Top 10 Worst Newbie Home Brewing Mistakes

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Mini Bio

My dad taught me that making mistakes comes with the opportunity for an education; hence the phrase, "learn from your mistakes." However, I prefer to learn from someone else's mistakes. Some of the most fun you can have in this short life is watching someone get himself in a pickle, and then try to get out of it. In fact, that's often the funniest part.A few years ago, I was having an addition to my house built. The construction manager, Owen, and I stood on the deck discussing the plans. I was having trouble listening, though; one of his workers was trying to get a company pickup truck turned around in a small space right at the edge of a cliff. The other workers gave him instructions, holding their fingers a couple of inches apart to show how close he was to the loose, crumbling drop-off. It was rather distracting, and I couldn't focus on Owen. Hang on a second, I said. I need to see this.Owen turned around to see what was going on, and turned a strange shade of green. He owned that truck, and paid the drivers work comp. Plus, they might have been friends, I don't know. Me, I just watched in gruesome fascination as the idiot driver executed the worlds first 96-point turn. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered why he hadn't just backed out, but whatever. Owen wiped his forehead with his sleeve and gave me a sidelong scowl. You act like you want him to fall off the cliff.No, I dont, I said firmly. But if he does, I do want to see it. I gave him a manly slap on the shoulder. Come on, man! This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Its like reality TV, but you're in it.You can laugh; thats not your guy, he said.Damn right hes not.* * *Maybe that was harsh. My views have changed, about a lot of things. Ive had two little girls since then, and Im now a more sensitive, compassionate fellow.In that spirit, I would like to offer all beginning homebrewers out there a chance to learn from other brewers mistakes. Some are mine, and some are those of fellow brewers here at HomeBrewTalk. Here's a link to the discussion thread in which I asked the members to contribute their knowledge. They really stepped up and contributed more material than I can include here, so head over there to see the rest.They're not in any particular order. Their importance will vary from brewer to brewer, and it was so hard narrowing it down to the Top 10, I figure any one of them could be the #1 Worst Mistake.If you're doing an all-grain brew, you will transfer the wort from the mash tun to the boil kettle (this is called lautering). Be sure the valve is closed on the boil kettle before beginning the transfer. Later, when you get ready to chill the wort, make sure the hose connections on the chiller are secure. If not, there are two ways this can go wrong.A " The water in the chiller will heat to boiling and come spattering out, scalding everything in range.B " When you turn on the water that cools the chiller, it will spray into your wort, ruining your target boil gravity. A checklist helps here (see below).Doing maintenance or research on brew day is a bad idea. Accidents are bound to happen. Brew day is complicated enough without adding tasks like maintenance and research.A - I had a bad thermometer on my boil kettle, so on brew day I told my son to replace it, but later; after I added the hot water to the mash tun. An hour later I said OK, time to replace that thermometer. So he goes out and removes the thermometer screwed into the mash tun, dousing himself in a gallon of hot wort. By the time I ran out to help plug the hole, I don't know how much we lost, but it was more than I wanted.B - Do your research ahead of time. When you have 5 minutes until the next hops addition, now is not the time to see if you can replace one type of hops for another without missing your target bitterness/flavor/aroma. Besides, while you're caught up in research, who's watching the boil? (See below).When you're first starting, you haven't yet developed brewing habits. For example, I put on my seat-belt automatically when I get in the truck. One time I moved my truck just from one side of the driveway to the other, and then tried to get out only to find that I was strapped in, and hadn't even known it. Until you develop these automatic behaviors, use checklists. They keep you from forgetting things or missing steps. Go over the checklist the day before, and also use it on brew day. Just do a search for brew day checklist.Whether you're boiling or fermenting, you need headspace. When the wort heats, it expands. Also, at the beginning of the boil you get hot break, which causes boilovers. I do my 7 gallon boil in a 10 gallon pot, and that's as tight as I want it. Primary fermentation results in a foamy layer called krausen, and you need head space in the vessel for it.If you don't provide space for the krausen, it will seep upward into the airlock, plug it, and build pressure which can relieve itself explosively and leave you a messy souvenir on the ceiling, walls, furniture, and carpet. Maybe even your keyboard. Do your primary fermentation in a vessel that has about 20% greater volume than the batch size. I use a 6.5 gal. carboy for a 5.5 gal batch.Boilovers occur in seconds. Seriously. The spilled wort gets scorched on the burner and the outside of the kettle, and the stench can linger for days. Besides that, you lose ingredients, altering your recipe, usually for the worse. TIP: Turn the burner off before any boil additions. They tend to cause boilovers.The whole point of the wort, its very raison d'etre, is to be an ideal growth medium for yeasts and bacteria. Think of it as gardening. You want to sow squash seeds; not crab grass seeds. The same is true of your wort. Inoculate it with your intended yeast as soon as the wort is chilled and oxygenated, so it will take over and outpace any mold or bacteria that may infect your batch.A healthy yeast culture will dominate and lead you to success, but left alone to multiply without competition, one healthy Lactobacillus bacterium will have you dumping the batch, unless you're a fan of sour beers.You need to be sure your primary fermentation is complete before you bottle, or you'll get exploding bottles. Don't rely on airlock activity; take a gravity reading with your hydrometer or refractometer. Another cause of exploding bottles is over priming. Carefully measure your priming sugar. Too little and your beer will be flat, too much and it will be on the ceiling.Bottle conditioning takes time. How long depends on many factors, but a good rule of thumb is two weeks at room temperature. If you taste the beer too early, it wont be fully carbonated, or worse, you may get some off flavors from the by-products of the still-active yeast. Besides that, the yeast can give you a moderate case of diarrhea accompanied by bloating and stomach pain.The yeast needs time to process the by-products of its own fermentation, and then go dormant and settle to the bottom of the bottle. This is why, with a bottle-conditioned beer, you usually decant the beer off the yeast. (One exception is Weissbier, or Hefeweizen, as Americans call it. With this style of beer, you should swirl up the yeast and pour it into your glass. Don't worry, it wont hurt you, and it tastes wonderful). Basically, just be patient, and it will pay off.I used to make movies, and maintaining set discipline " the First Assistant Directors job " was the key to getting things done efficiently and safely. I don't know the brewers term for this; lab safety? Brewery procedure? You get the idea, though.A - Safety first. Making beer is fun, and its a good way to spend an afternoon with your kids or some friends, but there are many risks that must be abated. One serious accident can take all the fun out of brew day, and worse. Several gallons of boiling wort can cause life-threatening injuries. There are large amounts of boiling liquid, flames, electricity, pumps, heavy glass objects such as carboys, and potentially toxic chemicals, as in the water testing kit. You need to keep a clear head and be safe, and then you'll have a good time.B - Temperature control. Making beer is art, but its also chemistry. Certain desirable things happen within certain temperature ranges, but over- and under-shooting a mash or fermentation temperature can ruin a beer. What fun is that?C - Control the mash pH. Tannins are great in a nice Cabernet, but they will put an instant chill on a beer buddy bromance. These astringent compounds are extracted from the grain husk during the mash if either the pH or the temperature gets too high. The ideal numbers vary based on the recipe, but generally you want to keep the pH between 5.2 and 5.5, and the temperature in the 150s (Fahrenheit).D - Sanitation. There's a saying that its hard to make bad beer, but that's assuming you have a good fermentation. In other words, you might have aimed for a Brown but wound up with an Amber, and so you failed to achieve what you set out to do, but if its a good Amber, you still have a good beer. Even if its only mediocre, its not bad. But if your beer gets infected, that's bad.There's no such thing as excessive sanitation. It might be more than is necessary, but the only harm is wasted time and materials. Bad sanitation, on the other hand, can ruin the whole batch. Make sure your equipment is cleaned first, and then sanitized. Clean it to remove particles of food, which can harbor bacteria. You cant sanitize a dirty vessel or hose. It just doesn't work.This one factor affects everything previously mentioned. You start out great. Got your checklist ready, equipment sanitized, ingredients weighed and lined up, and all your prep done. You start the mash, set the timer and pour a nice bottle. Trust me, this is the beginning of the end. After a couple of bottles you remember a pack of hops with a little left in it, and recalculate your recipe to use them instead of a fresh pack.You get your math wrong. When lautering, you forget to close the valve on the boil kettle, and the wort goes all over the floor. Then you misread the boil gravity and add too much LME. Then you fail to stir it properly and carbonize it on the bottom of the kettle. Need I go on?Just remember; don't drink to excess and brew. If you can control yourself and drink just one, fine. If not, send me an account of your experience when you sober up, and I might include it in a follow up article.Ive given you the Top 10; now here's a bonus. Don't obsess about every minor detail. I know that might sound contradictory to the Top 10, but really its not. Basically, the only thing you really must get right is safety. Other than that, the worst that can happen is to waste time and material. Just get in there and get some experience. Make some effort to avoid batch-ruining mistakes, and when you make mistakes, learn from them and keep getting better. But make sure you and your brewer friends are having fun; there's really no other reason to get into a hobby like this.I wish to thank the HBT forum members for their input. It really was an indispensable part of helping me identify and narrow down the Top 10, and I learned quite a few things. It is not sensible to include every comment; to read the whole list, go right to the thread. There will probably be additional helpful contributions after this article is written. Everyone's contribution was helpful, and I have selected a few to include here:says:says:treats us to this gut-buster:says:says:says:says:says:says:says:says:Trust me, I really wanted to include more, but I have to stop somewhere. Please go to the thread for the rest " you wont regret it.//www.pinterest.com/pin/create/extension/ t=_self