Home Brewing – Failures to Success

I wanted to write this blog as I started imagining someone wanting to home brew for the first time and not doing it because they were afraid to fail at it. Home Brewing is one of those things that you will fail at. Of course, there are varying degrees of failure – baseball for example is a sport that the best hitters fail 70% or more of the time. Home brewing doesn’t typically have that kind of failure rate but you will more than likely have an issue at some point with the quality of your beer.

I’ve talked to many brewers who have had to dump a batch for one reason or another. I’m hoping this article will educate you about what possibly can go wrong so you can try to prevent it and to let you know that if you get a bad batch it’s not the end of the world, it’s happened to the best of us.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Below are some of the most important things in the brewing process that you’ll want to consider that can prevent problems in your beer. Although this isn’t everything, I’ll post some good links at the bottom of the page for additional information.

Cleaning. The most important thing in brewing is cleanliness. I can’t emphasize this enough. I’m going to differentiate between cleaning and sanitizing but both fall under the same umbrella, and each are just as important.

ALL of your equipment needs to be clean. By cleaning your equipment you’re removing dust, dirt, proteins and various other things that may spoil your beer. You don’t want any contaminates in your beer. I always wash my equipment after brewing and again before the next time. A lot of times it’ll sit in the garage until I brew again, and I know it gets dirty again out there.

Everything from your brew kettle, fermenters, spoons, airlocks, bottles, etc all need to be cleaned. Anything that will come in contact with your beer – directly or indirectly – needs to be cleaned. I even clean the scissors I use to open the grain or hops or yeast packages.

You can buy products for cleaning and I’ve got one in the link here, but honestly, just standard dish liquid will do the trick. It’s not any different than washing dishes.

Sanitizing. I won’t say this one is more important than cleaning but this kills the bacteria that you can’t see. Microorganisms can live in the smallest of places including small scratches in your equipment. I have always used Star San because it’s a high foaming sanitizer that utilizes that foam to reach those small grooves and hard to get to places. It’s also a no-rinse sanitzer that does not add any flavors or aromas to your beer. There are other high quality sanitizers but Star San is the best. Here is a link to my site that has the Star San listed.

I usually use a 5 gallon bucket to put some Star San in with water and add some of the equipment that I’ll be using and just let it soak in there. I also use a squirt bottle filled with a sanitizer solution to continually spray things down as I’m using them. A stirring spoon is a good example of something you’ll probably use the squirt bottle on, because you will be taking it in and out of your wort and probably setting it down somewhere.

Just like I mentioned above in the cleaning section – you’ll want to sanitize All of your equipment. I won’t list everything here again but if you’re bottling your beer, make sure to clean and sanitize your bottles particularly well, especially if you’re reusing them. If they didn’t get rinsed out after they were last used, you could easily have dried up remnants in the bottle that are hard to clean out.

A good practice after you finish a bottled beer is to do a quick rinse and store it upside down on a bottle drying rack or bottle tree and allow it to dry. I have one of these that I keep on my beer fridge in the garage and I just keep them there until it gets full or I’m ready to wash and sanitize them again for use.

Quality of Water. Tap water tends to have minerals, chemicals, and various other things that can throw off the flavor of your beer. Even if the quality of water is good, those things could add flavors that you don’t want in your beer. A lot of breweries spend money on water filtration to remove those things as well as other impurities they don’t want in their beer.

I’ve always just bought distilled water from the grocery store in order to never have to worry about the water quality and always have consistency. Make sure you buy some extra as I’ve come up short a few times.

You can get real technical and go down a rabbit hole researching water. I’m not that smart or willing to spend that much typing on here 🙂 but if you want to learn more about it here is a link for a book that will tell you all about it. Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers (Brewing Elements)

Wort Temperature. The proper wort temperature is important for pitching yeast so that the wort ferments properly. If the wort is too hot you can kill the yeast. If the wort is too cold the yeast will grow slowly and could alter the flavor because of it. If the wort is juuuuust right, the yeast will be healthy and happy and eager to multiply.

You can let the wort cool down naturally, which takes hours or you can use a wort chiller, that just takes minutes. There are several types including an immersion style, counterflow and plate chiller. Here is a link to the immersion and plate styles: Other Supplies – Home Beer Brewing Kits (homebeerbrewkits.com)

There are different temperature ranges for different yeasts based on what type of beer you’re brewing. For example, if you’re brewing an ale, you want your wort temperature range to be between 64*F-73*F, depending on the type of ale and yeast. If you’re brewing a lager, you want your wort temperature range to be between 48*F-55*F, depending on the type of lager and yeast. Here is a great link from White Labs for a yeast chart showing fermentation temperature ranges for the appropriate beer styles: White Labs Core Strain Collection.

Patience. The reason for brewing beer in the first place is to ultimately drink it, so naturally you want to start drinking it as soon as possible, just don’t rush the process or your beer will suffer.

Starting with the mash – follow the timeline of the recipe and don’t shorten it. If it says to boil for an hour make sure to do that. Add your hops at the correct times. If you’re pressed for time you should probably wait to brew when you have enough time. Brewing shouldn’t be something you do in a hurry. Allow yourself enough time to prep, clean and sterilize your equipment, read the instructions, RE-read the instructions, make notes of your when to put in your hops, set timers, etc. I usually make a day of it to enjoy the experience.

When it comes to the fermentation process – 2 weeks is typically the time you allow for the yeast to do their thing in primary fermentation (this is the timeframe I use). Your recipe may call for something different so please follow those instructions as they may be specific to the beer you’re brewing. After the 2 weeks I often siphon the beer to a secondary fermentation bucket to allow for more clarity in the beer. If you cut the fermentation process too short, you don’t give your yeast a chance to fully consume all of the sugars and could result in a lower ABV.

As I was writing this, I came across some information I didn’t know about, but am going to try on my next batch. Above I mentioned that after 2 weeks I move my beer to a secondary fermenter but after reading an article at basinbrewers.org, they recommend leaving it in your primary fermenter for 4-6 weeks and not using a secondary fermenter at all. This approach is that leaving it on the yeast cake for that long, the residual yeast will perform a “clean-up” on the beer and make it smoother. I’m looking forward to trying this on my next batch of beer I brew. Here is the direct link for that article: Basin Brewers – A club for homebrewers and craft beer enthusiasts in the Permian Basin: Patience: An Essential Homebrew Ingredient

Aeration. Believe it or not aeration is pretty important in brewing. I will admit I don’t do it often enough but it’s something I need to do every single time. (I think I just tend to forget) It’s important because your yeast needs oxygen in order to thrive and do its job. You want to aerate by stirring or shaking your fermenter after the wort has cooled and before you pitch the yeast.

On the flip side, you do not want oxygen in your beer after fermentation. This is called oxidation and it will add unwanted flavors to your beer. If you use a siphon to move your beer from one container to another just do it carefully. A normal siphon does a pretty good of moving the liquid smoothly and doesn’t agitate it at all. If your hose or tubing is long enough to reach the bottom of the secondary container you won’t have any issues because it will flow pretty effortlessly.

Carbonation. OVER-carbonation to be exact. I added this one after I thought I was done with this article because I remember a friend of mine telling me a story about exploding bottles of beer in his house after he brewed. (That also happened to Hank in Breaking Bad) I think this probably happens to a lot of people as it happened to me also, but I never actually heard them explode.

Carbonation happens naturally when the yeast eats the sugar and it creates CO2, which during the fermentation process, escapes from your fermenter through the airlock. When you bottle beer there is remaining live yeast that continually eats sugars in the beer (you may have added additional priming sugar before bottling) and instead of escaping it’s trapped in the bottle – which creates pressure – and in turn is carbonating the beer.

Over-carbonation occurs when there is too much priming sugar in the bottle or the beer hasn’t finished fermenting yet. Remember the patience section above? Here is a link for a priming sugar calculator that can help you determine how much priming sugar you need: Priming Sugar Calculator.

You can over-carbonate and the bottles not explode, you’ll know this has occurred when you open a bottle and it foams out of the top. If this happens there are ways to fix it. You can refrigerate it, as the cold temperatures can slow the yeast down or even put them in hibernation. You can also just degas the beer by slightly prying the cap up and letting the gas escape and then resealing with your bottle capper, or you could just take the top off completely to let the gas out and put a new cap on. Keep in mind when you’re initially bottling your beer, make sure to leave some room in the bottle to allow for carbonation.

Summary. There are many more things to consider when brewing beer and this article just touches on some of them. Brewing Beer is fun and that’s the way you should think of it. If you’re hesitant about brewing for the first time – don’t be. You don’t need a lot to get started, as this website will show you. These things I mentioned above are all things every brewer has to address. I’m hoping with this little bit of knowledge you can brew successfully and with confidence.

If you have any questions about this article or anything else brewing related, please reach out. I’m happy to help and will probably learn something in the process.

Cheers!