Things I wish I’d known about homebrewing
Or, how not to make ALL the mistakes and be a noob after 10 years
Ok friends, real talk. My last 2 homebrews were utter shite. A red ale I brewed was simply awful, and had an infection, and the porter I brewed soon after just… didn’t taste the best. Not infected (phew!) but really missed the mark in terms of flavour, body and carbonation.
So while I know what went wrong with these two brews*, I also had the whole of December and Jan to mull over my homebrew career so far. Basically, I got depressed, and angry with myself for not doing things “correctly”. I very nearly packed it all in and gave up. But in the spirit of “progress over perfection” I thought I’d share some of my failures and learnings from being a beginner for 10 years.
*For the curious: My red ale had an infection that smelled like bleach - so basically it’s probably down to me not rinsing my cleaner off properly or diluting my sanitiser incorrectly. These are both likely because I’m generally not super precise about anything. Ugh. See point 8.
My porter was admittedly not brewed to style. It was a “kitchen sink” beer, AKA a beer that is brewed just to use up ingredients. I had a bunch of pale malts, caramel malts, and some de-husked roasted malts, plus some English-style hops and yeast so I plugged it into the Grainfather software and hoped for the best. It seemed to fit well enough, and so I brewed it. Where I went wrong is that I mashed too low (leading to it not having enough sweetness) and it was under-carbed. Precise measuring got me again. See point 4.
1- Brew a few kits before moving to all grain
Ok look, this is elementary advice, but it’s exactly the kind that I totally ignored. I brewed exactly 1 kit-beer before going all in and buying a Grainfather. Excellent decision, but I should have waited. Here’s why (you’ll notice a theme) - you have to learn to crawl before you can walk, and what brewing kit beers does is teach you to focus in on the very basic building blocks: cleaning, sanitising, and bottling. The brewing process is foolproof but it’s the stuff that comes before and after that really affects your beer.
2- Start with other people’s recipes
I’m embarrassed to tell you this; I’ve never brewed from a recipe made by someone else. Crazy right? You don’t make Beef Wellington without following (at least the bones of) a recipe before trying to make it your own, do you? Apparently, that’s my toxic trait - I’m overly confident about my knowledge of ingredients, methods, and styles and so I have only ever brewed my own recipes. Sometimes they’re great, but a lot of times I’ve been let down due to my own stubbornness, ego, and/or laziness. It’s my new-beer’s resolution this year to only brew from other’s tried and true recipes - that way I will learn not only what works well, but I’ll learn why.
Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s shit.
3- Brew the same beer a few times over
I’m way too ADHD for this, but it’s absolutely to my detriment. When you brew the same beer over and over, you can tweak small things and compare and you can really dial in the recipe. The first time you brew a beer it probably won’t turn out perfectly - learning your own system can really help your beer. I know it sounds boring, but pick a beer style (and recipe from the point above) that you’d be happy to drink every day and practice with that. When you have that one nailed, move on to another recipe.
4- The method is just as important as the ingredients
Ever tried to bake but you fudged it even though you measured everything perfectly? Just me? Well, I never measure anything perfectly, but similar to point 2, I’m often oblivious or downright stubborn to look at the instructions for the recipe. A few of my beers, particularly darker ones have flopped because I neglected to research the right mash temperatures and either mashed too low, or didn’t give it a final rise in temp to leave some unfermentable sugars in the beer. That remaining sugar is pretty important in balancing the hops or roasted malts in a beer - and I’ve made this mistake a few times. If it says Mash at 68C and hold at 72C for 10 mins, please do that. If it says take it off the yeast after 2 weeks (FG notwithstanding), do that. Learn from me.
5-Don’t jump straight to kegging
It’s soooo tempting to go straight from bottling your first all-grain brew to buying a keg system; it’ll be easier to clean and quicker to carb, right? Yep, that’s true. But, and it’s a big one - it’s not the first thing to level up. Here’s my proposed order:
Kit > All Grain > Fermentation temp control > Conditioning fridge > Keg system
Some of the best advice I ever got (and obviously ignored) was that once you’ve got the beer brewing bug and you’re convinced you will brew more, get a temperature-controlled fridge for fermentation. It’s not just important for lagers (which need colder temps) but it’s really important to keep consistent temperatures during fermentation, and quite frankly, no-one’s house is the same temperature 24 hours a day, for 14 days. Those dips and rises in temp tend to stress yeast and that’s where off flavours come from. It’s among the top 3 “common” BJCP judge feedback themes for all homebrewers, along with cleanliness and categorisation.
Only after you’ve got your fermentation temps down, move on to the next. Which is yet another chamber or fridge, specifically for conditioning your beer. Now, you can get away with using the same fridge for both, but if you want to stagger brews you won’t be able to fit 40 bottles and a bucket in the same fridge. Conditioning is extremely important for good beer, and the step that people neglect when they jump straight to kegging. I get it, you have beer on tap and want to try it. But condition it for 2 weeks first at the right temperature for that style. Make that your new rule - 2 weeks of conditioning at least, please.
Only then are you ready to find the money and space for a keg system? And when you do invest in that, clean your damn lines - and make sure your pipe length works for your system.
6- Don’t drink while you brew…
Just don’t. Crack your first beer when you’ve done your post-brew cleaning. Firstly, you will get tipsy and make mistakes (guilty) and secondly, when you’ve had a few beers you really don’t feel like cleaning (also guilty) and that can lead to infections. Work hard then play hard.
7- Check your ingredients before you begin your brew
My recent red-ale-fail happened in part because I didn’t do a good job of measuring my cleaner, sanitiser, etc (see point 8) but what went immediately wrong with that beer was that I designed a recipe for a pale ale (I think?) and on the day, found that I had received the wrong yeast. It probably would have been fine, but I made the mistake of finding out about this yeast issue when I had already mashed in, and also I realised I’d mashed in some de-husked Carafa (which is quite roasty) instead of Cara (caramel malt). I made that mistake because of point 6 above. But anyway, I quickly realised that if I added my English yeast, it might make a decent red ale. In theory, it may have been fine, but making stupid mistakes like not double-checking my ingredients before I committed them to water would have saved me a batch of regret.
8- Measure twice, cut once
The other thing that definitely went wrong with my red-ale-fail was that I eye-balled my cleanser and sanitiser, and hoped for the best. I definitely put too much sanitiser into the water, making it more concentrated than it should have been which led to my infection. Just follow the instructions and don’t play around with that stuff.
9- Do some sensory training or BJCP
The one good thing that has come out of my (many) failed batches of beer is that I can objectively sit down and diagnose the problem. It’s not enough to know that something has gone wrong, or that it doesn’t taste as it should - it’s useful to know what to do better next time. This is why at the very least, you should book into a sensory training course (your homebrew club probably offers these) and for deeper knowledge, do your BJCP exam even if you never want to judge professionally.
As an aside, Cicerone is cool too - but IMO BJCP focuses on brewing, rather than tasting or serving.
10- Don’t take yourself too seriously
It’s only beer, and if it’s a bad batch you can always give it to a local distillery or fertilise your plants. It’s not heart surgery and if you’re stressing too much over it, give yourself permission to fail.
Bonus: Drink your beer before deciding on the style.
Most homebrew comps have at least one or two entries that are well brewed, but entered into the wrong category. There’s no way to score well on that beer - judges have to evaluate your beer against the style it was entered into. So, while you think you’ve made a red ale - taste it, look at it, and compare it to the style guidelines. If it passes - great! If not, look at similar styles and see if it fits better there. A lot happens between creating a recipe and actually drinking the beer, so don’t get too hung up on what your intention was, focus on the result.
I’d love to hear that I’m not alone in being the most unfocused, anti-process brewer out there. Hit me up with your fails, let’s laugh together,
