Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Holding temp, transferring, storing, anything. What have you failed at?
Read as much as you can. Vikeman gives you very good advice. Find a club in your area. Nothing like helping a veteran brewer make some beer.
In addition you should read this forum and I happen to like homebrewtalk as well. Also read The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charlie Papazian (very good for beginners as well). Any questions - feel free to ask them we are all here to help.
Nothing helps more than experience. But like everyone else said I would definitely do ALOT of reading. Be very clean. Especially after the boil. Be very clean when doing hydrometer readings and bottling. You'll get your own method for things after a few tries. I would start with doing either a recipe someone else has given you, or one you can find here or online, or if your LHBS has some kits/pre-made recipes. Those make it easier to learn and focus on everything else your doing. I did those for my first 3 beers, and made learning the process and sort of figuring out how to do everything much easier than if I was trying to figure out the recipe as well.
I've found the Northern Brewer forums helpful as well, just read as much as you can before you brew. I probably read up for a few months prior to brewing my first batch (just bottled!) and everything seems to be well. An extra set of hands would have been pretty helpful for moving large amounts liquid all day. My biggest tips for brew day, as always: Sanitize Follow directions/keep track of timing Sanitize Watch temps Sanitize And don't forget to drink a beer and have some fun!
1. Read as much as you can from different sources. Getting an understanding of how brewing works makes the process a little less tedious because you'll know exactly what's going on at each step. And different sources may give you different ideas, which always helps because you can see what works best for your system and your style. 2. Temperature can be kind of finicky. But honestly, brewing isn't an exact science and if you go a few degrees over or under, it's not going to completely ruin your beer. If you're steeping grains, bring up the temperature slowly to where you need it, then keep it on low heat when you steep the grains. It helps to have ice cubes or boiling water on the side so you can readjust the temperature if needed. But more often than not, if I steep, I bring it to maybe 4 or 5 degrees hotter than what I need, then turn off the heat, steep the grains for 20-30 minutes, then be done with that. As far as wort chilling, get a wort chiller. It's by far the best investment I made for brewing aside from getting a humongous kettle. For fermentation temperature, if you have a cool basement that stays around 60-65'F, that's perfect. If your temperature fluctuates, I recommend getting a mini fridge or something and changing the temperature controls for it. 3. Transferring beer was never an issue for me. Just make sure that after the boil, EVERYTHING that touches the beer is sterile. Meaning as soon as your boil is done, everything in contact with your beer must be sterile. I'm a bit anal about that and I haven't gotten an infected batch yet so I guess what I've been doing works. Keep a spray bottle of a starsan solution handy so you can spray things quickly. 4. I clean while I brew. I hate spending time afterward cleaning so I have a sink filled with soapy water in which to put stuff as they're used. 5. Keep in mind, it's usually not necessary to go crazy sanitizing everything. Anything that gets boiled for more than 10-15 minutes is more than likely considered sterile. So anything that is going into the boil probably doesn't need to be sanitized, just cleaned off if needed. I didn't realize that when I first started brewing and spent forever keeping stuff sanitized before adding it to the boil. Wasted a lot of time that way. Message me if you want more info on stuff. I have a pretty handy document that breaks things down for new brewers.
Read books. How to brew and Joy of Homebrewing to start. Read forums. Post. Blog. Ask lots of questions. Talk and think about brewing, ingredients, processes etc. Work with other more experience brewers if you can. Give bottles of your homebrew out for criticism, enjoyment etc. If you screw up a batch, brew another. Equipment wise: Auto-siphon, wine thief, wort chiller. These were the most helpful things for me.
And once you get a few batches in, I'd suggest checking out The Mad Fermentationist blog to get some ideas on creating your own recipes or modifying kits. That guy knows his stuff.
I'll echo every one else. One thing that hasn't been mentioned is take thorough notes. When you steep the grains, how hot was the water and how much was in there? When you sparge, how hot was the water? How much did you use? Did you squeeze the malt bag (don't by the way)? What was your volume before you boiled? How long did it take to come to a boil? What was your volume after boiling? Did you use hop bags? How long did it take to chill to pitching temps after the boil and how did you cool it down? What was your volume in the fermenter after removing the hops and chunky (trub) stuff at the bottom? How did you aerate? What temperature was the beer when it went in the fermenter? What temperature did it get to during fermentation? Were there any spikes in temp? Any drops? What was the date on the pouch/vial of yeast? Once you make starters, what size starter? These seem like annoying questions, but they will help in the long run. Does your beer taste off? Astringent or tannic, maybe you sparged too hot and squeezed the bag. Hoping for higher IBUs, how much preboil and post boil volume did you have, if you ended with 2.5 gals and watered it down to 5 gals, your IBUs will be lower. Hoping for more hop aroma and less bitterness, if you chilled via ambient temperature or a water bath in the Summer your hot wort probably continued to extract IBUs from the late hops and you didn't cool it fast enough to lock in all the precious aroma. Your beer is still really sweet and tastes like apple Jolly Ranchers, you didn't make a starter and your yeast was on the shelf for 3 months and less then 50% viable so it didn't finish it's job. Good notes can help figure out problems down the road. Most all of the guys on here will ask what was the recipe? What was your process? If you don't know, can't really help. The volumes will really help when you start to do your own recipes as well since you will know how much you lose to boil, how much to hops, how much to trub, etc. Wish I would have known this when I started. When I went all-grain my efficiency and volumes were all over the place since I didn't ever take notes to figure out my losses. My hoppy beers always tanked since I didn't account for how much wort I lost to the hops.
I also meant to say this, notes about your processes and measurements will be helpful for correcting mistakes and perfecting recipes. Same with tasting notes once you get to bottling.
Mistakes I ve made so far...not being patient enough to let wort chill to less than 80(Im guessing it makes the fermentation go nuts and gives the beer an overwhelming alcohol taste from my observations) Don't transfer the hops from the brew kettle to the primary(The top of primary ended up popping open and left me a big mess...Im assuming the hops blocked the airlock) Watch how much you drink during the brewing process, especially with all grain brewing. Things can get pretty fuzzy and confusing after a few too many around the 4th or 5th hour mark. If you decide to dry hop, make sure to wrap the siphoning tube in some sort of screen or you will get air bubbles from hell. And remember any mistakes are usually a blessing in disguise, because you now know and understand what not to do and why.
thanks all. I have been reading for a while and I help out at Dry Dock Brewery some, but helping them on that big of a scale, I know steps were skipped. Flipping a switch to transfer beer instead of siphon (have to find an auto siphon) is a lot easier. I know most people that brew have the dream of opening their own brewery some day and that is where Im at. Even though I have not made a beer yet,(within two weeks though), I have 2 companies wanting what I make. Again, thanks all, and I be asking more questions in the future.
