I'm not an expert brewer or anything, but I have learned a few things since I started.
I wasn't planning on brewing at all this winter due to time constraints. For the heck of it, I put together a small kitchen brewing system. Its turned out to be my best brewing season yet. I thought I'd share a few things I learned recently.
1) Small batches rule, while you are learning or testing new recipes.
This winter I'm brewing 3 gallon batches. I started doing that because I was watching
www.basicbrewing.com and they were doing it, and I had all the equipment on hand and my HERMs system is sitting in storage, so I decided to give a small batch a try. It turned out to be an excellent way to brew.
Small batches are great because they are quick to brew, they don't cost much to throw away if you mess up, they don't take big expensive equipment and they get you brewing more often.
Practice makes perfect, right ? Well, if you drink 15 gallons of brew a year and you brew 5 gallon batches, you only brew 3x. If you brew 3 gallon batches, you get 5 brew sessions and 5 different brews.
I know that some of you are screaming that 3 gallon batches are just as much work as 5 gallon batches. They pretty much are. But the boil goes faster. The chilling goes faster. There are less grains to dig out of the mash vessel. There is less to bottle. They are easier.
I'll be using 3 gallon batches to test and tweak every recipe I do from now on. Once its perfected with small batches, I'll move to 6, 12 and 15 gallon batches as necessary.
2) Go AG as soon as possible.
I did one extract brew before going AG. I had made a bunch of wines, so I understood the yeast, sanitation and bottling stuff pretty well. I'm glad I didn't spend a whole season messing around with extract beers.
I'm sure that one can make some decent extract beers, but I don't think that extract brewing will give you the control and versatility that AG brewing will. With a good AG setup, you can do pretty much anything that a commercial brewer can. Yes, AG takes more equipment and there is a lot more to go wrong in the process, but the results are worth it.
There is also the cost factor. Big beers get expensive with extracts.
If you are serious about brewing, you'll want to get to AG. The sooner you start, the sooner you'll master it.
3) Get your LHBS to crush your grains.
When you are starting out, especially when you are doing 3 gallon brews, you aren't using a lot of grain. It doesn't pay to buy sacks of malt and it doesn't pay to buy a grain mill. By getting the LHBS to crush your grains, it eliminates one potential area to screw up.
4) Steam mashing with a cooler rules.
Mashing is all about temperature control. Get your temps right and starch conversion is easy. Miss the temperatures and you might as well be thowing darts blindfolded.
Coolers are great at holding temperatures steady over time. Traditionally coolers lack the ability to easily add heat to the mash to do mash steps or reach mash out temps. Adding a steam system to a cooler removes that limitation.
As soon as you add steam to the system, you no longer have to worry about getting the strike temperature exactly right. If you miss it, just give it a shot of steam to get it right.
You don't have to worry about having the best insulated cooler. You can easily boost the temp if it falls.
You can do multi step mashes. And you can heat the mash up for mash out. (Prevent stuck mashes !) Raising the mash temp is as easy as opening the steam valve and doing a bit of stirring. You don't need to buy a pump. You don't need to worry about scorching wort. You don't need to worry about diluting the mash. Its fast and efficient.
See the threads in my sig for my steam setup. Flyguys has posts on his steam setup too.
I've got more to say, but I'll leave it at that for now.
Good luck and good brewing.
My 2 cents for newbies...
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