Practical Guide to Damn Good Beer

Point of this Talk

  • What do you need to do to make great beer?
  • Most of this is All-Grain/Extract agnostic

Brewing is Hard

  • But it's not really
    • Brewing stretches well past the rise of science
    • Traditions can make good beer
  • Very easy things can make better beer
    • And yes, science can make beer better

Just Remember

Beer happens, your job is to help it along.

Don't let someone gate keep you, your taste or technique!

If you're making beer, congrats, you're a brewer!

The High Level

  • Keep Things Clean
  • Keep Things Simple
  • Use Healthy and Vital Yeast
  • Don't Get Lazy

Prepare for Success

  • The best brew days start before the brew day
    • Make a starter (for liquid yeast)
    • Collect and treat your water
    • Everything is clean and ready
    • Grind Your Grains

Ingredients / The Recipe

  • Using someone else's recipe?
    • great learning opportunity!
    • choose a reputable/reliable source
  • Your Own Recipe?
    • Keep it simple - most beer recipes don't need to be complicated
    • Tweaking a recipe is a great base for success

Water

  • At first, don't do much!
  • Remove the chlorine/chloramine
    • Filter or using Campden
  • Perfectly fine to use pre-filtered or reverse osmosis water
  • Use salts for taste until you understand pH

Malt

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Hops

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Yeast

  • Vital yeast forgives most brewing sins
  • Dried yeast is fantastic and easy to use
    • no need to rehydrate
  • Make a Shaken Not Starter
    • 1 gallon growler with 1 quart of wort
    • Shake it like you mean it
    • Add the yeast and pitch when active

The Brew Day

How to make this work

  • Mash/Sparge/Boil/Chill
  • don't drink during the brew day*

Mashing

  • Mix throughly to ensure complete extraction
  • Don't sweat the mash temp - get close and call it a day
  • Once you're comfortable, work on mash pH with a calculator

The Boil

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Chilling Out

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Sanitation

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Post Brew Day

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Pitching / Oxygen

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Fermentation

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Packaging

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Transporting

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In Summary

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Questions?