better beer?

What can I do to make better beer? I want to make excellent beer all of the time and from what Im told I usually do but any tips or methods on anything from mashing styles/profiles, grains, hops, aging, ect. any tips on anything someone has been quite succsessfull with would be greatly appriceated. Also soon I will select several fellow brewmeisters from this forum and send them one of my better beers for judgement so keep an eye out.
Thanks
Don

There are so many little details! Make sure that you hit your target temperatures for mashing, and make sure you know what temperatures you want for the desired result. Be sure your water is good, since your water makes up the vast majority of your beer. This includes mineral composition and softness. Make sure you come up to around 170 degrees for mashout, and keep your temperature up there for sparging. Definitely make sure that you use good ingredients. Use something like maris otter for pale malt, or whatever taste you prefer. Get good yeast and use a really kickin' yeast starter. Oxygenate your wort well prior to pitching. Keep fermentation temperatures constant. Know what works best for your system.

There are many details that you can watch, but most importantly, brew what you like to brew, and brew what you enjoy best. This should be fun above all else. There's not much point in minding all of the little details if it starts to feel like work and less like a relaxing and enjoyable hobby.

Just follow the conversations on this site, and read the wiki in your spare time. That will help you tremendously if you want to brew better beer.

Quality ingredients and attention to detail. Document what you do, as you do it. Learn to taste and evaluate beers. If there are brewing or judging classes available, take them. Stay within style guides, if you are brewing a specific style. I'm not saying never brew outside the guides, just accept that weird recipes get weird results. Sometimes very good weirdness. But, you are far more likely to get good results making moderate changes.

I agree with David most all of the time. You might want to put him on the "send to" list.

Patience
Care
Sanitation

david_42 said:

Stay within style guides, if you are brewing a specific style. I'm not saying never brew outside the guides, just accept that weird recipes get weird results. Sometimes very good weirdness. But, you are far more likely to get good results making moderate changes.

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I am typically pretty anti-style. But, that being said, styles and recipes are awesome tools for learning how the flavors work and where they come from. Just be sure to get the recipes from good sources and follow the recipes, if it calls for one ounce of hops, two is not better .

I'm in total agreement with the above. The only thing I'd add is to taste your ingredients individually, getting a sense of whether or not you'd like a little more of THAT in your beer. Flavors change, of course, during the process, but you can get an idea of what more or less of a thing will do by being familiar with its flavors.

Cheers, and happy adventuring! -p

I agree. Learn the rules. Learn how to break the rules.

I have a section at the bottom of my brew sheet called, "Lessons Learned". When I experiment with a beer, I keep track of all the things that went wrong and all the things that went right.

Oh, and lots of practice.