New to Brewing, Any Tips?

Hello everyone, my name is Connor, I’m 26, and I am brand new at home brewing. I have officially finished my first brew which was a cinnamon/pear Mead. It was absolutely delicious, and it has sparked a fire within me to learn more!

What are some good tips and tricks you all wish you had known when you first started brewing?

Welcome to the hobby!
I can only speak from the beer end, but probably the most important pieces of advice for new brewers are:

  1. Sanitation matters (but you don’t need to sterilize everything – it’s okay!); basic cleaning, occasional inspection of things like hoses and tubes for grunge, and use of StarSan or other sanitizer will be sufficient 98% of the time (and the other 2% can usually be fixed with replacing old o-rings or tubing).
  2. Fermentation temperature management (or selection of yeast / brewing schedule for the temperatures you have access to) will fix many homebrew flaws; an IPA fermented at 85 degrees with an American ale yeast won’t taste as good as one fermented at 68 degrees. You don’t need to
  3. Relax, Don’t Worry, Have a Homebrew! It’s okay to stress about the little things, but especially when you are getting going in the hobby, know that fermentations are resilient things.
  4. When you are ready and if you are interested, share your brews with someone you trust who knows beer (or mead, or whatever) and can give you constructive feedback. They may pick up on things you missed.

Also, like any hobby, you will find some strong opinions on what you MUST do (or it might feel that way) – buy this piece of $500 equipment; only this particular yeast will produce an acceptable beer of a particular style; rewire and replumb your home (forgetting not everyone is a homeowner–a pet peeve of mine), etc. Folks are usually coming from a good place (and sometimes the advice is good, even if there are alternatives that work nearly as well, just as well, or better), but do keep things in perspective. It’s OK to experiment a bit and find what works for you. There are multiple paths to good fermentations.

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For beer brewing one of the must have books is How To Brew by John Palmer. Make sure you get the 4th edition because John updated, edited and completely reversed some of the info presented in the 1st edition.

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Lots of great advice, thanks for that! It’ll most likely be some time before I branch out into the world of beers, but I can’t wait for that new environment. Step 3 is also a really nice touch. A reminder to relax and remember I’m still learning is a must.

Thanks, I’ll look into this!

In addition to Mr. Palmer’s book I highly recommend
‘Simple Homebrewing: Great Beer, Less Work, More Fun’. Also try out their pod cast and the Brulosophy podcast. Just my two cents.

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My advice is start with small brew-in-a-bag batches.

Everybody told me to buy gear for 10-gallon batches because “you’ll want to upgrade eventually anyway”, but I’ve gone the opposite way. I ditched my big gear to standardize on 5- and 10-liter batches.

You can pick up a kettle big enough for 10-liter batches at Walmart, and brew bags are cheap online. Each batch uses fewer ingredients; can be easily done in a regular kitchen; takes (a bit) less time; takes less space; is easier to temperature control; and is easier to package.

Also: keep up the mead-making. Mead is awesome! And if you haven’t tried it yet, look into cider-making.

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I will add the podcasts to the list!

Ciders and beers are 1,000% on the to-do list, can’t wait to try those out.

Thanks for the recommendation!

The nice thing about this hobby is that you will always have something new to learn. I no longer brew for personal consumption as I have focused on competition and experimentation - as such, I give away 90% of what I produce successfully and have no issues with dumping the failures.

I haven’t brewed a beer for four years when I make a large batch of Eisbock that has won several Gold medals with an average score of ~43.5. I still have some of this in a keg and it gets better as it ages. I have been experimenting with mead, makgeolli, and most recently purchased 900 pounds of ‘Golden Bosc’ pears. I just sent off two pear ciders for judging (I appreciate the feedback) - one a ciders was straight pear and the other a really nice pear/ginger combination.

From my experience, I’d provide the following advice: manage temperatures, manage sanitization, manage water quality and water chemistry, and accept failures as part of the learning process.

The one aspect of this hobby nobody enjoys is cleaning and sanitizing. I focus on developing strategies to simplify and optimize this process. I have a sump-pump-based system that I put in a 5-gallon bucket that spray cleans empty kegs, I keep a keg full of a SanStar mixture that I pump with CO2 into and out of kegs for sanitization (test it regularly for pH and don’t keep it too long), and there are similar other tricks you need to find.

The final thing I recommend is keeping outstanding records. Details are important. When I started, I developed a strategy for detailing the recipe, the process, SG, FG, temperatures used, comments about anything and everything, with thoughts about how to improve the recipe in the future.

The hardest thing for me is to decide whether to just make a small experimental batch of a new recipe, or produce a 10 or 15 gallon batch. The large batches reduce errors as measurements don’t have to be as precise. In regards to my recent 900 pounds of pears used for cider, I couldn’t turn down the $200 the farmer wanted for the 900 pounds of pears.

This isn’t very well written, but hopefully gives some input that is useful.

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$200 for 900 lbs of pears is WILD lol.

Bought them from a farmer in Courtland, CA

:exploding_head: That’s crazy bananas cheap.

I have a straight pear and pear/ginger cider submitted in competition. I should get the feedback mid-Feb. I will be taking the judge sheets and samples of the cider down to the farmer. The farm’s location along the Sacramento River is amazing. That property is worth more than anything he can get from the pears.

There is a series of videos the AHA put out a cpl yrs ago that is a good review. It is narrated by John Palmer based on his book How to Brew. I’ll put a link below for the first in the series.

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