Whats should be the next step in my home brewing education?

[PaleMan]

Hey everyone, so I kind of hit a fork in the road when it comes to my home brewing knowledge and I really have no idea what and where I should go next. So I have been brewing for about 6 months, where I have made 7 beers, 6 of them have been all-grain BIAB, and now and I feel like I have finally gotten down all the basics of the brewing process(of course my efficiency is not perfect, but I normally come within .03 of my target initial gravity and .02 of my final gravity). I feel pretty confident when it comes to understanding all the basic elements when it comes to the brewing process. This includes sustaining mash temp, understanding my setup/knowing its boil-off ratio and grain absorption, chilling the wort properly, SANITATION of course, temp control, and even the bottling process. But now I just feel stuck, not knowing what I should do next. I would love to know how to make my own recipe because I have only brewed clones to this point. I am not saying that brewing a clone is boring, but I just want to start making the beers I brew my own. There are so many books, forums, websites, and youtube videos out there that I dont know what to choose. What do you guys think I should next? What area should I focus on, hops, grains, water chemistry? So please, if anybody has some advice I would love to hear it.

Great thread. I'm at your stage. Ive found Brewfather a step in the right direction to designing your own beer. But what is your own beer? I like the idea of going to style with Hefe Weizens and big Belgium beers. So not really inventing anything new. Go to what works i think.

 

[Holden Caulfield]

First, I apologies for any repeats as there are a lot of replies with a lot of great info that I am too lazy to review prior to posting .

I started brewing a couple years ago so just recently went through the accelerated learning period you are experiencing. My thoughts on how to keep growing:

1. Learn the differences between all the malts, adjunct grains, and sugars; understand how the malts are made (kilned, drum roasted, stewed, etc) and the types of flavors they will deliver. Not just between the categories of Base, Kilned, Crystal, Roasted, Adjuncts, but within them as well. For example, Vienna vs Munich. Amber vs Victory. Crystal vs Caramunich, Special B vs Crystal.
2. Avoid building kitchen sink beers. The great beers of the world usually have very simple grain bills. You don't need to go SMASH, but keeping your recipe's simple will usually lead to a better beer, and also one where you can isolate out the flavors and learn how different grains and hops impact flavor.
3. You did not mention water chemistry. Learn your water chemistry and how to adjust it to hit mash PH and target beer profiles
4. Evaluate your process for oxygen exposure and make changes - cold side is most important, but hot side may help as well.
5. While you know your process and can come close to hitting your target OG, it sounds like you don't know how to determine the amount of sugars in your preboil wort and make adjustments so that you hit your OG every time. Learn how to count points and make adjustments.
6. Look into kegging if you have the space and $. I found it so much easier than bottling. Also, it makes it easier to put in place practices to lower post fermentation oxygen exposure

As far as books to read, start with these two and they will make you so much better.

• How to Brew by John Palmer. There is no better book than this. It has everything. It is up to date. It goes deep into everything but is still easy to understand.
• Brewing Better Beer by Gordon Strong. Not a another how to book, rather a book about tips to make you better.
• If you like Belgian Beers, then read Brew like a Monk. It's a fun read.

Finally, there is so much great info on the internet, just search for whatever you want to learn about. Here are a few links to get you started:

• Start with this article - very important about darker malts. Avoiding the Harsh Zone - Brew Your Own
• Explore Braukaiser's site. This is the nirvana of data driven brewing analysis - http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Braukaiser.com
• Explore Brulosophy - Brülosophy BTW, I just opened up Pandora's box, so I must qualify. This site will probably not make you a better brewer, but it will provide some great entertainment. Brulosophy is a fun site where they do one on one homebrewing experiments to test if a single variable does in fact have an impact on the outcome of a beer. While they use a statistical approach to evaluate the results, their process is not perfect and the way they write their conclusions could lead to a brewer doing something that has not actually been scientifically proven. That said, like the authors of the site's mind set, just take the conclusions for what they are - interesting, fun, make you feel better when you screw up or implementing a process change that is just too difficult, provide answers to experiments that you would like to do at home, data that you can choose to accept or ignore.

Hope this helps - enjoy your journey. The learning is the most fun part of the brewing.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I was warned of Trojan only on this selection by (Malwarebytes program I run??)

It's plausible that the web site is fine and you were involved in a MITM attack. I asked the forum admins to change the link (back) to https. That will help prevent future MITM attacks.

ETA: Links in #9 & #30 have been updated. Thanks!

 

[Kent88]

Off-topic, responding to Kat. Speaking not as a mod in this post, this is a browser extension I personally use:

HTTPS Everywhere

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

this is a browser extension I personally use

Good choice. There are others.

Any idea when the software that HBT uses will start recommending https URLs when typing/editing posts? The software seems to want to "improve" the link in a number of situations, so asking about https (vs http) would seem to be another way to avoid third party interference with content.

 

[Velnerj]

If you're interested in challenging yourself and learning as well as recipe design. Try putting together a recipe by hand, that is, not using a recipe calculator. Try to find the formulas and add up the gravity points, ABV, ibu, srm etc yourself. Then take your calculations and match with a recipe calculator to see how close you are.

If you're good with excel you can even create your own recipe calculator as I did.

Either way you'll learn all the ins and outs of recipe making by pulling back the curtains and looking in depth at it.

It's actually how I started out....

 

[NeoBrew]

If you have down time to listen to podcasts, I learned SO much from listening to the various shows of The Brewing Network over the years. Check out Brew Strong, Brewing With Style and Dr. Homebrew. Some great content is in older shows and might be a bit outdated, but much of it is still useful. The Session used to have more homebrew information, but has favored focusing on commercial craft beer lately. If you like your humor inappropriate and your homebrewing information laced with sophomoric humor, go back and check out The Session from 2-3 years ago and before.