: when the owner of beeradvocate removed links to his site from many articles here, why did you feel compelled to put all of them back? When I explained that home brewing did not and does not affect beer styles, did you put the home brewing (BJCP again) back it again? What do you call this kind of behaviour?Mikebe 21:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)


 * The accusations that you're making simply don't make logical sense. Not all homebrewers are members of the AHA; if you can't name any homebrewers in Belgium doesn't mean there aren't any, and doesn't address anywhere outside Belgium...I'm sorry, I simply don't see any coherent argument here to address. --Stlemur 22:05, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Homebrew Challenge
You can read about the details here:

http://forum.northernbrewer.com/viewtopic.php?t=39850&sid=f4f261906ed23f34f07bbd3f2b8e6bc9

It would be great if you could enter.Patto1ro 21:00, 19 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I've been looking throught the stuff on Brettanomyces in English beers. Whether of not it affects the character of a Porter, depends on what precise style (that must seem odd coming from me) you are brewing. As far back as I have looked in the brewing records (1805) there are always two sorts of Porter : keeping and running. The keeping version, matured in vats would certainly have had a Brettanomyces character. The running Porter, sold straight after racking would not.


 * If you look at the Claussen text, he maintains that, though it may have been present, Brettanamyces would not have had time to influence the flavour. "These beers do not get sufficient time to go through a secondary fermentation and consequently Brettanomyces will hardly be able to influence upon them to an appreciable extent." (p. 314)


 * Both running and keeping Porter were brewed throughout the 19th century. According to Loftus, these were usually sold blended, in fact he goes so far as to recommend that mild (running) Porter never be sold in its pure state. But after 1870, as the "stale" taste lost popularity, Porter was increasingly sold "MIld", that is with no Brettanomyces character at all. Though the continued production of keeping Porter suggests that some was still blemded with aged beer.


 * The presence of both keeping and running versions of some of the Stouts implies that a similar situation existed for these beers. The strongest Stouts (Russian Stout) seem to only exist in keeping versions.


 * There's an interesting statement on page 315 of the Clausen text: "Most of the difficulties connected with conditioning the beer can doubtless be avoided, as well as the work done for this purpose, such as rolling the casks." When I worked for Courage I can remember being told how the barrels of Courage Russian Stout needed to be kicked around the brewery yard once every few weeks. I always wondered why they needed to do that.


 * To summarise, any level of Brettanomyces appears to be acceptable: straight young Porter with no Brett, blended Porter with a third brett aged beer, export Porter that was all or mostly Brett aged. A similar situation occurred with Stout, though with perhaps a greater emphasis on aged (Brett) beer.


 * Aged (Brett) Porter declined quickly at the end of the 19th century and by 1914 was sold exclusively mild. However, Brett aging of Stout continued, in the case of Courage Russian Stout right up until 1993.


 * I hope you find this intersting and useful. I have a lot more detailed information about brewing in London 1805-1940. You just have to ask.


 * And I really am interested in trying what you brew.Patto1ro 22:11, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

False claims
Your claims of vandalism here are unacceptable when all it was was someone else's POV. Calling other people's POV vandalism is not acceptable. Please dont repeat, SqueakBox 04:57, 23 April 2007 (UTC)


 * In that case I reverted three edits, as referred to in my edit summary. --Stlemur 11:45, 23 April 2007 (UTC)