From The Brewers’ Guardian – 1883
Few brewers are fully aware of the paramount importance of uniformity in their work. The whole question of extraction and fermentation is just one of those about which there is so little really known that it leaves a wide field for conjecture and theory. Through centuries of practical work it has been found that definite modes of procedure produced certain results, and each succeeding generation of brewers through carefully observing the effects, sometimes of accidental changes, improved their mode of working, and handed down to their descendants as a valuable receipt the modus operandi whereby the improvement was obtained, without they themselves or their successors troubling themselves about the reason why, and they were firmly persuaded that to deviate a fraction from their system would entail ruin, although their next door neighbour made equally good beer on quite a different plan. And yet they were quite right, for so very slight an alteration in the manner of working changes the whole affair, that to make one may necessitate a change right through every detail of the process.
How often has it not happened that when a brewer who is successful in trade, finding that his small plant is not sufficiently powerful for his increasing business, builds a large and expensive one replete with all modern improvements, and finds to his sorrow that he cannot make the same good ale in it that he formerly manufactured in his old despised brewhouse. In nine cases out of ten it is no fault whatever of the new brewery, but is simply that the brewer does not realise the fact that with his new plant and new machinery some alterations must be made in his mode of working. The most successful brewer of even the present day is in the majority of cases the one who acts on the plan of sticking in the old groove. The majority of brewers are not sufficiently well up in their business to make it safe for them to leave it, and their best plan is to stick religiously to the mode of working that practical experience has taught them is best adapted to the circumstances in which they are placed.
Our advice is, do not despise or overlook the small matters, and if you are making good beer, and have got, so to speak, into a good groove, stop there, and make each succeeding brew the exact counterpart of its predecessor; do not neglect even the smallest details – you do not realise their importance. There is, perhaps, no class of manufacturers more self-satisfied than brewers when they are successful, and no class more hopelessly at sea when anything goes wrong.
reprinted from the Australian Brewers’ Journal.
Crescent City Brew Talk 