Like many of us, I stared home brewing under the watchful eye of a more experienced friend. He has given me a lot of sage advice over the years and I wanted to pass on some to here. Here is one of the first documents he gave me:
Avoid paralysis-by-analysis. There are about 1 billion home brewing books and web sites that tell you how to brew. You cant read them all so dont waste time trying. Pick one and just brew it!
Brewing basic good beer is simple brewing truly great beer is not. Your initial goal should be to brew basic good beer.
Keep a brew log, no matter how simple the recipe. If you make a particularly good beer, you will know how to reproduce it if you make a bad one, you will know what not to do in the future!
New brewers should brew by the KISS principle. Basic ingredients learn and perfect the basic processes slowly ramp up.
Computers suck at brewing beer. Rely on your nose and your taste buds, not your computer program.
The quality of a brewer is not measured by the equipment he has, its measured by the beer he produces. Ive had truly great beers made using nothing more than an aluminum brew pot, a long handle spoon and a 5-gallon plastic bucket.
Clean DME spills IMMEDIATELY! Once they have been exposed to moisture and allowed to dry, they become like concreate!!
When adding anything to boiling wort, take the pot off the fire first. This will reduce the chance of burning your DME/LME before you can stir it properly and will reduce the chance of hop induced boilover.
The bigger the brew pot the better. Conducting a two gallon wort boil in a two gallon pot is a recipe for disaster.
Aluminum brew pots work fine but eventually get stainless steel. Makes clean-up much easier.
Beer is fermentation and fermentation is yeast. Your process and yeast are more important that which grains you are using.
Its easier to add to a simple recipe than to subtract from a complicated one.
Use vodka in your airlock instead of water. Its sterile and bugs hate it!
Stay away from bleach to sanitize brew equipment. It sometimes reacts with wort and can give a nasty flavor.
After your first home brew kit and bottle of StarSan, your next purchase should be an aquarium air pump and stone. Yeast need oxygen to thrive and boiling your wort takes O2 out. A 15 minute blast of air AFTER your wort is cooled works much better than sloshing your wort around with your brew paddle.
Keep a small mist bottle of Vodka and use it to spray the opening of your carboy before pitching your yeast and as a quick sanitizer for pieces and parts that have previously been sterilized.
Your airlock is a poor indicator of quality of fermentation. Rely instead on your temperature control, wort gravity and your nose.
If you live in a hot climate, use a water bath to control wort temperature during fermentation. Square beach cooler half full of cool H2O, your fermenter and a couple of frozen 2L soda bottles should be adequate to keep your wort in the proper temperature range.
Boilover control method 1 Mist spray bottle of H2O will knock down most pending boilovers.
Boilover control method 2 Ice cube thrown into the boil pot when a boilover is rising will usually do the trick.
Boilover control method 3 Small clip on fan positioned so it blows across the top of the boiling wort will keep all but the most aggressive boilovers down before they begin.
Boilover control method 4 Pennies in the boil. About 10 should suffice. Insure they are clean. Also, pre-1974 pennies are 100% copper while newer ones have a zinc core. If you use newer ones, insure they are intact!
Chilling wort in a water bath is about temperature differential. First two baths should be done with cold tap water to remove most of the heat. Subsequent baths should employ ice to get to the appropriate wort temperature. Using ice first does little but waist ice.
Avoid paralysis-by-analysis. There are about 1 billion home brewing books and web sites that tell you how to brew. You cant read them all so dont waste time trying. Pick one and just brew it!
Brewing basic good beer is simple brewing truly great beer is not. Your initial goal should be to brew basic good beer.
Keep a brew log, no matter how simple the recipe. If you make a particularly good beer, you will know how to reproduce it if you make a bad one, you will know what not to do in the future!
New brewers should brew by the KISS principle. Basic ingredients learn and perfect the basic processes slowly ramp up.
Computers suck at brewing beer. Rely on your nose and your taste buds, not your computer program.
The quality of a brewer is not measured by the equipment he has, its measured by the beer he produces. Ive had truly great beers made using nothing more than an aluminum brew pot, a long handle spoon and a 5-gallon plastic bucket.
Clean DME spills IMMEDIATELY! Once they have been exposed to moisture and allowed to dry, they become like concreate!!
When adding anything to boiling wort, take the pot off the fire first. This will reduce the chance of burning your DME/LME before you can stir it properly and will reduce the chance of hop induced boilover.
The bigger the brew pot the better. Conducting a two gallon wort boil in a two gallon pot is a recipe for disaster.
Aluminum brew pots work fine but eventually get stainless steel. Makes clean-up much easier.
Beer is fermentation and fermentation is yeast. Your process and yeast are more important that which grains you are using.
Its easier to add to a simple recipe than to subtract from a complicated one.
Use vodka in your airlock instead of water. Its sterile and bugs hate it!
Stay away from bleach to sanitize brew equipment. It sometimes reacts with wort and can give a nasty flavor.
After your first home brew kit and bottle of StarSan, your next purchase should be an aquarium air pump and stone. Yeast need oxygen to thrive and boiling your wort takes O2 out. A 15 minute blast of air AFTER your wort is cooled works much better than sloshing your wort around with your brew paddle.
Keep a small mist bottle of Vodka and use it to spray the opening of your carboy before pitching your yeast and as a quick sanitizer for pieces and parts that have previously been sterilized.
Your airlock is a poor indicator of quality of fermentation. Rely instead on your temperature control, wort gravity and your nose.
If you live in a hot climate, use a water bath to control wort temperature during fermentation. Square beach cooler half full of cool H2O, your fermenter and a couple of frozen 2L soda bottles should be adequate to keep your wort in the proper temperature range.
Boilover control method 1 Mist spray bottle of H2O will knock down most pending boilovers.
Boilover control method 2 Ice cube thrown into the boil pot when a boilover is rising will usually do the trick.
Boilover control method 3 Small clip on fan positioned so it blows across the top of the boiling wort will keep all but the most aggressive boilovers down before they begin.
Boilover control method 4 Pennies in the boil. About 10 should suffice. Insure they are clean. Also, pre-1974 pennies are 100% copper while newer ones have a zinc core. If you use newer ones, insure they are intact!
Chilling wort in a water bath is about temperature differential. First two baths should be done with cold tap water to remove most of the heat. Subsequent baths should employ ice to get to the appropriate wort temperature. Using ice first does little but waist ice.
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