The International Bitterness Unit (IBU) wasn't invented to tell beer drinkers how bitter a beer would taste. It was invented to help brewers make more consistent beer. Somewhere along the way, the brewing industry's quality control measurement became a consumer-facing marketing number—and that's where much of the confusion began.

It's been 77 days since I brewed my 100% Brett-fermented beer, and I'm happy to report three things.

The very best way to think of the difference between extract brewing and all-grain brewing is to think of the difference between using a cake mix and baking a cake from scratch.

Even allowing for the fact that much of what we know about topics such as medicine and longstanding popular commercial products was the result of old-timey people saying "I wonder what this does. Death? Okay, then let's not do it quite like that anymore. How about when I do this?", getting from a fish to its bladder to use of said bladder in clarifying beer seemed like a huge leap. Like how many other things were people dumping in beer before they got around to thinking of drying a fish's bladder and then tossing it into beer?

Being able to visualize what kinds of ingredients are in my beer adds to my enjoyment of it. It's sort of like when you see the music video for a song you like, in that the next time you hear that song, you'll have an image of the song being performed.