Avoid These Home-Brew Misfires

Making your own beer successfully is true pleasure, not only did you get the enjoyment of an excellent product brewed to your own taste, but you also create something to share. Something desirable, that will get you more respect with your crew, than anything you could buy in a store. Becoming a great brewer can make you feel like a god. Unfortunately, this experience is very hard won, and many people never even get close. Many things can go wrong on the way to pulling that handle on your Kegerator.

·         Cleanliness:  Cleanliness is next to Godliness when it comes to beer. You don’t want anything in those pipes and bottles other than what you put there on purpose. Incomplete cleaning, and contamination can ruin a brew right from the start. Your brew is alive, but not everything that can live in it is tasty. You really don’t want to sample a brew that got its character from something under your dirty fingernail. Pretend you are performing surgery; everything needs to be sterile and clean.

·         Bad Measuring: You may get to the point where you can add ingredients by instinct like a chef, and have confidence in your results, but making beer is scientific and until you are a brewmeister yourself, you really should stick to a recipe and use quality measuring tools. And get a good scale to measure your dry ingredients by volume. Quite a few components can be purchased in useful portions, just the right amount for a batch, like 14kg Bundaberg molasses, or carbonation drops in uniform sizes.

·         Overheating:  It doesn’t take long to ruin a brew, if you burn your extract, or you let your materials boil over, you are going to have a big mess and likely no beer, every step of the process needs to be a scientific as possible. As you get more time with your equipment, you will learn to know what to expect.

·         Impatience: Not allowing time for the process is another way to ruin the day. Beer making takes patience, and there is no substitute for good timing. Don’t get too anxious at any stage, be precise. And don’t try to bottle your brew too soon. You will be wasting all that effort and be left with the sound of breaking glass as your bottles become over pressurised.

If you truly want to become a beer god, you will have to realise that with great power comes great responsibility. You need to be a perfect acolyte before you can be the wizard. Do so, and your efforts will be rewarded.

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