Mr Wizard’s Top Homebrewing Tips

Wow, nothing like an open-ended question! I do have a single thought about brewing that influences my general approach, and that is to keep brewing processes as simple as possible unless there is a specific need to add complexity. With this idea in mind, here are some tips that ring true to me. I hope these are helpful!

Match Your brewing System with your Brewing Style

It seems to me that many brewers, both homebrewers and commercial brewers, do things a certain way because they are simply following the lead of others. My philosophy is to do what is needed to brew great beer, and not much more. If infusion mashing using an insulated cooler makes beer that tastes as great as beer made from a more complex process, then why add the complexity? There are merits to keeping things simple. In my opinion, there is too much emphasis placed by some on the equipment used to produce wort, and not enough focus on the means and methods used for fermentation, aging, and packaging.

Know Your Brewing Profile; Utilitarian or Gearhead

It is totally cool to be a gearhead brewer. These are the brewers who love designing, building, and tweaking their brewing tools almost as much as brewing and enjoying beer. If you are a gearhead, you know it! It’s also cool if you see your brewing tools as a means to an end, the end being great beer. In my travels as a brewing professional, I have looked for a correlation between “X” and great beer. What are the commonalities, or X-factors, among breweries who produce great beers? Well, fancy equipment is most definitely not a commonality. Sorry gearheads, there are plenty of mediocre beers brewed using stunning technology. I suppose there is a bit of wow factor involved here . . . as in wow, with all of those awesome gizmos, this is it? But there is a real correlation between cleanliness and attention to detail, and beer quality. Fastidious brewers tend to brew better beer than sloppy brewers.

I am a gearhead brewer and love looking at well-designed and well-built brewing equipment. And the control that well-designed equipment affords the brewer is at times amazing. Yet I have come to realize that simple tools are often the best fit for the job. My tip here is to compartmentalize your thinking. Don’t confuse your tools with your beer, and feel free to fall into either camp. The utilitarian and the gearhead are not easy to detect in a blind tasting, because the quality of their beers are judged by the same set of quality parameters and great beers can be brewed using a range of tools.

Simplify Packaging

Very few brewers truly enjoy packaging. Indeed, bottling or kegging is the one task that seems to be universally reviled. So the best way to approach the chore of packaging is to spend more time thinking about how to improve it. The more important aspects of packaging include easy cleaning, set-up, and operation, and minimized oxygen pick-up during the process. Although packaging into kegs certainly can be the easiest method, kegs are not easily transported or given to friends and a regular maintenance schedule is required. The tip here is to determine the type of packages that are the best fit for your homebrewery, and to invest in the equipment needed to streamline this critical process step.

Go Metric

This may seem logical for those outside of the United States, but not always so for those still using imperial units. Brewing math can be confusing because of the various units and brewing-specific terms used by brewers. Using the metric system for calculations greatly simplifies this process. Plus, the basis for all science-based math is the metric system, and many of the calculations used by US brewers include conversion factors that put metric values into English units. Why make things more complex? Switching from gallons, quarts, pounds, ounces, and ˚F to liters, milliliters, kilograms, grams, and ˚C is a great first step into easier math. The only nations that have not converted to the metric system are the US, Liberia, and Myanmar, so metric brewing is a good way of practicing an important second language.

For example, a typical pint of beer . . . oops half liter, contains 2 grams of carbon dioxide per liter after fermentation and 5 g/L after carbonation. So how much sugar is needed to boost the carbon dioxide of 18 liters of beer by 3 g/L? This is easy math using the metric system. We need 54 grams of carbon dioxide (18 liters x 3 g/L), with a bit of chemistry we can see that 1 gram of glucose yields 0.49 grams of carbon dioxide (C₆H₁₂O₆ 2 CO₂ → 2 C₂H₅OH), and can easily determine that 110 grams of glucose (also known as dextrose or corn sugar) is needed (54 grams CO₂ divided by 0.49 grams CO₂/grams glucose). Ahhh, so simple!

Calibrate Your Equipment

All beer recipes are based on ratios. Kilos of malt per liter of mash water, grams of hops per liter of wort, grams of priming sugar per liter of beer, etc. So it is really important to know liquid volumes. Calibrating your brewing vessels is not only super easy, it is one of the keys to better brewing. Calibration strips, ink marks on vessel exteriors, measuring sticks, sight glasses and etched marks on the interior of brewing vessels are the most common methods. Once you begin thinking in terms of weight per volume, and calculating your ingredient additions using this method you will never go back to general rules that are based in “2 cups per batch.”

Interact with Other Homebrewers

The brewing community is social by nature; after all, our product is the classic social lubricant. Beer makes us want to talk, and brewers love talking about brewing. Join a club, participate in group tasting, enter your beer in competitions to get feedback from others, and go to homebrewing functions that have an educational component. Not only is socializing with other brewers enjoyable, it is a great way to improve your brewing skills.

Know Your Cleaning and Sanitizing Chemicals By Name

The importance of cleaning and sanitizing cannot be over-stated. This rule applies equally to brewing clean beers as it does funky, wild and sour beers, just in different ways. I am a strong advocate of calling out cleaning chemicals by their proper names, as opposed to their common names. For example, “Bob’s Brewing Magic” is meaningless when it comes to clear communication, whereas 1% sodium hydroxide leaves no ambiguity about the nature of the cleaner. Know what you are using for your own safety and for the integrity of your beer; some chemicals require gloves and eye protection for safe handling, and some chemicals used for cleaning and sanitation can affect beer flavor and foam stability. A good vocabulary list of cleaning chemicals includes caustic, sodium hydroxide, sodium metasilicate, trisodium phosphate, iodophor, peracetic/peroxyacetic acid, quarternary ammonium compounds (aka “quats” and QACs), sodium hypochlorite, chlorine dioxide, sulfur dioxide, potassium metabisulfite, phosphoric acid, and acetic acid.

Clarify, Rack, and Dose When Bottle-Conditioning

Bottle-conditioning is a great method to carbonate beer and has the added benefit of extending beer shelf-life. And one of the tricks to this method is limiting the amount of yeast in the bottle, and ensuring that the yeasties going into the bottle are fresh and healthy cells. An easy way to set the stage for success is to allow beer to clarify in the fermenter after primary fermentation is complete, either by simply allowing yeast cells to flocculate or by assisting the process with finings, like isinglass, racking to a clean container where sugar and a fresh dose of conditioning yeast is added, and then bottling. The addition of fresh yeast is a practice used by most commercial breweries that bottle condition, but a practice used by few homebrewers. And using the same strain for primary fermentation and secondary fermentation in the bottle is not required; in fact, it is quite common to use a different strain for conditioning. Dried yeast added at the rate of 0.2 g/L is very handy for this practice.

All-Grain Brewers should Experiment with RO Water and Brewing Salts

Beer is 85-90% water, and water has a huge influence on all aspects of brewing. Mash enzymes, color development, hop utilization, and beer flavor are all significantly influenced by water chemistry. The problem that many brewers have with water chemistry is that it is a very challenging topic to clearly understand. And even with a clear understanding, adjusting water can be a real challenge because the data about local water from your water authority may not match the water coming out of your tap on brewday. Reverse osmosis, or RO, is a common water treatment method to remove just about everything from water, other than water. RO water is actually not great for brewing because it lacks minerals. What RO represents is a blank canvas that makes brewing salt additions easy, consistent, and location-independent.

Have Fun!

This last tip is perhaps the most important. Homebrewing is a great hobby and it should be fun. Make sure you take the time to look into new techniques, recipe ideas, or experiments if homebrewing starts becoming mundane.

Response by Ashton Lewis.