Tips you would like to have known when you first started brewing?

[AustriaJoe]

Hello,
Any tips, from grain milling, fermentation disaster and success, to sanitation and simplifying the process of brewing, any tips welcome!

Here are some more personalized/specific questions

Now my most recent IPA. Tastes better than three different ipa’s I bought at the store so in my opinion a success however,

I did have some questions:
1. How important is water PH? Because I don’t adjust mine and the beers I’ve made have come out great, except two one had a pretty bad infection the other I burnt the grain bag.
2. Krausen After 3 week ferment (california ale yeast white labs) dry hopped at first day of fermentation(next one I will do after 5 days) temperature fluctuated a lot in that room. And the sediment was CRAZY like up to the 5 liter mark on my bucket. Even though we strained the flour from the grains after milling. Is this also an infection? The lid of the bucket had mold, but again the beer tastes great.
3. if I add fruit during fermentation (specifically frozen fruit on day 7 of a wheat beer fermentation) does the flavor carry over in a three week ferment?

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

It takes a LONG time! My brew day is about 10 hours. Then must wait for fermentation and packaging.

Oh, yeah and NEVER give homebrew to friends and they will just guzzle and not appreciate. Have BMC for friends Or, if you do give homebrew to friends/relatives/etc they will constantly bug you for more.

As a beginning, don't worry about water pH.

Sounds like the yeast flocculation. This is good. Save the yeast and pitch in next brew.

If adding fruit must decide 1. I want additional fermentation or 2. I don't want additional fermentation.

How to you plan to package finished beer? Bottles or keg (and force carbonate with CO2)?

 

[AustriaJoe]

It takes a LONG time! My brew day is about 10 hours. Then must wait for fermentation and packaging.

Oh, yeah and NEVER give homebrew to friends and they will just guzzle and not appreciate. Have BMC for friends Or, if you do give homebrew to friends/relatives/etc they will constantly bug you for more.

As a beginning, don't worry about water pH.

Sounds like the yeast flocculation. This is good. Save the yeast and pitch in next brew.

If adding fruit must decide 1. I want additional fermentation or 2. I don't want additional fermentation.

How to you plan to package finished beer? Bottles or keg (and force carbonate with CO2)?

Hi,
Thanks for the reply!
Bottles. Cleaning them is getting a little annoying but I don’t think I’m ready for kegs just jet, I feel the bottles are simple enough.

I don’t mind additional fermentation time for the fruit.

also I didn’t know that that’s a good sign of healthy yeast, thanks!

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

If the fruit is fermented then probably will not have the desired fruit aroma. Will have higher alcohol ABV due to the sugars in the fruit. If bottling, way around this problem, is to use fruit extract at bottling time.

 

[rburrelli]

Straining flour from the grain after milling is not something that we tend to do. You are throwing away starches. Flour is not going to cause any issues. Unless you have some HUGE amount.

 

[NewJersey]

I wish someone had told me about:
Biab. I upgraded from gas 3v to eBIAB and love it
Co2 blanket is a myth/how oxidation effects beer
I also wish someone had suggested all the good brewing books
CAMPDEN TABLETS- at a minimum I feel like this should be stickied in every part of the forum.
I have never brewed with another brewer and have to this day never joined a homebrew club. To this day I wish I had joined a club before I even brewed a beer. I feel like I could have skipped so many mistakes and avoided rebuying so many things so many times. I brewed before I even found HBT.
Spending 2-3 hours a week poking around here for a month before buying anything would've been good enough even.

 

[AustriaJoe]

If the fruit is fermented then probably will not have the desired fruit aroma. Will have higher alcohol ABV due to the sugars in the fruit. If bottling, way around this problem, is to use fruit extract at bottling time.

Awesome, thanks for the tip!

 

[AustriaJoe]

Straining flour from the grain after milling is not something that we tend to do. You are throwing away starches. Flour is not going to cause any issues. Unless you have some HUGE amount.

It was a few 100 grams.
I think instead of using the valve this time, I’m going to use the auto siphon to transfer the liquid into the fermenter, keep the sediment at the bottom. And keep the flour in it then.
thanks!

 

[AustriaJoe]

I wish someone had told me about:
Biab. I upgraded from gas 3v to eBIAB and live it
Co2 blanket is a myth/how oxidation effects beer
I also wish someone had suggested all the good brewing books
CAMPDEN TABLETS- at a minimum I feel like this should be stickied in every part of the forum.
I have never brewed with another brewer and have to this day never joined a homebrew club. To this day I wish I had joined a club before I even brewed a beer. I feel like I could have skipped so many mistakes and avoided rebuying so many things so many times. I brewed before I even found HBT.
Spending 2-3 hours a week poking around here for a month before buying anything would've been good enough even.

Love this! Thanks! Campden tablets I will try them! Not used them yet

 

[mcmeador]

1) Using simple sanitizers like Starsan and Iodophor. Didn’t know anything about those at first, so I used bleach to sanitize. On a related note, I also didn’t realize that anything that would be used before flameout didn’t need to be sanitized, so I was spending unnecessary time and energy sanitizing everything.

2) Using a wort chiller. Didn’t know anything about those, so I was relying on an ice bath to chill my wort post-boil. I was really worried my first batch was going to be ruined because it took so long to cool it. I ran out of ice in the freezer and had to leave the house to go buy more while the wort sat there exposed to the elements. Turned out ok, though.

 

[NewJersey]

Love this! Thanks! Campden tablets I will try them! Not used them yet

They are for getting chlorine out of your water

 

[TkmLinus]

One trick I recently learned is to use 5 gallon paint straining bags when racking from kettle to fermenter and also when racking from fermenter to bottling bucket(Find at big box hardware store). To sanitize just boil water, when boiling cut off heat and submerge straining bag for 5 minutes. This is great for getting loose hops/ trub/ or other additions that get sucked through your siphon.

 

[JimRausch]

Time management. I definitely never thought about how long the whole process took before my 1st brewday. It was the day after Christmas (Christmas present of a kit), and I told my wife I'd be ready to leave to go visit family "in about an hour and 1/2". 3 hours later...........

 

[undergroundbrewer]

When buying a kettle, get one with a ball valve (or add one). Much safer / cleaner than lifting 40+ pounds or sanitizing an auto siphon. Also, get a fermenting vessel with a wide mouth. So much easier to clean

 

[Beenym88]

My biggest to recommendations would be a simple way to control temperature anvil makes cool sticks and a pump for about 100 it’s great. Fermentation temperature control is everything. The second one would be to invest in a fermenter with a spigot like a brew bucket or the big mouth bubbles so that way you do not have to siphon for samples. I make lots of fruit beers it’s very important to make sure the hydrometer reading had been steady or it can referment and be dangerous. One week should give you flavor but you need a LOT of fruit if you want a serious fruit flavor. For my Christmas fruited beer I used a 20oz bottle of cranberry purée from Amoretti and still wasnt happy with so added 4 more pounds of frozen fruit. You will typically need at least a pound per gallon.

 

[twd000]

One trick I recently learned is to use 5 gallon paint straining bags when racking from kettle to fermenter and also when racking from fermenter to bottling bucket(Find at big box hardware store). To sanitize just boil water, when boiling cut off heat and submerge straining bag for 5 minutes. This is great for getting loose hops/ trub/ or other additions that get sucked through your siphon.

Are you using the paint strainer bag in front or behind the siphon? Just wrapping it around the intake?

 

[kidmock]

Things I've learn from the beers I've dumped

1. Have fun. Relax. Have a homebrew.
2. Water is important but not that important filter out chlorine with a charcoal filter or buy it. Spring not distilled. You only need to worry about salts and PH if you are going for something very specific.
3. Temperature Control, Temperature Control, Temperature Control. It makes all the difference all the way through. Getting the right starch conversion in your Mash, Preventing boil overs, Getting a good cold break, reducing off flavors in fermentation
4. Watch out of suck back. During fermenting, your wort will warm up. When it cools back down, it can suck the stuff out of your airlock. If this happens, you could infect your beer. Use Star-San or Vodka in your airlock.
5. Make sure you have good head space in your fermenter and watch for blow off. Same Reason as 4. If you get a blow out change your airlock with a clean sanitized vessel.
6. When Dry hopping, be careful not to introduce bugs or oxygen. I like dry hop at peak fermentation activity.
7. Healthy yeast makes health beer.

 

[balrog]

Patience.

In all things.

As to the filtering, I dump the entirety of the BIAB kettle into the fermenter, wort, break material, hop material, and sometimes reading glasses. Try not to do that but it still worked. Even dumping everything in, the beer still clears.

With patience.

And repeatability. Do it the same way, every time. When you invariably change something, make it a thing, not things. Keep notes to help repeatability. When something comes out great, you want to be able to do it again. Patience in taking notes and not cutting corners.

 

[BongoYodeler]

None really. I initially read up on brewing, watched youtube videos, and then just dove in. It's a fun journey, and through it all my beers have gotten better and better. There's certainly tons of great information here on this site, and everyone is more than willing to offer advice, but to date there is no teacher nor single tip that's more valuable than experience.

 

[TheMadKing]

#1 tip

It's hard to mess it up. Beer is forgiving, so just chill out, don't obsess over details and learn what's important as you go.

 

[flyfishorbrew]

You didn't mention if you're brewing extract or AG but I'm assuming extract in which case pH is not something you have to worry about unless you have very weird water. That being said, if you're brewing all grain this early, my first recommendation would be to brew extract, and my second would be that pH absolutely does matter. I wasted my first three or so all grain brews by not adjusting for pH.

Personally, I don't think a brand new brewer needs to be messing with fruit beers - it introduces so many new variables that can be really difficult to control, and if something goes wrong, it's hard to know exactly where the problem came from. Get your process down first - your sanitation, your time management, and your racking procedures. I would even avoid dry hopping until you feel like you're on top of avoiding oxidation and your sanitation is good. You mentioned mold on your bucket lid in your post. If it actually was mold, that would be a pretty bad sign even if the beer came out ok - more likely though, it was trub/hop gunk. If you could actually SEE an infection, it would probably be too late. In a word, don't be casual about sanitation and brew simple beers - pale ales, brown ales, English styles - to have some confidence-building successes and to keep the process simple.

Use dry yeasts to start! And if using liquid yeasts, look into doing starters, even if you just do shaken starters with no stir plate. Dry yeasts may not seem sexy but they're consistent.

And finally, as others have said, don't feel like you have to use a glass carboy just because that's what you read in a book or what your LHBS told you. Bucket fermenters (with gaskets) and wide-mouthed fermenters are much easier to keep clean, don't shatter, and make dry hopping much easier. Actually, on that note, if you're currently doing secondary fermentation, I'd recommend cutting that out too. There's still some arguments about that and I think once you've been brewing for awhile you'll know when a beer needs a secondary fermentation and when it doesn't (and many people never do it period including myself). I oxidized my beers like crazy when I started racking from primary to secondary (and this is another reason I recommend holding off on fruit beers for awhile).

 

[AustriaJoe]

They are for getting chlorine out of your water

I looked them up, yeah we don’t have excessive chlorine in our water like for example some states. You can taste it in the ice there even when I visited the US. Not something I’d want to taste in beer for sure. Thanks for the tip!

 

[AustriaJoe]

Things I've learn from the beers I've dumped

1. Have fun. Relax. Have a homebrew.
2. Water is important but not that important filter out chlorine with a charcoal filter or buy it. Spring not distilled. You only need to worry about salts and PH if you are going for something very specific.
3. Temperature Control, Temperature Control, Temperature Control. It makes all the difference all the way through. Getting the right starch conversion in your Mash, Preventing boil overs, Getting a good cold break, reducing off flavors in fermentation
4. Watch out of suck back. During fermenting, your wort will warm up. When it cools back down, it can suck the stuff out of your airlock. If this happens, you could infect your beer. Use Star-San or Vodka in your airlock.
5. Make sure you have good head space in your fermenter and watch for blow off. Same Reason as 4. If you get a blow out change your airlock with a clean sanitized vessel.
6. When Dry hopping, be careful not to introduce bugs or oxygen. I like dry hop at peak fermentation activity.
7. Healthy yeast makes health beer.

Wow. This is amazing! Thanks pretty much all of that is news to me. I appreciate you taking th e time to help out!
Everyone has been so helpful and friendly

 

[AustriaJoe]

Patience.

In all things.

As to the filtering, I dump the entirety of the BIAB kettle into the fermenter, wort, break material, hop material, and sometimes reading glasses. Try not to do that but it still worked. Even dumping everything in, the beer still clears.

With patience.

And repeatability. Do it the same way, every time. When you invariably change something, make it a thing, not things. Keep notes to help repeatability. When something comes out great, you want to be able to do it again. Patience in taking notes and not cutting corners.

The more I learn about it...it seems that making beer really is a simple process.... but can be as complicated as you want it to be.
but once you have the fundamentals down YOURE pretty much set.
Thanks!

 

[odie]

the most important thing I wish I knew was that you don't need a bunch of fancy stuff to make good beer. I can't tell you how much "cool" stuff I bought to "improve" my brewing that now just collects dust.

Keep It Simple Stupid. Stick with the basics and don't stray into the blinding light of "Blingdom".

A kettle, a bucket, some bottles and a few items to "connect them all together".

 

[rowanb]

If you decide to keg your beer, it is really handy to be able to use Co2 to push your beer from a fermenter to a keg (aiming for a closed transfer & minimising oxygen pickup). A spunding valve on the receiving keg makes that process easier. Filling your (purged) kegs by weight (sitting the keg on a scale while it fills) also helps with closed transfer.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

we don’t have excessive chlorine in our water

If/when you're brewing with malt extract, remember that the malt extract maker takes just the water out (all the minerals are left behind). If you tap water is low in minerals, it will work - be sure to treat for chlorine/chloramine. Otherwise, you may end up with beer that doesn't taste right (wrong mineral content for the style of beer). If this happens (beer doesn't taste right with an extract batch brewed with tap water), you'll want to try again with distilled, RO, or low mineral water (spring water is often low mineral water).

 

[dbsmith]

For me: keeping fermentation temperatures below 70F will help make it taste so much better.

 

[Brewing in Bethesda]

(1) Be thorough in your sanitation but not psychotic.

(2) If you haven’t already, spring for a good immersion or counterflow chiller. Single easiest way to shorten your brew day.

(3) If you’re not ready to buy a pH meter get some of the brewing specific pH test strips to make sure you are in the neighborhood.

(4) Brew whatever you want but repeatedly brewing a simple recipe with one or two modifications each time is a great way to dial in your process and start to get a handle on recipe design. Look into SMaSH or brewing on the ones.

 

[AirLock Sniffer]

Do your homework, there are plenty of online resources as well as print publications. The brewing forums are excellent, like most hobbies or DIY routines there are always going to be generally accepted practices and standard operating procedures. Many times the benefit is mostly learning what not to do.

Having the right tools is key, it doesn't need to cost a fortune but there's something to be said about not cutting too many corners. I laid in a supply of all the gee gaws, fittings, bottling wand and bottle washer, and various accoutrements and extras and a metric crapton of bottles. Life got in the way and didn't get started brewing until some time later. I was pleased with myself after the fact, everything went pretty smoothly with no major hiccups because the basic equipment needs were well represented. An immersion wort chiller is definitely a plus.

 

[SFC Rudy]

Patience (luckily I started brewing while stationed in Germany so I had access to some great biers!) I read all too often of people opening fermenters during fermentation. Wait 14 days and you'll be rewarded; with experience you'll know when to check. Also brewers opening their bottles after three days and complain about no carbonation. Again, wait 14 days MINIMUM depending on style. Every bottle you open early just to "check" is a good beer that that you will not be able to drink later.

Oh, and you don't need a lot of shiny expensive sh*t to make great beer.

 

[Woodland Brewer]

I think a few things I've learnt being a very, very new brewer is organization has been very big for me. I never seemed to be properly prepared and I'm always running around looking for things at the time I needed it. I bought a brewing box (clear bin) from the dollar store to keep what I needed in. Everything from Campden tablets to Ph strips is in one box, one place and it on the table on brew day.
Totally agree with McMeador [On a related note, I also didn’t realize that anything that would be used before flameout didn’t need to be sanitized, so I was spending unnecessary time and energy sanitizing everything]
and
Brewing In Bethesda [Be thorough in your sanitation but not psychotic]
about cleaning. I absolutely hated the cleaning part and it was ruining my brew day. I thought I had to first clean and then sanitize everything, even if it was already clean from last brew day. You'll be a lot happier on brew day
Last thing. Try some easier beers to start, like SMaSH beers. Simple ingredients and ease into brewing. Beers with multiple grains, adjuncts with multiple hop additions can be overwhelming.
Just my cents from what I'm learning.

 

[Velnerj]

I hope this doesn't cone off as arrogant. When I started I went right into all grain brewing and creating my own recipes. I've never tried extract or using a kit. Here are the tips I would say got me to be able to brew successfully since day 1.

1. Absorb as much information as you can, then read some more. I calculated out by hand my entire first recipe. Calculating the water amounts, temperatures, gravity, IBUs, ABV all of it. I used brewing calculators only as sanity checks, and through this process I understood the what and the why of brewing.
2. When formulating a recipe I took the same approach as in the kitchen. I would choose a style of beer and look at dozens of recipes. You soon see patterns of what is required in that style and what brewers have added in for their tastes. Do research on these optional ingredients and make educated guesses on what you think you will like. Calculate their impacts on measurables and try to imagine their perceptible impacts on flavor, mouthfeel etc. Take detailed notes so you can track what works and what doesn't.
3. In your first few (all grain) brews you should be targeting either a specific gravity or a specific volume. It's quite difficult to get both correct on a system you've never used before.
4. Though equipment isn't the most important I couldn't imagine brewing without a chiller and a refractometer. A chiller will eliminate hours from your brew day (unless you go no chill). A Refractometer allows you to check gravity quickly without affecting the volume of your batch and stay on top of your brew day. If you know what your doing you can make adjustments accordingly in order to hit your target numbers.
5. Make sanitation ritualistic. Get in good habits early. To be honest new equipment is pretty clean and the danger of infection is low. But through time and multiple brews is where creepy crawlies enter your system. If your sanitation is on point you'll delay infection and perhaps avoid it all together.

Here are some things I learned later that I wish I paid more attention to in the beginning :
1. A brewer makes wort and yeast makes beer. Do your best to create good wort but invest time in learning good fermentation practices. Healthy yeast pitches and temperature control will make a huge difference.
2. Water chemistry may not matter until it does. At the very least you'll need to treat your water against chlorine. Campden tablets... Enough said. Get a water report and learn how to manipulate your water to fit your expectations. If you can't get a report. There's nothing wrong with experimenting with gypsum and calcium chloride (can even experiment with finished beer).
3.Stick to one system and try to learn it and improve it. Don't get distracted by new methods or equipment that's going to drastically change your brewing process.
4. I started brewing 2.5 gallon batches. Quickly found out that it was too little and jumped to 5 gallon batches. If you're starting small buy big equipment so you can scale up easier.

Sorry that was way long.

Cheers

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Patience (luckily I started brewing while stationed in Germany so I had access to some great biers!) I read all too often of people opening fermenters during fermentation. Wait 14 days and you'll be rewarded; with experience you'll know when to check. Also brewers opening their bottles after three days and complain about no carbonation. Again, wait 14 days MINIMUM depending on style. Every bottle you open early just to "check" is a good beer that that you will not be able to drink later.

Oh, and you don't need a lot of shiny expensive sh*t to make great beer.

I agree with the "wait 14 days suggestion". Depending on my brew schedule, it's 14 to 21 days.

January 8, 2021 I transferred my Steam Beer brewed on December 23, 2020. Hydro, adjusted for temp, is 1.014. Now lagering. Was 17 days in the primary.

 

[bwible]

Time management. I definitely never thought about how long the whole process took before my 1st brewday. It was the day after Christmas (Christmas present of a kit), and I told my wife I'd be ready to leave to go visit family "in about an hour and 1/2". 3 hours later...........

I take advantage of down time during the process to prepare or clean things up along the way. Grind grain while waiting for mash water to heat up. Measure out hops, fetch Irish moss, clean and sanitize fermenter waiting for the hour mash. Empty and clean mash tun, dispose of grains while waiting for wort to boil. Don’t wait til the end of everything after beer is in the fermentor to start cleaning up, rounding up and putting things away.

 

[bwible]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply!
Bottles. Cleaning them is getting a little annoying but I don’t think I’m ready for kegs just jet, I feel the bottles are simple enough.

I don’t mind additional fermentation time for the fruit.

also I didn’t know that that’s a good sign of healthy yeast, thanks!

Top parts of bottles where the capper grips are different. Some have a large top for the capper to grab, others have a couple small rings and the capper can’t get a good grip on those. I only keep the good ones now.

I have 2 large 7 gallon pails I use at bottling. One is full of pbw solution, the other is full of star san solution. I put the bottles in pbw for 1/2 hour first, then drain, rinse and transfer them to the star san. I take them out 6 at a time while bottling.

11 cases is not enough bottles. I love Fullers bottles. Nicest looking bottles I have.

 

[bwible]

Also, get a fermenting vessel with a wide mouth. So much easier to clean

And easier to add dry hops or oak and get it back out.

 

[bwible]

Patience.

In all things.

As to the filtering, I dump the entirety of the BIAB kettle into the fermenter, wort, break material, hop material, and sometimes reading glasses. Try not to do that but it still worked. Even dumping everything in, the beer still clears.

Keep notes to help repeatability.

If it doesn’t clear, try gelatin. Plenty of info online how to use it. The stuff is magic.

Make a form to fill out for each brew’s notes. So you have the same info recorded for each beer. All the important stats plus notes for things that happened during brewing, equipment used, mash temp, tasting notes, etc.

 

[bwible]

Things I've learn from the beers I've dumped

1. Have fun. Relax. Have a homebrew.
2. Water is important but not that important filter out chlorine with a charcoal filter or buy it. Spring not distilled. You only need to worry about salts and PH if you are going for something very specific.

Water is the majority of what’s in your beer. Most drinkable water is safe to brew with, but it’s certainly not a bad idea to spend $40 or whatever it is and get your water tested to know for sure what’s in it. I mean if you’re going to spend money on equipment and want to brew beer for a long time that’s a very small expense compared to other things you’re going to buy. I thought my water was ok til I had it tested. My water has several issues that have been causing me problems.

 

[3 Dawg Night]

I take advantage of down time during the process to prepare or clean things up along the way. Grind grain while waiting for mash water to heat up. Measure out hops, fetch Irish moss, clean and sanitize fermenter waiting for the hour mash. Empty and clean mash tun, dispose of grains while waiting for wort to boil. Don’t wait til the end of everything after beer is in the fermentor to start cleaning up, rounding up and putting things away.

Do as much as you can the night before (e.g., collect water, add salts, grind grain, etc.). But yeah, make use of that "downtime" to clean as you go. I usually only have ~20 min of cleanup work left once my fermenter goes into my chamber.