Thread: Brew Beer or Razor Restoration

I said do both. My reasoning is that when your wife gets upset that you are spending all of your time playing with your razors you can come back at her by saying you also spend some of your time brewing beer.

Originally Posted by natepaint

Right now I'm leaning toward brewing. If it is easier than I think, I could easily go into restoration, if I'm wrong and brewing is harder than I thought, then SR-CMT, makes a good point.

This is not my final decision.

There are a lot of microbreweries here and from what I could gather from the owners and etc... brewing is VERY, very difficult to master. I mean, sure you can make 100 gallons of cheap stuff easy... but the good stuff is more akin to science.

I'm not saying there's no science in razor restoration but it's more of a craft, IMO. Not really wanting to look pedantic or open up a debate here but after a couple weeks of reading about razors/restoration/honing I feel like I pretty much know most things I need to know. Am I eager to learn even more? Yes... but I will learn most things from practice and experimentation.

That is also true of brewing but you're playing with living matter and there are a lot more variables invoved... a lot!

You can definitely learn to do both at the same time...

Originally Posted by Stubear

Set the beer up to brew and then, while thats going on, break out the Dremel and the MAAS and get restoring!

You must not understand how much work is involved in making your own brew - if you do it right. I used to make my own ESB but ran into a problem. The problem was everyone was willing to come over and help me drink my beer - - I made good beer - but NO ONE was willing to help me make it - and it really is labor intensive for what you get.

I started brewing 25 years ago when I was too young to buy alcohol. I could buy ingredients for making bread such as malt and yeast and hops to spice the bread. With modern ingredients it is very easy to make a great beer, much better than the beer you get in a bottle. Brewing is an art that you will get better at with experience but mastery of all the components is very elusive.

I would compare brewing to cookies. The cookies you buy at the store range from very good to really bad. The cookies coming out of your oven tend to be better than the store.

^^^ great analogy

Brew first then restore.

Getting started in brewing is not all that difficult and there is a lot of waiting involved. Brewing is a hobby that can be as simple or as complicated as you make it. I generally make a couple of batches a year. The easy one, an all extract batch, takes one afternoon to start and one afternoon to bottle, plus a single trip to the brew store for a can of extract and appropriate yeast. The other batch (which sometimes I don't get around to) takes the same trip to the store but has a bunch more ingredients from whole grains, to extracts and hops and yeast, this is a more from scratch batch. It usually takes a full day to start (mostly because there are more steps and a lot more junk to clean) and an afternoon to bottle. That second batch also requires a lot more knowledge and research into the whole process, as well as planning time. The first batch usually gets planned while I am looking over the selections at the store

I have the mind set right now that brewing is another form of art so I will spending a lot of time on the basics and will try to keep it as simple as possible. This may be a long journey to master, but I'm willing to attempt it and if doesn't turn out to be something that I enjoy doing, I would hope that I would at least get a few good batches of beer.
nate

If it's all the same to you, just brew the beer. I agree, Max & Glen can handle most of SRP member's retoration needs but we have no-one who brews a custom beer yet. You might find yourself suddenly with many more "friends".

On a less selfish note: Do both if you find the time. Beer brewing obviously interests you, otherwise you wouldn't be thinking of it, so I am even going not going to tell you to restore razors and forget about the beer. Both sounds good.