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What I learned ...

SleepySamSlim

Grandmaster Brewer
Joined
Dec 10, 2008
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Location
North of Kalifornia
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 ....
 
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.
 
"Patience Grasshopper" I would say that taking time whilst sparging has been the best "What I've learned" in the last year.

cheers
 
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

 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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
 
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