Making My first Beer Any Tips ?

Relax. Make sure your local water supply is OK for the style of beer you are brewing. Make sure everything is clean. Get a good rolling boil going on the wort. Keep the fermentation temperature within the yeast's recommended range. Enjoy.

 

And don't worry. As long as you're diligent about sanitation, it's hard to really screw up a beer. @pat61 is bang on with fermentation temp. (And remember: the beer ferments at a warmer temp than the ambient temp.) But again, don't worry. I didn't bother with serious temp control until Year 3, and the batches in those first few years were fine. Just brew a few batches, enjoy, and worry about the finer points later.

 

Clean equipment is super important. You could execute perfectly but destroy the whole batch if this step is neglected!

 

Agree with the clean--super important.

Assuming you'll share with others--expect that they will try to be nice over being candid. A good friend will probably serve you a compliment sandwich, with the critical parts in the middle: good color, little malt heavy for the style, but like the mouthfeel.

Hopefully, you went with a style you're familiar with, so you can be your own best critic. All the books make more sense after that first batch; learning sticks more easily.

 

http://howtobrew.com/book/section-1
this information along with what others have mentioned is a good start. I suggest using mrmalty's yeast starter information http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html
since a lot of succesful brewing hinges on healthy yeast
Relax don't worry, have a homebrew is a good mantra =basically attention to detail for the most part and even if you screw up it is not the end of the world, good practice is what it takes.

 

take your time, relax. plan to have 4 hours uninterrupted. make it 5. relax. above all, relax. if you don't relax your beer will suffer. yeast are like dogs this way, they will know if you are stressed. so really, relax.

did I mention it is important to relax? you want this to be enjoyable. work is stress. beer is the opposite of work and by extension making beer is the making of relaxation. so relax. you'll get it. but only if you relax.

Cheers.

edit. of course feel free to ask questions. homebrewers love to talk about brewing, especially the crusty homebrewers.

 

Here is a link to a search that I did on the keyword 'newbie.' Your question gets asked occasionally and there are a few good threads in this list somewhere. You can also try the alternate spelling 'noobie' and see what you get.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/search/31892678/?q=newbie&o=date&c[node]=8

My list of tips is to:

1. Regardless of what your recipe instructions say to do, if you read anything in this forum that is different, go with what you read here. Instructions with recipe ingredient kits are way too general with their information.
2. On brew day, if you are using a liquid yeast, write 'take yeast out of fridge' at the top of your 'things to do' list.
3. Organize your brew session with a time line of what time each step of your boil additions occur. If you miss a certain step by a few minutes, revise each of the subsequent times. (It's okay to boil longer than the recipe recommends.) Check each step off when complete. It's easy to forget about something and skip it entirely. It will be a very busy one hour period.
4. Keep notes along the way.
5. When transferring your wort to your fermentor pour it in a rough manner to try to incorporate oxygen into the liquid.
   
6. Get your wort down to 65 before pitching your yeast, and know ahead of time that you have a place to put your fermentor that will have an ambient temp of 65-68 degrees.
7. Take a gravity reading when the wort is at the pitch temp, and then write a note to remember to take a final gravity reading after you think the fermentation is complete.

Other tips were mentioned above, and some more are yet to come. But read back thru some of the old threads too. If you reach a point where you have a question and want to create a thread here to ask it, let us know some basics about your recipe, i.e. all grain or extract, temp reached for the mash, a summary of procedures followed to the point of your question, etc.

Good luck. You can do it.

 

Here's my list of the most common errors first time brewers make (surprisingly my top post on blog, more than double #2): http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2012/02/11-mistakes-every-new-homebrewer-makes.html

 

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Here's a good one, How to Brew, by Palmer...gospel when it comes to basic brewing procedures...keep it by your bed at night.

 

Post your recipe and process here and we can catch all of the usual beginner mistakes before you make them

Seriously, ask first and avoid all of the "is my beer ruined?" questions that will come up later.

 

Find an experienced homebrewer to brew the first few with you.

 

Make a stout...they usually turn out drinkable and you don't have to worry about fining or cold crashing for clear beer...

 

Just do it (rinse)
Take notes (lather)
Repeat

 

Don't choose a bottling day ahead of time. The kit you get might say "bottle after 2 weeks". Ignore it. After a week or two, when airlock activity has subsided and krausen (foam) has disappeared, take a gravity reading every 2-3 days. Once you get two consecutive gravity readings the same, you're ready to bottle. And try to keep as much CO2 in the fermentor as possible when you open it to take gravity readings (be gentle).

The penalty for bottling too early is gushers, or worse, bottle bombs.

 

If you're doing an extract batch I'll just hit on a few things. If you're doing all grain, then it'll be a little more difficult for you and there'll be more tips to come:

Sanitation, sanitation, sanitation. 90% of this applies to POST BOIL

Hit your OG and your post boil gravity. You'll lose about a gallon of water during an hour of boiling wort. Adjust for that! Volume boils off. Sugar does not.

Fermentation temperature is crucial in making good beer. Keep the temp in the middle of the yeast range and KEEP IT THERE

Proper yeast pitch. Rehydrate your yeast in RO or distilled water for the duration of your boil. Keep the yeast away from heat sources and pitch the proper amount of yeast for your batch.

 

Here's my 5 cents. Paste image into Word in landscape and print it out.

 

^Some pretty good advice there. I think I'm getting deja vu though... the substitution of table sugar in place of corn sugar @ 80% rate will not result in the same level of carbonation. It's more like 91% by weight.

 

Rice hulls are your friend