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

[89OctaneStang]

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

From bottle to belly!

 

[Germey]

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...

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.

 

[bronzdragon]

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~

 

[Dubcut]

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.

 

[countrygringo]

.

 

[kh54s10]

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.

 

[tgmartin000]

All grain
Water treatment
yeast starter

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

 

[badbrew]

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

 

[Scooby_Brew]

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

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!

 

[Beerbeque]

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.

 

[DirtyDirty]

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.