John Palmer joins me this week to discuss his top five tips for new home brewers. John is the author of the top selling “How to Brew” book as well as his new book “Water”, and provides some great tips for brewers just getting into home brewing or even experienced brewers interested in making better beer.
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Topics in This Week’s Episode (46:47)
- John Palmer, the best selling author of How to Brew as well as his new book Water (both Amazon Affiliate Links) is my guest this week. John provides some great tips for new brewers on water.
- This week’s episode is sponsored by Craft Beer and Brewing Magazine – sign up today for your subscription!
- We discuss our recent trip to Brazil and the great brewing and craft beer revolution going on in Brazil
- John talks about his first tip, sanitation, as well as why sanitation is so hard to do well
- We discuss what cleaning and sanitizing agents John uses for his brewing
- John explains his second tip – fermentation temperature control, and how it improves your beer
- We discuss methods for home brewers to control their fermentation temperature including refrigerators, baths and alternatives
- John explains why you need a temperature controller to use a conventional refrigerator for fermentation
- We talk about his third tip – pitching enough yeast
- John shares his thoughts on a yeast starter and why it is often needed for liquid yeast
- We talk about dry yeast and hydrating dry yeast
- John explains his fourth tip – developing the right recipe proportions
- In most cases, John feels people use too many ingredients and also too large a quantity of specialty malts
- We talk about using small batches, teas and tasting to get familiar with ingredient flavors
- John shares his final tip – controlling water
- We talk about what makes good brewing water and how to find out about your local water
- John shares why he thinks bottled water is often a good choice for extract brewers
- John mentions the Lamotte water test kit which he helped developed as a good alternative for testing water
- We discuss our new joint DVD project – our How to Brew videos on malt extract and all grain brewing – coming later this summer. You can also watch the trailer for the first video mentioned in the show at that link.
Thanks to John Palmer for appearing on the show and also to you for listening!
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