The great thing about brewing your own beer is that you can be good at it starting out and get great at it over time. You can make each and every batch tasty and enjoyable but at the same time always be driven to make a better brew. Part of the function of home brewing contests and being part of your local brewers club is that you get those tips and learn from the old pros at brewing so month by month and year by year, your beer gets better and better.
One important thing that the real beer gurus know is what great chefs know and that is the quality of beer comes down to the freshness of the ingredients you use. One area you can improve on freshness is with the yeast you use for fermentation. A dry yeast is simply not as fresh as liquid yeast so that is where one small change can dramatically affect the freshness of your beer. Use this same approach with the grains, the hops and all the perishable ingredients that you need for a quality home brewed batch of beer.
But just as even if you buy fresh flour for bread, you freeze it to delay it getting stale and use proper refrigeration for all of your brewing ingredients. First of all, only buy the ingredients when the day you are going to brew is very near. And use as much as you can up in one batch. You will get a natural instinct for how much of each ingredient you need for a single run of brewing and eventually get to where you can buy enough, use it up the next day with little or no left over and in that way always be brewing with absolutely fresh ingredients. But even then, make some room in your freezer and refrigerator to slow down the aging of the things that make up your beer. Grains and yeast can go in the refrigerator and the rest in the freezer for a short time. Use your ingrediants up quickly. Don’t stock pile.
Temperature control is a central issue with all home brewing gurus who seek absolute control over the quality of their product. That first step of brewing which is the boiling of the grains and hops to make up the "wort" is a heat intensive operation. But once the time of your boiling phase is done, bring the temperature of the wort down very quickly. By dropping the temperature from boiling to cooler temperature at a very fast pace, you will reduce the contaminations in your beer and your final product will have a vastly better clarity which is a sign of a great beer. This is one little trick of the trade that may take some effort and maybe even specialized equipment like an immersion chiller for your wort but it will be worth it in the quality of beer that results.
Keeping the temperature of your finished beer constantly under control during fermentation is also a central issue with beer making gurus to make sure their beer is of the highest quality. If you are a devoted home brewer and want to buy a refrigerator just to devote to fermentation, that would be the best situation because you could carefully control the temperature.
But there are other methods many home brewers use to assure their fermenting beer says at a steady temperature. You can select the best spot in the house where the beer will remain relatively cool all day. Then wrap the fermenter up using wet towels and then put a fan on the wrapped beer. This uses the humidity of the water and the coolness that comes from the fan to keep the beer in the best possible environment to create truly great tasting beer.
In tough economic times, we all look for ways to save money. With gas prices going up constantly, the prices of everything just goes right on up with them. Unlike the government, we can't print up money so anything we can do to cut costs without giving up quality of life is a good move. And if quality of life includes having a nice tasting brew every so often, well then there is definitely something we can do and maybe you are already starting to do that is not only great fun but a very good cost cutting move for you.
The great thing about taking up home brewing that you get three great benefits all in one great hobby. First you get a new passion in your life that will keep you busy and learning a side of beer making that you never knew could be so fascinating. Second, you inherit an entire society of fascinating people who are zealots for this hobby and life style of home brewing. And finally, once you get set up with the equipment and learn the "ropes" of brewing your own beer at home, you can make beer that is 100 times better than anything you can get at the liquor store or in a restaurant. But you can make it for a tiny percentage of what you would pay for retail beer which is inferior to yours anyway.
The great thing about home brewing that in addition to all these benefits, it really is not difficult to learn how to make great beer right at home. It will take some effort and a bit of study or coaching to learn how to use the equipment and what ingredients to buy and store. But because the ingredients are easy and abundant to get, you can set up to make literally gallons of beer for a very small investment. So on top of great fun, that’s just sensible economics.
One great way to get some help with this process and make it even more fun is to learn to make beer with a group of friends. You can split the costs and make it even more economical. And each of you can and pool your knowledge, your learning and your talents to make each batch of beer better than the last one. Because the process of brewing involves several steps, you need that patience and understanding of the process to do it right. And having friends in the process, each one can be watching for steps that need to be taken. Then when the beer enters the fermentation stage and what you all need is patience not to break into the beer and drink it before its time, you can be a support group to be willing to wait for it because you know how good it will be.
This support group can also be very helpful to be patient if that first batch of beer is not entirely perfect. But you know there are ways to get better. So by being faithful with your learning, joining with other beer brewing lovers around your town, you can and will get better quickly.
But the other value of working together with good friends is that you can eventually get a feel for how much beer you will make with each batch and how much each of you will use in a period of time. Then you can time the brewing sessions so you may even have multiple batches in various stages of completion and coming into use at just the right times so you never have to go to the liquor store again. You will have taken control of this one part of your economy by making your own beer so it's a cost you can control, unlike gasoline.
This website uses cookies that are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the privacy policy. By accepting this OR scrolling this page OR continuing to browse, you agree to our Privacy Policy