TIPS and TRICKS for beginning home brewers

[mr_stout]

I did not see a thread for tips and tricks for beginners.
Anyone have tips or tricks for a person starting out brewing at home?
Like a list of things that you wish you knew once you first started brewing.

 

[mr_stout]

Use a wort chiller to cool down the wort quickly. It is better to cool down the wort fast to stop undesirable things from growing in the wort. The ice bath is a super slow cool down method. I wish I had started out with a wort cooler. Now that I have one cooling down wort is much faster. I combine a wort chiller with an ice bath of whatever ice I have in the freezer.

 

[GrogNerd]

to expand on mr stout's cooling down the wort: if you're doing partial boils and using bottled water, keep your top-off water in the fridge or freezer (but don't let it freeze!) to help cool down your wort after boiling

also: if you're doing a mini-mash or extract, DON'T WORRY about a low original gravity reading. as long as you hit your volumes, your gravity should be what your recipe says it should be. there is no way to NOT get all the available sugar. what happens is, even with vigorous mixing, the heavier extract will sink to the bottom, while the lighter water will remain on top, which is where your sample was taken. DON'T WORRY! your yeast will find ALL the sugar and make beer out of it. you should still mix as much as possible. pour into another bucket, back and forth several times. I use a paint mixer on my drill. aeration is important to good cell growth at the very start of fermentation

 

[Biscuits]

To add to the great advice already in this thread...don't be freaked out, and subsequently make yet another "no airlock activity..." post....If you've pitched your yeast at 70 degrees or less, it WILL work...I have used yeast that was 2 years out of date and it fermented my beer.

Brew on!

 

[McKnuckle]

There are a pile of threads in the Stickies with this kind of info, not to mention what will come up via Google using site:homebrewtalk.com in the search string.

 

[Miraculix]

Do all grain biab with half volume, get the Wort out of there, squeeze the **** out of the bag, pour the other half of the volume in Form of cold water into the bag, stir very well, let it sit for 5 minutes and then, again squeeze the **** out if the bag.

Welcome to 80% + efficiency land!

 

[Roland_deschain]

I would second the wort chiller. I built one for my first brew session and i’ve Had good luck ever since.
Tips? Take extremely detailed notes. Don’t rely on your memory if you make any changes.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

In the beginning, keep it simple and learn [and enjoy] the process. Keep notes!!!. Use YOUR experiences to master your numbers, don't use other peoples numbers. Your rig is not going to act like my rig.

Have everything you need ready. Mentally go through your brew day before you begin. Make a few notes of what you want to do, test, measure, etc.

After brewing and everything is cleaned up, crack a beer and review your notes... Did you hit your volumes? What was your boil off rate? Was the OG close to expected? If not, why? Did you hold your temps? If not, what effects do you expect? What changed this time and how did it effect this batch? What would you do different next time?

Don't pick the fly poop out of the pepper. If your boil goes 5 minutes long because you got an important phone call, you wont taste any difference. If your pump jammed up and you mashed an extra 30 minutes, it's no big deal! Relax and enjoy.

 

[65C]

1. nail your mash temp and nail your ferment temp in first 3 days

2. use a blow off tube

3. don't stress about screwups - they are almost always fixable if you nailed the temps and kept things clean after the boil

4. don't stress about being under/over numbers or quantities, make small changes between each batch until you get it right

5. beer takes time - 4 weeks in primary - 1 or 2 weeks in bottle - before that point even good beer can taste rancid

 

[MaxStout]

Sanitation, sanitation, and more sanitation. Keep your gear clean and sanitized--in that order, you cannot sanitize something that is dirty. I see too many brewers end up with bad beer because they cut corners. I've had a few infected batches myself and learned the hard way. You don't need to become a germophobe and attempt to sterilize things. Just be reasonably diligent. Use PBW or unscented Oxiclean for soaking gear, and use a good no-rinse sanitizer, like Starsan to kill most of the microbes. Don't scuff or scratch plastic fermentation buckets or carboys, as microbes can thrive in those nooks and crannies. Replace plastic spigots and tubing from time to time. Sanitize anything that will come into contact with beer, or wort below ~160F. That means spoons, thermometers, wine thief, etc.

There is only one time you want oxygen in the wort--at the time you pitch yeast. After that, try to protect your beer from O2 exposure as much as you can. You rarely need to rack beer to a secondary fermenter vessel. More racking means more O2 exposure, and more potential for microbes to get in. Unless you are brewing a big beer that needs a very long aging period, fermentation can be done entirely in a primary. Then you only rack once for bottling or kegging. Keep splashing and stirring to a minimum.

 

[green_giant43]

MaxStout took mine- sanitize. Nothing is worse than dumping even a "just ok" batch of beer due to an infection.

Otherwise, learn and take notes, notes, notes. You can't improve if you don't know what you did right or wrong the last time. I recommend just an excel sheet- batch number, mash temp, pH (at some point), efficiency, etc. etc. with overall "what did I do right" and "what did I do wrong" rows too.

You'd be amazed how much easier it is to hone in and make better beer when you have notes that can guide your process.

 

[ncbrewer]

Be careful about ingredients storage, especially hops. There are too many guidelines and options to cover here, but the main thing is keeping hops cold and protected from oxygen and other food odors.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

Make the effort to find a brew that your non-beer-drinking wife may like. She will be much more willing to issue kitchen passes for brew days

 

[swampbrewcrew]

Find a way to control fermentation temps, and join a local club if there is one available. They will give good feedback, and help you hone your processes.

 

[Toejam792]

Cleaning and fermentation temps are the biggest things. But that's everybody's #1 advise.

Research. Knowledge is power and this is one of the best sites out there. If you have any brewing question just go to google and type site:homebrewtalk.com then your question topic. You can learn so much. Beer has taught me how to wire a 220v control panel, modify an air conditioner to cool water, cook the best steaks I've ever had, convert a freezer to an extremely efficient fridge, build a keggerator, the list goes on and on.

Things I do that I don't see mentioned are: I use a pen and note pad to record what I do at the time I do it. Like 10:05 Mashed in with 8 gallons water, 11:05 started sparge, 11:30 sparged 9 gallons, 11:50 boil started 14 gallons in bk added 1oz type of hop. I like that I can go back and see exactly how long I did things and their volumes.

Also I would write things I want to improve. Like clean the mash tun during boil, just little reminders to improve my brew day.

The thing I'm most glad I did though was every time I brewed I would write my "wants" in the top margin. It could be a simple free diy thing like add volume etching onto kettles, or a minor annoyance like garden hose to npt fitting so I can put a camlock attachment onto my garden hose. I would write anything I could think of and if it made it in the margin for at least 3 brews I would pursue it more. It gave my purchases direction and kept me from spending all my money on neat stuff I read about that might improve my set up but would end up just sitting in a drawer.

 

[MaxStout]

Don't be distracted by the idea that you need a lot of brewing bling to be successful. That nice, polished $500 brew kettle won't necessarily give you better beer than the $75 pot from the LHBS. Concentrate on making good beer, learn the science and build up your skills. The shiny (and expensive) equipment can come later, if you want. Many brewers make outstanding beer with basic equipment on their kitchen stoves or with turkey fryers, and ferment in plastic buckets.

That nice gear, in the right hands, can make the brewing process more efficient and give the brewer more control. But when you are in the learning phase, you really don't need to go beyond the basics for a while. Spend your money on better ingredients.

Another thing...don't think that extract brews are necessarily inferior, and don't let anyone tell that they are. Lots of brewers make outstanding beer that way. Some have won competitions. Granted, extract limits your choices, compared to all-grain. But within those parameters, there is no reason you can't make many styles of decent beer from extract.

 

[SoCal-Doug]

Don't be distracted by the idea that you need a lot of brewing bling to be successful. That nice, polished $500 brew kettle won't necessarily give you better beer than the $75 pot from the LHBS. Concentrate on making good beer, learn the science and build up your skills. The shiny (and expensive) equipment can come later, if you want. Many brewers make outstanding beer with basic equipment on their kitchen stoves or with turkey fryers, and ferment in plastic buckets.

That is the best one I've read yet!

When I have non-brewer friends over, the most common comments I hear is "I cant afford all the equipment to brew" and "you have to make 10,000 gallons before it pays for itself." Not true at all and I've had some damn excellent beers people made on a stove, with a pot and a spoon from Bed Bath and Beyond. I admit that some of us beer-geek-gadget-nerds to a bit haywire sometimes, but we gotta help people understand that it is not required.

The other one I hear a lot is [paraphrased] "that chemistry stuff is way too complex for me to understand". Bull. Follow some simple instructions and you will make excellent beer. If you want to geek out, learn a little at a time and apply what you learn to your next brew.

 

[PADave]

Learn the basics first before trying to make complicated brews. Keep you gear clean. Control fermentation temps. Keep good notes. Don't buy a bunch of gear right away till you do a few brews and figure out what you want. Then buy good stuff, once. Read. Lots of good brewing books out there.

 

[jlinz]

There are no shortcuts in this hobby. Keep it simple and progress slowly and deliberately using the motto keep it simple stupid.

Start slowly by making a few extract batches. Make a plan on how to progress after you think you have it down. Once doing all grain start with a few simple recipes and get them nailed down before trying something complicated. When you can make good simple beer consistently, then make weird sour beers with sassafras in them or whatever. But not until you know how to brew first.

The ultimate ideal (for me) is making great all grain beer for cheaper and better than what you can buy in the store.

 

[MSK_Chess]

have fun!

 

[green_giant43]

There are no shortcuts in this hobby. Keep it simple and progress slowly and deliberately using the motto keep it simple stupid.

Start slowly by making a few extract batches. Make a plan on how to progress after you think you have it down. Once doing all grain start with a few simple recipes and get them nailed down before trying something complicated. When you can make good simple beer consistently, then make weird sour beers with sassafras in them or whatever. But not until you know how to brew first.

The ultimate ideal (for me) is making great all grain beer for cheaper and better than what you can buy in the store.

Great point about simple beer. If you can't make a base porter, you have no business making a jalapeno cocoa porter. Something I learned later on but my beer (even crazy ones) are so much better now that I'm working on making just great normal beers.

 

[Kent88]

If you're using grain for a significant portion of your fermentable sugars, start by making some SMaSH recipes. Make sure you get a decent gravity if your efficiency comes in anywhere from 55%-80%.

And if you're putting those SMaSH recipes together yourself, remember to over-shoot your final volume. You'll have some hop sludge to leave in the kettle.

And (again, if you are getting a significant amount of fermentable sugars from grain) get a refractometer. I usually try to avoid recommending new brewers buy specific equipment, but waiting for hot wort to chill to the right temperature for a hydrometer is a pain, and you might need to know when you stop sparging, or when to add a few ounces of extract. Refractometers are freaking great.

 

[grampamark]

Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew.

Mark

 

[TBC27]

KISS - keep it simple & sanitized

Keep in mind the end result, no matter how bad the screw up, will most always be beer. Yay, beer!

 

[boland]

Do all grain biab with half volume, get the Wort out of there, squeeze the **** out of the bag, pour the other half of the volume in Form of cold water into the bag, stir very well, let it sit for 5 minutes and then, again squeeze the **** out if the bag.

Welcome to 80% + efficiency land!

Some other brewers advised against to squeeze the bag too much as that adds unwanted flavors in the beer?
They advised only to do sparging; not to squeeze too much.

 

[boland]

My pro tip is to cold crash with gelatin.
My first BIAB was a hoppy beer, so a lot of trub. Tried to bottle the same way as kits, so ended up with a lot of trub in my bottles. They became fountains when opened.

Get a fermentation fridge is a pro tip on its own, which allows you to do cold crashing. Gelatin is awesome, my next beer was super clear.

 

[portguy]

My tip: treat your water right. Know your water. Care for it. Read about it. Buy a PH meter. That alone made my beer so much better.

 

[Sadu]

Yeah, fermentation fridge plus a cheap temp controller, get one of those.

Does take a bit of space but it's a hands-off experience and makes great beer. Also lagers are on the table, and there are some great lagers out there.

 

[PADave]

Some other brewers advised against to squeeze the bag too much as that adds unwanted flavors in the beer?
They advised only to do sparging; not to squeeze too much.

Not true. Squeeze away.

 

[Miraculix]

Not true. Squeeze away.

Exactly! Another good advice, don't believe myths like "squeezing a bag makes astringent wort" or "there is a significant flavour difference between different hop types at 60 minute additions" or "clearer Wort makes clearer beer".

All rubbish!

Ignore the land of myths!