Something You Wish You’d Started Doing Sooner (in Home Brewing)

[TheMadKing]

Wish I'd dared to build the gear from Dave Lines books and get all grain brewing last century. Instead gave up malt extract brewing for 26 years, before jumping into all grain again.
What a lot of joy missed there.

Same here, I extract brewed from 2008 - 2014 and I wish I had started out with all-grain. I also wish I had known about John Palmer's How to Brew when I first started. It was super valuable in helping me feel confident in all my basic process steps early on

 

[TheCache]

A thick PBW solution left on overnight will dissolve that wort

Thanks! I tried a lot of things, including some overnight soaks, but never thought of PBW. I'll give it a try.

 

[Bobby_M]

It's almost impossible for a 15+ year veteran of brewing to have a good enough memory or deep enough hindsight to remember what it's like to be completely green. The best we can really do is recall some of the things that we changed about our process that ended up making a noticeable and positive impact. I want to reiterate how important it is to get yourself social with all kinds of brewers which is best done in a club. Ask to observe a few brew days. Look for locations where the Big Brew is taking place and visit one of them. Big Brew for National Homebrew Day May 6, 2023

There's also a club finder

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-clubs/find-a-homebrew-club/

 

[Red over White]

Brew your favorite beer over and over until you absolutely nail it. After that it's easy.

 

[hottpeper13]

Teach a buddy to brew day is the first Sat. in Nov. Last year we had 50+ mph wind and rain. Thank me for having gone electric in the basement where the weather was fine. Still managed to get 8 grilled pizzas and a 6 gal batch done outside with a couple guys holding down the screwed to the deck canopy.
Find one or host one,I've done it for the past 5 yrs. Pizza and beer has to be the best combo ever!

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

perhaps related to #45: https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/aha-events/learn-to-homebrew-day/.

Fore me, before 2020, these two events (Learn How To Day, Big Brew for National Homebrew Day) were a great way to meet local home brewers, find clubs, etc. I didn't try to participate in 2022.

Consider giving these local events a fresh look in 2023.

 

[Clint Yeastwood]

If you're sure you're going to keep brewing, buy the good stuff the first time around. Not necessarily the expensive stuff, but the stuff that works and will not fall apart right away. Of course, it tends to be more expensive.

Start with kegging, not bottling. I guess some guys don't mind all the extra work, but kegging is easier and just plain better. I will never bottle again.

Question standard practices vigorously and get information from people who know the truth. A bunch of standard practices have turned out to be wastes of time.

Write your own recipes and learn how ingredients and practices affect beer. Why brew what you can buy?

 

[OakIslandBrewery]

It's almost impossible for a 15+ year veteran of brewing to have a good enough memory or deep enough hindsight to remember what it's like to be completely green. The best we can really do is recall some of the things that we changed about our process that ended up making a noticeable and positive impact. I want to reiterate how important it is to get yourself social with all kinds of brewers which is best done in a club. Ask to observe a few brew days. Look for locations where the Big Brew is taking place and visit one of them. Big Brew for National Homebrew Day May 6, 2023

There's also a club finder

https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-clubs/find-a-homebrew-club/

I couldn't agree more with joining a club. I've learned so much for the local clubs here and even gained the confidence to start all grain brewing. I've been all grain for 20+ years now, before that was extract then partial mashing.

I've mention in numerous threads I started brewing when there was much available for home brewers let alone people brewing their own beer. It was very primitive but put down the foundation to expand, learn and seek out others who brewed. That first time was almost forty years ago now (which makes me sound old?) but I keep brewing, learning with each brew and learning from a whole bunch of others that brew and new folks just learning themselves. It's an evolving hobby in many different ways.

 

[Zenmeister]

Just starting out...three things really:

1. Learn as much as you can. I recommend Palmers book (How to brew) and Daniels book (Making great beers.) I got them early on and reference them frequently to this day, but also use this forum and brew clubs for knowledge, and of course a local homebrew shop if you have one nearby.
2. Sanitation/Cleaning: Make sure, before your brew day that everything is cleaned and sanitized, making doubly sure everything on the cold side is doubly sanitized, with Star San, or something similar. You can never recover a spoiled beer, especially one that has all sorts of biological growth spurting up from it. Expect that cleaning is as much a part of brewing as boiling the wort.
3. Oxygen Control: O2 will ruin a beer, and gives it that lovely "wet cardboard taste". And it doesn't take a lot to ruin it. So to start, do the little things right that you can control right now: Do not transfer to a Secondary fermenter. EVER! It does no good and there is now way you can do it without picking up additional O2. Try to do everything possible to keep your beer calm and quiet, i.e. no splashing or moving around too much.
   If you are just starting out, you will likely not have all the equipment (or know how to use it) to control O2, but you can still make excellent drinkable beer by being aware of O2, and mitigating it. Get the expensive stuff later when you decide to stay with this hobby.

These are things you can/should do now, without buying a lot of expensive gear. (Trust me...I have LOTS of expensive gear now...) Finally, remember the motto of the HomeBrewTalk forum: RDWHAHB! *
Happy Brewing!

*Relax, Don't Worry, Have A Home Brew!

 

[mattdee1]

There are lots of things I learned along the way that really helped/improved my brewing but there aren't very many where I find myself really wishing I had started doing them sooner. I say this because if you jump too quickly into doing everything by "best practices" then you don't get the benefit of seeing first hand how NOT doing best practices impacts your results. For me, a great example of this would be building my own water profiles from RO rather than using untreated tap water. I developed lots of experience with the latter, was dissatisfied with it, and made the change to RO. I'm glad I have that firsthand experience to see the improvements rather than going directly to RO and taking the benefits on faith because I read about them on the internet. Maybe I'm just weird like that.

If I had to pick something for this thread, it would be the management of oxygen exposure on the cold side. Having a fermentor that can hold pressure, using fermentation CO2 to purge kegs, doing closed transfers, etc. I'm still glad that I have firsthand experience ruining hoppy beers with open transfers, but maybe I didn't need to ruin dozens of them before making this particular change. Hops are expensive!