What 3 things have you done since you started brewing, to make better beer?

1. Fermentation temperature control

2. Aeration. Rather an O2 system or a whip for a cordless drill.....no more stuck fermentations

3. All Grain

i echo many things said on this thread, here are my three:

1) MOVED TO BREWING OUTSIDE - never forget the day Alex at the LHBS looked at me curiously when i was lamenting having to brew inside on hot summer days and said "why don't you move your brewing outdoors?" Toal gamechanger! more fun (obviously) and eventually led past the turkey fryer to the blichman. Heading into winter now and still determined to keep this an outdoors activity.

2) ALL GRAIN - for a lot of obvious reasons already stated. helped me understand ingredients, plan more effectively and craft beers to my tastes.

3) PUT YEAST AT THE CENTER OF RECIPE PLANNING - when i started out home brewing i just thought of yeast as a common ingredient, but i soon realized its impact and have learned to leverage its impact by focussing on yeast starters, pitching rate, temp control etc.

I'm still new to brewing. But my beer quality has increased exponentially in my first year.

#1 Switching to Partial Mash: I can mash 8 lbs in my current system.

#2 Aerating with a Sanitized Paint Stirrer: I still can't believe the difference over just shaking the fermenter. Definitely a big difference in my FG.

#3 Joining HBT: By far the biggest impact on my beer. Thank you.

#1 Yeast Health- making starters and using an oxygen system from Williams

#2 Swamp Cooler- at least until I can buy a new house with room for a converted freezer

#3 Brewing more- seems obvious but now that I am brewing 2x a month and taking notes I seem to really be improving as methods become more standardized and I learn my system better.

All grain.
Grain mill (BC)
Tighten it up till I started sweating during sparging.

-Stopped drinking so damn much during brew day
-Began doing partial mashes (AG is just too much stress for my back)
-Condition, condition, condition!

1. Fermentation temp control. Hands down the biggest bang for my buck.

2. Experimenting! Now that I experiment I know so much more about what works and what doesn't in my beers.

3. Tasting and evaluating other beers. This doesn't seem brought up specifically yet. I know it is implied in the homebrew club answers but I feel it deserves special mention. Evaluating my own beer is easy because I know what went in it. Evaluating others challenges my palate and forces me to think of ingredients and procedures I normally don't use.

1) yeast love. Pitching enough at a reasonable temperature and giving it enough time to do its work.

2) iBrewmaster.

3) BIAB.

all grain - i started all grain early, and actually now do kind of a partial mash with DME, but to really get mastery of what you want you have to do some all grain batches.

temp control - nuff said. gotta do it

sanitation - Ive never had a sanitation problem because i was thorough about it, but looking at others whove messed up from not being thorough, majorly important if you want to make beer, not just play at making beer.

1) All Grain - I instantly noticed that my beers tasted "cleaner" after I started brewing all grain.

2) Patience - I used to seriously lack this, and ended up drinking and serving all of my beers before many of them really came into their own. Three weeks is supposedly the minimum bottle conditioning time, but man do they get better with a few weeks of cold conditioning after that.

3) Experimented with new yeasts - I used to be just a US-05/Notty guy, but built a stirplate and now have branched out. It has really expanded my brewing. Besides, I don't care for notty much anymore and that bastard US-05 has been super peachy on me lately.

I just started in August, but so far, these have made the most notable improvement for me.

1. Fermentation temperature control.
- Wow, took me two brews to figure out that room temp was not fermentation temp. Thermometer strips are a lifesaver.

2. Better filter for my water.
- Had built a filter set up to use from the start, read more about water filters and stepped up to a solid carbon block filter - world of difference

3. Switched to all-grain
- Although I feel I brewed some pretty decent beers with extracts, all grain has added that little something extra that I didn't notice before.

1) Fermentation temp control -- are you starting to see a pattern with all the other replies? My guess is that anyone who didn't put this in their top 3 doesn't have fermentation temp control. (Part of this includes pitch temp too -- I always pitch a few degrees *below* target ferment temp.)

2) More efficient chilling -- Improves consistency of hop utilization, better cold break, etc.

3) Gelatin -- this isn't "beer quality", per se, but getting beer to clear more quickly allows me to drink it fresh and generally gets beer to its "mature" point more quickly. It's probably not actually in my top 3, but nobody else had mentioned it so I threw it in.

bwarbiany said:

1) Fermentation temp control -- are you starting to see a pattern with all the other replies? My guess is that anyone who didn't put this in their top 3 doesn't have fermentation temp control. (Part of this includes pitch temp too -- I always pitch a few degrees *below* target ferment temp.)

2) More efficient chilling -- Improves consistency of hop utilization, better cold break, etc.

3) Gelatin -- this isn't "beer quality", per se, but getting beer to clear more quickly allows me to drink it fresh and generally gets beer to its "mature" point more quickly. It's probably not actually in my top 3, but nobody else had mentioned it so I threw it in.

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Wroooong! I'm just not a parrot that copies what others say because of some lacking of the imagination. At least,it's make me feel that way. Trying to add something else I've learned to the conversation.

unionrdr said:

Wroooong! I'm just not a parrot that copies what others say because of some lacking of the imagination. At least,it's make me feel that way. Trying to add something else I've learned to the conversation.

Click to expand...

LOL... That's why I included #3, since it was new.

I just like to reinforce over and over and over the importance of temp control to new brewers... They spend time and money on all sorts of wort-production gadgets and processes when one of the biggest actual improvements come from buying an old fridge and a temp controller. (At least, I know I did).

I'd rather see new brewers add temp control first and go all-grain later, as far as it affects actual beer quality. I did it the other way around, and I regret that quite a bit today.

I echo everyone's top 3... And that's why I will now put something different:
1. Water analysis from ward labs. I just didn't know what I was dealing with until then. I use RO from home, that I had tested. And spring water from a local spring... Also tested. Put it into a spreadsheet and by adjusting my proportions and making small additions I come close to the correct water for my style... A lot of my styles I use 1/2 RO and 1/2 spring.
2. Keg and filter. Skip the whole house cartridge water filter and just go with the Plate style filter for about $50-60. The plates are cheaper than the 10in cartridges and give a much better result. Helped my homebrews, especially Lagers make the leap to pro quality.... I only filter styles that need super clarity, most ales go unfiltered in my house. But I did need to rush a wit last spring, and filtering had it ready and mellowed out long before it would have conditioned to the right point. Darn brew fests just sneak up on you!
3. Got a 2 burner camp stove for mothers day... Lead to better boils and better quality than my weak indoor boils. 2nd burner comes in handy for decoctions. This lead to my bigger badder brew pot and a bigger wort chiller. I'll taste the difference a 10 min chill makes over a 30 min chill after I keg my next batch.

bwarbiany said:

LOL... That's why I included #3, since it was new.

I just like to reinforce over and over and over the importance of temp control to new brewers... They spend time and money on all sorts of wort-production gadgets and processes when one of the biggest actual improvements come from buying an old fridge and a temp controller. (At least, I know I did).

I'd rather see new brewers add temp control first and go all-grain later, as far as it affects actual beer quality. I did it the other way around, and I regret that quite a bit today.

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Yeah,temp control is def a good thing. Moreso than AG or playing mad scientist with their first batch. Gotta agree on that.