At what point did your homebrew go from good to great?

I am still a long way from making a great beer. Every batch has gotten better than the last. Yup I use pre hopped kits but going from Corn sugar to LME and dry hopping has helped me make something that is far better than Molson makes. It might not be anywhere near an AG but I'm sure it won't be long until I'm giving that a try.

"At what point did your homebrew go from good to great?".....I'm still waiting....

Denny said:

"At what point did your homebrew go from good to great?".....I'm still waiting....

Click to expand...

Thanks. Now I have to wipe soda out of my keyboard.

YooperBrew said:

I think temperature control and pitching the proper amounts of yeast (instead of just pouring in a package) is what boosted my beer's quality from "ok" to "excellent".

Click to expand...

lol - I think that's what helped me go from "yuck" to "ok this is pretty good"

personally I think the thing that helped me get to really good bordering on excellent beer was learning not to use so much of everything -- somehow when I got started I got the idea that if a quarter pound of specialty grains was good, then a half pound must be twice as good, or that an extra ounce of cascades were needed for no other reason than I had a pound in the freezer, or .060 must be better than .040 -- that was a hard habit to break, but sometimes less is more

My earliest improvement was to stop wildly experimenting all the time.

The biggest improvement was surrounding myself with great brewers. It forced me to look at my beer in a new light. I'd taste their creations and have to figure out how the heck they did it!

Really, a good brew club can mean the difference. Seeing others brew and talking out issues with experienced brewers is a great way to learn.

jds said:

Thanks. Now I have to wipe soda out of my keyboard.

Click to expand...

How about if I buy ya a beer to make it up to ya?

Still waiting....

This book blew me away , and the Randy Mosher did too.thats when It all just clicked and i saw the light..I became the Rain Man of Brewing...I now just walk into a brew shop and can build a recipe from memory, from the heart man, from the liver. Every grain bag is its own nebula pouring into the swirling vortex .
I am the Creator....Of Beer.

Mine improved when I got out of the joint and could ferment my apple juice in a glass jar with an airlock instead of a plastic bag in the cell toilet.

Denny said:

How about if I buy ya a beer to make it up to ya?

Click to expand...

Any time you're in Denver, it's a deal. I'll stand the second round.

At what point did your homebrew go from good to great?

From bottle to belly!

Donner said:

I don't want to speak for anyone who has chimed in about going AG, but i'm curious if they feel that their improvement was a combination of going all-grain, but also having refined their process...

Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm late to this thread... but I don't care.
I brewed extract with steeping grains and then partial mash for so long that I suffered a short set-back when I went all grain. My recipe's developed over many trials and (well, no real errors, just not exactly what I wanted) that it took me some time to get the AG versions back to where I had developed the PM's.
I have really enjoyed some of the new things I have done with AG though.

I brewed with extract for about 5 years and was making some pretty good beers, but I couldn't get a beer with a real clean taste, there always seemed to be some residual sweetness from extract.

Then I went to small partial mash for about 3 or 4 batches. During that time I wrapped my head around the whole theory of mashing and realized the flavor differences.

I went straight for all grain within a few months. I think that time period where I was doing partial mashes was when my beer changed radically.

And after about 15 years of brewing, I'm very happy with my beers.

~r~

My biggest hurtle is trying to not to try so hard. After stumbeling/crashing through extract, all grain, kegging and all that, I'm finally now chilling my dill with extract and steeping while trying to do the essentials. To me the essentials are: clean buckets, good pitching/fermenting temps (I take all the time I need to cool the beer down for a good pitching temp) and patience.

I remember doing an experiment to compare agave syrup to maple. I split a batch and left them ferment in a room with open windows while Boston had a heat wave; those beers turned into rocket fuel. It was shortly after that I was reading an interview where Jamil Zainasheff, talked about how pitching and fermentation temps made the beer. It was a real simple focus that made my future beers -no matter how difficult/extravagant I made the process- better.

If I do those things and my recipe isn't too "experimental", chances are the beer is going to be great.

.

On my second batch! The first 4 were Northern Brewer extract kits. On the first one I let the fermentation temperature get too warm, on the second one I corrected that, it was one of my best in the 18 that I have tasted so far.

This includes extract, partial mash, Biab and all grain.

All grain
Water treatment
yeast starter

Two and three are interchangeable. Temp control is my next hurdle.

Went from bad to o.k. by fermenting under 80F

At what point did your homebrew go from good to great?

Click to expand...

1. When I went AG.
2. When I stopped trying to brew crazy beers like the Artichoke-Vanilla-Chocolate-Imperial-Sour-Smoked-Lager, dry-hoped with herring, shetake mushrooms and blue-cheese olives.

BTW, Yooper: I HEART your new avatar!

I can't say when it happened but 120 batches in now. my ales are every bit as good as what I can/might buy and I have proved it in blind tastings. I'm a happy camper. er,... brewer.

Not "great", but my beers have been pretty damn good since I switched to AG. But it's also a combination of other things. I'd say correct fermentation temps first, AG second, and proper pitching rates third. Those are the main three things that I've noticed to have the biggest impact on the quality of my beers. :rockin: Without question, correct ferm temps take the gold.