What I learned ...

[SleepySamSlim]

Is there a key brewing lesson or fact that you learned recently or in the past many months of brewing ? Here's mine:

In a couple of weeks I will hit my first year of brewing mark. And its a been great year of learning and brewing with only 3 brews having to be tossed out due to boo-boos. Started out with a recipe from the brew shop - then a couple more brew shop recipes - found BSmith and began mainly tweaking IBUs - using BSmith to brew clones - then more tweaks. And recently tried a recipe pretty much my own --- which flopped.

Key lesson is that its very possible to concoct a mix of ingredients that look good - but may not be able to ferment to a satisfactory point.

So with that in mind, I humbly move forward ....

[SOGOAK]

That is a bummer, but never totally give up experimentation.  I have been real lucky and had some lovely accidents that place in the mid 30s in judging. Brew on good man.

[sickbrew]

"Patience Grasshopper" I would say that taking time whilst sparging has been the best "What I've learned" in the last year.

cheers

[UselessBrewing]

My is a toss up between the correlation between PH and AA, and Learning how to culture yeast and put them on slants (Thanks to Darin for both!).

Cheers
Preston

[MaltLicker]

Well, not counting "learning" all of my self-inflicted mistakes in the move outside, I'd say water chemistry is the biggest improvement or lesson learned.  Critical mineral levels, pH, adjusting balance to fit the style.....it's definitely made a difference.   

Once I figure out how much water to put in the dang pot, I should be golden.

[dhaenerbrewer]

Ah, it's good to be back. Cheers to you Preston, I hope the yeast culturing is going well. What I learned this year; brew about 50 gallons of beer before grape crush season starts because due to the stress of crushing grapes, working seven days a week and having no time to brew, you run out of home brew really fast!

Darin

[SOGOAK]

I learned that bottling is a major bottleneck in the HB supplychain.  I am still not kegging, but it is no long an IF but surly a when.

Lesson 2 one can't have too much power under one's keggle.

[wrestler63]

In the past year, I have learned to experiment. Being a beer nut that loves to try new beer, I seem to change up my base IPA, Pale ale, and nut browns every batch or 2 so as not to completely duplicate these beers everytime. Once I have have a brew that appeals to me, I like to change hop schedules, specialty malts to get different contasts. I think that is one part of homebrewing that I love. It is like sitting at a brew pub and sampling every brew on tap. JMHO