Tips?

Havent started yet but am going to brew beer. I am going to go to midwest or northern brewer and grab a few kits to try first. Any tips for a first time brewer? Thanks

Grow a beard first. The quality of your beer will improve dramatically.

Read as many of the "new brewer" threads here as you can.

Brew beer you like to drink. I started by brewing a few kits of beer I didnt normally drink and decided they werent very good. It turned me off the hobby. A few years later I ecided to try again, and I love it...

skor said:

Havent started yet but am going to brew beer. I am going to go to midwest or northern brewer and grab a few kits to try first. Any tips for a first time brewer? Thanks

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Start with an extract kit.....

Watch a bunch of videos on YouTube.

This whole forum is a series of tips. ESPECIALLY the stickeys at the top of the beginner's forum. You want we should type em all in here for you?

Do some reading on here of the stickeys, and the discussions that are active on here, and you'll pick up a ton of tips.

Enjoy the obsession.

Palmer's "How To Brew", got me started.

This thread alone if full of a ton of tips.

Here's some of my info geared to the new brewer.

Revvy's advice for the new brewer in terms of worry.

What are some of the mistakes you made...where your beer still turned out great?

And Never dump your beer!!! Patience IS a virtue!!! Time heals all things, even beer!

Bottling Tips for the Homebrewer

evrose said:

Grow a beard first. The quality of your beer will improve dramatically.

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+1 for this. As my beard has grown, my skills and knowledge have as well.

And seriously, spend more time reading this forum. Listen to podcasts like Brew Strong, Beer smith, and Basic Brewing Radio. Watch Brewing Tv. All of these have helped me since I started.

thanks for the tips guys ill keep reading

I liked your answer revvy. Well both. I've been all-grain for a year now and mostly everything that I have learned, other than from personal experience, has been from reading on this forum. That's the best tip that I can give. If it has happened to you, it has happened to someone else by now. There have only been a few major topics that I have started threads about, because I couldn't find the answer in my research that would satisfy me. Read, read, read. Be interested enough to become obsessed and learn.

If I had to give you one tip, I would say be organized. Things go much smoother when you have everything you need all laid out so you don't have to search for anything. Sometimes things go awry, and it's much easier to deal with when you have everything at hand.

-Filter your brewing water or treat it with campden prior to brewing in order to remove chlorine and chloramines. This will avoid chlorophenols which don't taste or smell good.

-Pitch the proper amount of yeast. That means a proplerly rehydrated pack of dry yeast or a liquid yeast grown up in a starter as calculated at mrmalty.com (or slurry from a previous beer once you start brewing). Making the yeast happy makes the beer good, and pitching the proper amount of yeast makes them happy.

-Control your ferment temperatures. That means not only keeping them in the range they are happy in, but avoid cyclical temperature changes as well. Don't forget that a beer will probably be fermenting 5-7 degrees F above the ambient temperature when it gets really active, so keep the ambient temperature at least 7 degrees below the yeasts' listed max. This makes the yeasts happy too.

If you do those three simple things, your beer will be worlds ahead of most beginners.

1. Read the directions that came with the kit a FEW times. If you have any questions the time to get answers is before you start.

2. Do a dry run. This will help to see if you have your sanitation procedures down pat.

3. Use water that is suitable for brewing.

4. Be patient and before you go from one step in the procedure to the next make sure you or your beer is ready. This is where you may want to ignore some printed directions when it comes to fermentation, carbonation and conditioning times.

5. Keep the temperatures at each stage where they are supposed to be.

6. Enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Bosco