You know tonight I moved (transfered) a northern german pilsner to my corny to sit for a couple more weeks, as long as my Highland Heavy ale and Diablo extract doesnt run out beforehand. In the process, I started thinking to myself, self, you are to hard on yourself! In my last message I shared my concern of my mashing efficiency with not getting a full boil of 5 gallons upon the finished product. I may have only ended up with 3 or 4 gallons intead of 5, but it tasted good! So thoughts had led me to many steps that might have been the culprit of poor eff.,even as a newly aquiated homebrewer, Such as-My homemade gain mill,turkey pot,homemade propane stands/burners,exhaust fan hood to allow me to complete these beers in my favorite room,homemade chiller,Damn! I think I,m only into this about 300 bucks!!With only a year at this and only 4 ag batches,I was being to critical on myself,and as I read all these posts about efficiencies I now think its overrated and I should be proud of my accomplishments of making a good tasteing beer,Ex: why do you think Samuel Adams uses more hops than that piss beer Budwieser,sure it COSTS more,but it taste better!!and I think thats why we all got started in this hobby. I hope this message makes sences, and furthermore will help you to take one step at a time and craft these beers with your own personal trials. Good luck and happy homebrewing.

I agree, I track my efficiency for the sole purpose of having a stable process that will yield the result I am expecting. When coming up with recipes to make I generally don't think about style guidelines, more "is this a beer I think will be good". Once I think I got it right then I'll use my software and see where it falls as far as numbers, then I consider the ingredients. Although I won't change a recipe to follow a style, just make adjustments after a tasting.

I agree that great beer should be the real goal. Everything else is superfluous.

That's not to say that there isn't a place for style guidelines or discussions on mash efficiency, proper pitching rates, aeration, fermentation temperatures, etc. Diving into the details and trying to tweak things toward perfection adds to the fun of it all. But at the end of the day all I really care about is that the beer in my glass tastes good.