Ohh, perhaps you may be being a bit harsh on comercial brewers? I think what I've made is better than SOME beers I've had in pubs but not all. I also love Victorian London pubs and could never replace going down the pub with staying at home.
Still impressed with what I've made so far and looking forward to making more.
Oh, your right. I dont mean to say ALL commercial beer is **** but we've all been down the pub or bought a bottle from the supermarket and the beers is mediocre or down right cack , and you think, I've just paid X quid for this!
As you start to make more styles and brews you'll start to think to yourself, "I've got a beer in this style at home and mine tastes better/is easily as good as this" or "I bet I could make a beer better than this"
I think what I'm saying is, good, tasty beer is actually quite easy to make (I'm not saying your going to win gold medals with every batch you make) but with all their commercial muscle why aren't almost all comercial beers great? Take BMC (bud, miller coors) beers for example. Now I've never drank any of them but they've got a reputation for being insipid pish. But why? I've been following a thread over on our sister forum homebrewtalk (
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=123937), where the forumites have been making an ale version of these BMC beers and for the most part most of the forumites have been making a fantastic lawnmower beer. So what do or dont do AB Inbev (I think it's AB Inbev that makes these beers) to turn out millions of gallons of pish when the HBT forumites can turn the basic reciepe into great beer
I think mother nature actually wants us to make beer. The ingredients are simple hops, water, barley and yeast. But It's the yeast that does most of the work. As the saying goes, 'Brewers make wort, yeast makes beer', and as long as you have fresh(ish) ingredients, a decent receipe and time, It's actually really hard to feck it up. I read time and time again on the forum, new brewers being surprised at how good the beer is that they've made. They shouldn't be. God wants you to homebrew!