The 'Top Tips' Thread!

[raiderman]

.play with the recipe, design your own beer. more of this and less of that... recipes are only a starting point and if you like good beer and can follow a recipe competently then you can write your own recipe and it will taste even better.

For me that says it all. There are so many ingredients out there to play with and no book is ever up to date so the recipes are out of date. I've just added dark wheat malt to a bitter, why? because it was there! Look at the lager recipes in a book, all basically the same, where's the fun in that. Recipes are but a starting point and particularly with so many of the brew like what you drink down the pub books which faithfully call for sugar instead of malt, why brew an adulterated product. Why not start by replacing the sugar with malt and brewing the ale like it used to be before the brewery accountant got hold of it? After that the worlds your lobster.

[Blackjack]

Use Forums as a very useful resource but DO NOT take what you find on here as gospel, it ain't. ( I was told Lager Malt was fine for making bitter and ended up sending 10 gallons of Lager/Bitter b***tard brew to my sons but they think it's wonderful and want more!!!)

I hope that wasn't me!Sorry if it was. I use lager malt for brewing blonde and golden ales. I'm not just saying that, my mate Ainsworth who is CAMRA accredited is very happy to drink the stuff. Normal lager malt as a straw coloured bitter is great, its got less flavour than MO but a bit of wheat malt carapils and a tad of munich is all it needs to fill it out

Dunno, but I am quite happy to blame you . and I don't have carapils or Munich ( whatever they are LOL) and I did rack after just 3 days in the FV, so partly my fault. Ha ha ha.

[leewink]

Never go rock climbing with one arm and itchy b****cks

Brew on, lee

[beermonsta]

when kegging to a cornie, sanatise as appropiate then unscrew the grey disco' from your CO2 supply and screw a black one on.
Next purge the cornie with CO2 using the black disco' on the out post (this ensures the CO2 fills from the bottom by being pumped down the long dip tube and expells air out the top)
Next use the same out post to fill/rack your beer to the keg.
The beer will flow down the out post to the bottom of the keg meaning very little air makes contact, and with a CO2 blanket above it it should ensure minimal oxidisation. Then purge as normal.
If you can a simple set up is to use a 'bottler stick' tap as you can shove normal pipe into the connector and push this over the screw thread on the disco'.
Makes for very easy racking.
Credit to DomClarke (mate) for some of this!
Ben

[TC2642]

Filter tips make good tampons for mice (shamelessly stolen from viz).

[raiderman]

Don't worry, disciples of John Palmer and the great man himself would agree with you too

as would I - it's possible to make an ale with lager malt, good ones too if the ingredients are well choosen. Good fresh full flavoured hops if you want to make the most of the pale delicate flavour of the lager malt or plenty of full flavoured specialty malts to make up for its low colour and flavour.

That's not to say everyone will like it but the same can be said about beer made from any ingredient, you can't please everyone.

I'm experimenting with new zealand hops, brewed a refreshing lager which is 2 weeks old and bottled my first bitter using them on Sun, 2kg MO, 1.5kg Belgian Pale and 1kg dark wheat malt - as drunk durring bottling this has produced a very pale straw coloured ale which has a good maltiness. Maturity will tell.

[leigh1919]

Here's how I do my recipes:

1. Big pad and Pen.
2. Think of ballpark of Beer i'm aiming for.
3. Scour every web resource, both english and american, and always take a look in Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher.
4. Review what I can and can't get from suppliers (BB and H&G - never used anyone else)
5. Whack it all into Beersmith, tweak and brew.
6. First brew almost always needs tweaking, but i'm never far off.

finally - if you think of your beers in batches of say, two or three, then oyu can bulk-buy grain and hops with this in mind which is cheaper and means less grain/hops in storage, which in turn means fresher ingreidients.

[Hogarth]

A tip from the head brewer of a brewpub who was kind enough to give me a tour: if you work your way through the recipe book you'll probably make a decent enough beer each time, but if you want to come up with something outstanding, stick to the same two or three recipes and keep tweaking them.

[Blackjack]

Use Irish Moss ( in the copper! Chris ) and your yeast will settle better in the FV while whirlyfloc and protofloc will turn it into a clumpy flumpy nuisance.

[lancsSteve]

Here's how I do my recipes:

1. Big pad and Pen.
2. Think of ballpark of Beer i'm aiming for.
3. Scour every web resource, both english and american, and always take a look in Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher.
4. Review what I can and can't get from suppliers (BB and H&G - never used anyone else)
5. Whack it all into Beersmith, tweak and brew.
6. First brew almost always needs tweaking, but i'm never far off.
.

Much the same

1 - Read 'Radical Brewing' for inspiration
2 - Look at what's in stock and some other recipe books
3 - Fire Up BrewPal on iPod
3 - Make it
4 - Wait
5 - Wait longer
6 - wait more
7 - drink it
8 - think about tweaking it but returning to step 1 makes me want to do something different next!

[lancsSteve]

[The best way to achieve good beers is to get one beer how you like it then change one thing at a time such as add a different specialty malt or change a flavour or bittering hop and start to work on that to make another perfect beer before moving onto the next. Switching from a stout to a pale ale to a belgium ale to a lager tells you little about your brewery, water and malt supplier and will leave you as a jack of all trades but master of none.

Or will give you breadth of experience and a variety of beers and experience of different approaches rather than just the same kind of beer time after time which I personally couldn't stand - I brew at home precisely to get the sort of variety I can't get in the supermarket or pub.

I'm sure there's a few trajectories one can take but seems to me you have to choose a path: attempting to perfect one or two beer styles OR experimenting with variety and become competent at different styles... "Jack of all trades but master of none" is a pretty loaded and judgemental term but I understand and respect the sentiment, though it can easily be respun as being "flexible, adaptable and with a breadth of experience".

My guess is early enthusiasm for variety and experimentation will mature in time to refinement and reproduction, but it depends also on whether you believe consistency is something even worth aiming for or aspiring to. Consistency is a very industrial and commercial concept compared with batch production, artisanship and variety. Arguably consistency comes at the expense of serendipidy and fortune and you don't treasure something you can make again and again as much as something truly rare and wonderful!

[raiderman]

Making small changes from one batch to the next allows you to identify what change is responsible the difference between one batch and the next. Making a host of changes leaves you with no idea but if just making beer is more important to you than trying to understand the effect of changing ingredients and variables then I agree this sort of tip isn't relevant to you.

I agree, get a stock recipe and tweak it is the only way to really understand what a change of ingredient does. It works for me because I brew straw coloured bitters, blondes and lagers. I suppose its going to be harder for someone who brews the full spectrum.

[lancsSteve]

Now you can get just about every style and variety of beer from the supermarket and specialty shops.

Speciality shops yes - at a price usually, supermarkets? Not for me (when I can find rauchbier or schwartzbier in Tesco I'll be a VERY happy man!

Making small changes from one batch to the next allows you to identify what change is responsible the difference between one batch and the next. Making a host of changes leaves you with no idea

Yes, if they're the same style but if you want to make something different then you'll need to change a few things. Rather than between-batch change taking off some of the wort and fermenting with a different yeast can give a guide, splitting the boil etc. are all ways of learning and varying within a brew rather than between batches - and gives you even greater comparability as there's no other extraneous variables from between-batch changes (water quality, boil length etc.)

but if just making beer is more important to you than trying to understand the effect of changing ingredients and variables then I agree this sort of tip isn't relevant to you.

It's not about making generic 'beer' but making different styles and feeling the freedom that all grain gives yo to make the beers you love but are hard or expensive to buy. The beers I've made so far have been across a huge spectrum of styles and tastes and that's been wonderful. I'm not yet compelled to refine any of them but I'm sure that will come at which point this advice is indeed sage - however as outlined above this can also be done within a batch rather than between to gain variety from one wort. I'd say that's "the best" way to learn effects of single variables rather than between-batches an is controlling variables even more.

However it could be argued that taking the time to understand the ingredients and a slightly more scientific approach allows you to ultimately be more creative rather than leaving it in the lap of the gods as to whether all your time and effort is rewarded with a beer close to what you actually wanted rather than something that bears a vague similarity.

I do a LOT of research on recipes, in recipe books and in plugging in numbers to software in advance of brewing so it's far from haphazzard or just making 'a beer' - there's usually one that I'm aiming for but I also want to make a beer that's mine not a clone. Everything I've made so far has been VERY close to what I wanted and not a 'vague similarity'. I'm sure that one will become a beer I love so much I want to refine it (and I'm sure that will be a dark lager). And then refinement can also go in other directions: less hassle (e.g. using melanoidin malt rather than decoction mashing) and tryin different yeasts until i have something that i can mak consistently, but at the moment variety still floats my boat and that's a joy of brewing.

One of the advantages and one of the reasons often listed for all grain brewing is a greater control over the brewing process and the outcome

Another is the variety of ingredients available compared to extracts (certainly in the UK) and the possibilities that arise from that...

so it is fair to assume that this approach is relevant to at least some people.

I think it's relevant to all people, ultimately... but so is recognising the limits and parameters of it as an approach. This sin't to disagree or argue for the sake of arguing but to advocate another view and approach as being equally as valid, and the approach you take needs to be aligned with what you want to achieve and where you want to go, what you want to make and explore or refine. So it's not a 'best' way to which others are inferior but a 'best' way to achieve an outcome. In that way changing everything to make something different next time is as valid as refining an approach and learning the subtleties of a variety - it gives a sense of freedom and possibility. The question becomes 'what do i want to brew next?' rather than 'what one element should I change next time?' or 'how can I improve this?', and they are different questions suiting different approaches. I'm not advocating 'throw it all together and hope' but seeing recipes as guides not rules and seeking variety as being as valid as seeking refinement. As such I don't disagree with your view, far from it, but I think this other approach is worthy of consideration as well if variety and exploration are what flicks your switch. it's the difference between reading BYOBRAH and reading Radical Brewing.

And if advocating a 'best' approach I'm sure there's also a really good argument for learning all the maths and doing your recipes and calculations by hand as well compared with using software, but software makes life a lot easier and the creativity and ideas to be simulated in advance and thoughts and ideas polled from forums like this so they help inform variety and experimentation that would otherwise be totally haphazzard.

[JackA]

The reason I took up brewing was because I was fed up with drinking filtered, pasteurised beer at home which tasted nothing like the real thing. E.g. a bottle of London Pride tastes nothing like the cask version. Good, bottle conditioned, beers are hard to come by

[Spud395]

I'd actully have a foot in both camps of the above debate, and think both are great reasons to home brew beer