I’m a fairly new partial-boil extract brewer and would like to figure out the next step in improving the quality of my beer. I am thinking about:
making starters
wort chillers
fermentation temperature control
full boils
What will likely give me the most improvement? Or is there something else that will improve the quality? I am shying away from full boils because I cannot do them in my kitchen and don’t care too much about hop efficiency. There is not anything I can point to that I do not like about my beer, but that is probably because I’m just starting.
Fermentation temp control be my absolute number 1 priority. Number 2 would be starters unless you’re happy with just using dry yeasts, then you don’t need them. Wort chillers are nice but much less important if you’re not doing full boils and full boils, well, you’ve already stated how you feel about them.
There are 2 steps to making beer, Preping the wort and fermenting the wort.
Since you have limitations on preping the wort the obvious is to control the fermenting of the wort, so temp contol
but that said, making starters really isn’t too complicated and doesn’t require a lot of additional equipment (stir plates are nice, but certainly not necessary). so I’d suggest you do that too. leave the wort chilling for whenever (if) you move to full boil.
Looks like my next step is a Son of Fermentation Chiller or a Water Fermentation Chiller. I’ll also start making some starters because that does not look that difficult.
Depending on your location you could probably get away with a swamp cooler. It was suggested to me on this forum and it worked like a charm. It’s also nice because it costs next to nothing.