All of the above…especially the note taking.
I have also found that brewing the same beer until I “nail it” and then repeating several times has helped me tremendously. This helps me dial in my technique and assure that it was not a fluke but was brewed as intended.
Oh, and remember to have fun with it all. It’s easy to get all worked up over every little detail but more often than not, with a little effort and paying attention, you will end up with drinkable beer.
The messed up thing about that is as first time brewer I have no home brew. RDWHASBCB. Relax dont worry have a store bought craft beer. Also highly effective
Me too!
Glad to see all this… I’ve been wanting to start brewing for a couple of years now, and just got a turkey fryer from Amazon yesterday. Making a trip to the store this weekend to start my first extract batch. Wish me luck!
From personal experience when/if you make the switch to kegging don’t get rid of all your bottles. Some beers really appreciate extended aging, and I really like sharing my beer with other people and six packs make a nice gift.
Make sure your water is the same quality as your other ingredients. Chlorine and Chloramine are no good. If you are not sure, try a batch with store baught spring water and see if there is a huge improvement,
Water treatments are not hard but you have to know what is in there. My local water is hard as hell (I had thought it would be the same source as I had when I lived downtown) so burtonizing it just created a mineral bomb. Switched back to Labrador spring water and my beer was good again.
Read read read! There are many good homebrewing books and many offer different techniques that get the same job done. It really helps make these forums more useful when you have a solid understanding from guys like Papazian, Palmer and Zainishef. You’ll find that you get some pretty bad advice at times that you may have followed otherwise…
I agree read then read some more. I would recomend how to brew by palmer. as much as I like Papazian the joy of brewing book is getting out of date. Having a basic uderstanding from the start will give you a much greater chance of producing a good first beer.
Drew Beechum’s Everything home brew is a pretty good basic starter that’s a more enjoyable read than How to brew. How to brew is more complete though. I also enjoyed “Radical brewing” by Randy Mosher…
Note take - seriously, write down everything. Do NOT trust your memory on what happened on a brew day. Usually doesn’t work. (I have a really nice journal style book I write my notes in and I also have whomever helped on brew day or was a participant in some way sign the book - kinda neat brewery log type of thing)
Develop muscle memory. I do everything the same way - every time. Sanitize, clean, etc. IMO good beer comes from good, repeatable procedure. Do it the same way/order all the time and that’s helped me.
Hang out with other brewers, read posts where the topic title doesn’t interest you. I’ve learned more from things I didn’t think I wanted to read than anywhere else.
