Homebrewing Tips

Making good beer at home is easy. Making truly exceptional beer isn't hard, but takes some attention to detail and practice. There are a lot of things to juggle when you're trying to make things just right.

Brian's Rules for Beginners and Extract Brewers:

1. TAKE GOOD NOTES! This was the number one rule I was told when I started brewing. I sometimes, especially in my earlier days of brewing, ignored this rule. Every time, I regretted it later.
2. Sanitation. 'nuff said.
3. Know what you want to make. It's hard to strive for excellence if you don't know what your goal is. Learn from brewmasters the world over. Try out beers from all over the world. Keeping notes about the characteristics of each beer you try is a good idea.
4. Top-notch and appropriate ingredients. If you want to make a British style, use British ingredients. Same is true of all other styles. If you don't want to stick to any particular style, carefully choose what ingredients will give you the characteristics you want.
5. Know your ingredients. Taste them, smell them, smoosh them in your hands; take notes.
6. Have good, healthy yeast. This is an issue for all beers, but is especially true for lagers or high-gravity beers. Make starters for your yeast, stepping up size and gravity along the way. Do this regardless of where you get your yeast. Regardless of propaganda, it is still better to make a starter when using vials of White Labs yeast or Wyeast XL packets.
7. Be sure to aerate your wort once it's cooled. I find the easiest way to be to plug my 5 or 6 gallon carboy, then kneel on the floor, sit back on my feet, then rock the carboy back and forth across my leg. It's very effective. And if you slip, the carboy is only a few inches from the ground and isn't likely to break. It also doesn't require all sorts of extra stuff like aquarium pumps, etc.
8. Start simple. Experiment slowly by adding one new technique at a time and practicing for a while. Read up from many sources about this topic.
9. Boil for 90 minutes for a lighter beer, 2 hours for a darker beer. This really helps to bring out the malty flavors.

Brian's Additional Rules for Lager Brewers:

1. TAKE GOOD NOTES! This is even more important now.
2. Ferment cold. If you have a healthy yeast culture, the core temperature of your beer in primary fermentation is much warmer than the fridge or cellar that the carboy is in. For most yeasts, you can find acceptable fermenation temperature bands; Bavarian lager yeasts tend to be around 50-58°F. I try to use a fridge temperature of about 48°F.
3. When brewing lagers, healthy yeast is more important than when brewing ales. Try to plan multiple batches of beer at two or three week intervals. Pitch 8 to 24 ounces of sediment from the previous batch to ferment the current one. Yeasts are the strongest and give the best results after about 4 batches! If you plan to do things this way, start with low-gravity and/or lighter beers and move towards high-gravity and/or darker beers.
4. Learn to cool your wort quickly. DMS and off-flavors tend to be more noticable in clean lagers versus fruity ales. Furthermore, you need to cool your wort further before pitching, since your yeast is probably still cool. I try to get wort to about 60°F before pitching yeast, and then I let it sit outside of the fridge (typ. in my basement which is about 60°F during the fall, winter, and spring) until I see the earliest signs of fermentation. When the yeast is really healthy, this can be an hour. On the first full-sized batch for some given yeast, this might take 12 hours or so.
5. Seriously consider krauesening or force-carbonation. I don't want to keg or do the forced carbonation thing, so I krauesen now. Basically, the yeast from your primary fermentation is fairly weak after lagering. This means that it's performance in carbonating your beer is poor at best. It used to take a very long time for my beers to carbonate (up to 4 months or so). Furthermore, it is really tough to get the right amount of malt or sugar at bottling to make it work. It either takes forever to carbonate or you end up seriously overcarbonating. Everything becomes a whole lot easier with krauesening. It usually takes 3-5 weeks to carbonate, and the carbonation level is far more predictable. Remember that you don't want to add yeast to near-freezing beer. This is my procedure: the day before bottling, rack to a new carboy while beer is very cold. This leaves behind almost all of the sediment at the bottom of the lagering vessel and reduces chill haze. Then put the beer somewhere where temperatures are about 60F. The next day, you'll have clear beer at the right temperature for krauesening.
6. Since you are probably brewing continental lagers now, re-evaluate your ingredients. This one took me a long time to learn (it's all finally hit me while brewing batches 53-55). A German dopplebock should be made with light and dark Munich malts; NOT with crystal malt, NOT with chocolate or black malt. Same with a München Dunkle. Oktoberfest can also contain some Vienna and even a bit of Pilsener malts. Any of these can have a small amount (0.5 lb or less for a 5-gallon batch) of Carapils or wheat malts for better head retention.

Brian's Additional Rules for All-Grain Brewers:

1. TAKE GOOD NOTES! This is still more important now.
2. Be careful about your mashing method. A pot on top of a stove is very prone to hot spots and cold spots. I prefer a mash / lauter tun made from a Gott cooler. Be sure to stir very well and quickly when you add strike water.
3. Don't skip doughing-in! It is far easier to avoid hot and cold spots if you aren't as worried about doughing-in at the same time. I use about 1 quart per 6-7 lbs of grain.
4. If using a joint mash/lauter tun, fill the volume under the false bottom with 60°F water before grinding grain. This will significantly help to avoid air bubbles and hot-side aeration when sparging.
5. With wheat beers or large batches, use rice hulls to prevent stuck mashes. Stuck mashes just suck all around. It really isn't too tough to avoid with smaller batches made with only barley. (Wheat has more protien than barley, and some protiens form a "sludge" in the mash).
6. If you are brewing lagers, seriously consider decoction mashing for dark and amber beers. When done properly (which will take some practice), it adds a fullness to your beer that infusion mashes can't touch. Greg Noonan's book gives some good info on decoction mashing.