10 Tips to Up Your Homebrew Beer Game

Beer brings people together all over the world. With roots that reach back to ancient Egypt and variations around the globe, it’s safe to say that beer is a popular beverage that will be around for years to come. Some fans take their love of the drink to its logical conclusion and learn how to make their own beer.

Homebrewers come from all walks of life and brew all kinds of beer. Some learn from a kit and others learn from friends and relatives. As more people learn how to brew beer every day, dedicating space for beer-brewing equipment in your home is not so unusual anymore.

Basic Beer Making

The basic beer-making process for home brewers goes something like this:

1. Heat water
2. Cook grains
3. Heat more water
4. Add the cooked grains and steep
5. Extract grains
6. Add malt extract
7. Boil
8. Add hops and clarifiers
9. Cool
10. Add yeast
11. Transfer the wort to a suitable vessel and ferment
12. Bottle

There’s one more step in some cases.

Some bottled beers are encouraged to ferment in the bottle. This creates a carbonated beverage. For these brews, regulated beer storage conditions are critical. Fermenting bottles should be kept in a temperature-regulated environment and remain undisturbed for as long as the recipe recommends.

All these steps leave plenty of room for error. But experimentation and finding new flavors is half the fun. If you engage in free-style fermentation, you may find one or more of the following tips helpful.

Safety

There’s a lot of heat and boiling water involved at the start of the brewing process. One of the best ways to improve your brew is to make the process safer.

Get a Sturdy Stove

If it can’t handle your kettle and be stable at the same time, you could have a safety hazard. Its height should be comfortable for you to lift and move your kettle of wort. Other upgrades to consider are related to fuel. Are electrical connectors or gas lines safe and secure? Maybe it’s time for a new stove.

Use a Quality Kettle

The kettle for your boiling wort should be the appropriate size for your batch, with strong handles that are securely attached. Stainless steel is preferred. State-of-the-art kettles have built-in temperature gauges, filters, and other convenient options. These items make home brewing easier and more consistent.

Tools

There are a lot of details to successful brewing, but there are not a lot of tools. The few tools necessary, however, are critical.

Get an Accurate Temperature

You need to get a good thermometer for consistently good brews. There are many styles available. Avoid the infrared, point-and-click style thermometers since they read surface temperature only. Get one with a probe you can put into the wort. Make sure the length of the probe, and its cord, are long enough to reach the center of your kettle without scalding the user with boiling wort.

Invest in a Reliable Timer

You can find timers that track multiple processes. These can be convenient when adding hops, flavors, and fining agents.

Keep your Measurements Consistent

The best way to be consistent is to get a digital scale and make sure you measure ingredients consistently every time. This helps you get consistent results. With good record keeping and accurate measuring, you can reproduce your best brews with minimal flavor deviation.

Use a Set of Hydrometers

A hydrometer can measure how much alcohol by volume (ABV) is in your beer. Being able to craft a brew to a predictable ABV is a skill a good brewmaster should cultivate. A set of two or more hydrometers lets you average readings across each device, increasing accuracy.

Get a Wort Chiller

There are many kinds of wort chillers on the market. They’re easy to use and can help you get temperature control down to a science. This is especially important if you are going to aerate your wort.

Learn How to Use a Wort Refractometer

A refractometer is like a hydrometer, but instead of measuring ABV it measures suspended sugar content in liquid solutions in units called Brix (°Bx). You can use a refractometer on hot or cold wort. When combined with hydrometer readings this tool can help you fine-tune your beer.

Experimentation

Once you’re comfortable with the process of home brewing, and you get dependable results, maybe it’s time to experiment.

Try Different Grain Vendors

Lager made from the grain of one vendor may taste subtly different than lager made from another vendor’s grain, even if it’s the same type of grain. The same can be true of hops and malt extract. What about using local grain? You might discover something that improves your brew. Or not. Don’t be afraid to fail.

Mix it up With Dry Hopping

This term describes the practice of adding hops or other additives in the fermentation process or after. Hops added during the first or second fermentation stage impart their qualities to the brew in a direct manner. This can create a product with a strong flavor.

Get Brewing!

Brewing can be a complex art. It’s fun and easy to learn, but hard to master. It’s taken humankind thousands of years to perfect the brews we enjoy today, but you should be able to make a drinkable beverage in a few weeks. Don’t be discouraged if you skunk up a bottle or two. Keep practicing, and hopefully, each batch you make will be better than the last!