Taking Notes

Hello,
I was introduced to this forum through a friend and could not be happier with the health of information here. I have been very impressed with how helpful, encouraging, and courteous members are. I have used other forums for my hobbies and profession and have been turned off by the immaturity. My compliments to the members here

I am new to homebrewing. I have two extract kits under my belt (plus EdWort's Apfelwein, but that is too simple to really count). I feel like one of the keys to improving both the beer and the process is to learn from mistakes. I am going to start taking notes on the process, but I would like some help with what to take notes on.

Here's what I have so far:

-Recipe
-OG
-FG
-Timeline (how long in primary, secondary, bottles)
-ambient temperature
-lag to start fermentation
-progress in primary (airlock activity, krausen)
-any deviations from recipe, whether planned or accidental
-pictures of course (I've taken a bunch)
-how the beer tastes (can anyone recomment links on specific criteria for tasting beer. Sounds silly, but I've been "tasting" beer for years, but I'm not sure if I could adequately describe it for future reference).

Does anyone have any other ideas?

Thanks for all of your help.

Eric

Try using this: http://hbd.org/recipator/

It's free and you can post your own recipes.

After I fill in all the info I "VIEW" my recipe. Then I CUT and PASTE it into a WORD DOC. The format pastes and all.

I just open it up again as a DOC whenever I need to update the info.

There is also the excellent brew sheet available from Randy Mosher's Radical Brewing website. The sheet is the same one featured in the book for tracking brew details and progress. Good stuff.

Chad

Or if you're computer savvy and prefer everything electronic, check out brewing software. I use BeerSmith but there is also ProMash and some others. More info in the brewing software section of these forums.

Welcome to HBT!

A good thing to keep track of is intermediate tastings after you bottle/keg. This way you can know the approximate time to maturity when you repeat a recipe in the future. To be more specific, after you bottle/keg and let the beer mature a few weeks...then one evening crack one open. Take notes of what you are experiencing...i.e. the dominant characteristic(s), any lingering green flavors, etc. A week later try another, on and on...until you hit the taste you were anticipating for the brew. You may never get there, which would mean you need to go back and rethink the recipe. And after that keep notes on the flavor until you finish the batch. What you'll find will be very enlightening as you'll be able to see that each recipe has it's sweet spot. You really only need to do this once for a recipe if you take good notes (or alter the recipe), and with future repeats of the recipe you'll be able to know when that batch should be in i t's prime. It may be a little off depending on a few factors, but it should put you right in the ballpark.

It migt be overkill for extarct, but I use the log book pages published here. Just fill in the fields that apply.

Kai