I was wondering how widespread the procedure of sampling is among you guys? Privately I am only hand brewing and brewing batches of 25litres (about 6.5 gallons) so I would rather taste if the beer is good enough.
But if you are micro brewers or mini brewers and using different tanks for propagation, fermentation and storage and brewing larger batches it might be worth sampling to find off flavours or chemical/biological off standards.
Are you doing that? How much? Does it make a difference
cheers
David Funt

I typically sample my brews after I take gravity readings - OG reading and FG reading. I also try to sample a little when I transfer from primary to secondary. I figure I have taken a sample for other reasons (i.e. gravity reading), why not taste it?

I don't use sampling as a function of taste testing or quality control. I have had some not so great tasting samples along the way, but have turned out great batches. It's more of a curiosity and experience thing for me.

I think tasting and evaluating your wort and beer at all steps can be useful.

For a while, tasting at every step will help you get an intuative feel for the quality of your wort and beer. I can taste the wort on the way to the primary and predict the balance and tastes of the finished beer. Tasting also helps you to interpret what you measure, along the way.

Kev

I taste at every step and never do gravity readings, even though I've recently started useing mini-mashes in conjunction with extract. Tasteing is probably not the best way, or even close to the best way, of telling whether you've converted the grain into malt, but I'm just too lazy to use a hydrometer, and in general take a very laissez faire attitude to brewing. When I had just started out I was worried that one of my batches was infected, and I think it was Jeepguy who said "just taste it, if it tastes okay don't worry about it," or something to that effect. I have come to apply that principle universally.