What's something that has greatly improved your beers?

Unlike! Seriously, I agree, but mostly for safety reasons. I don't totally abstain, but seldom have a beer before the mash tun is cleaned out and the boil is well underway. l normally start pretty early so coffee is the beverage for most (sometimes all) of the brew day. I've occasionally been guilty of having a few and grilling instead of cleaning up once the wort is safe in the fermenter but the mess is easy enough to deal with the next day. The few times I've done much drinking and brewing, the beer turned out fine but my notes were nonexistent or a mess.

 

Interesting. Can you elaborate on amount and timing?

 

Two days before bottling, boil a cup of water in the microwave for 2-3 minutes. Then remove from microwave, add one teaspoon unflavored gelatin (I use Knox brand) and stir to dissolve. Cool slightly, pour into your beer, wait a couple days. Clear as crystal and ready to bottle. It's really as simple as that. Worked wonders on my ESB that I bottled a few days ago. It wasn't super cloudy before the gelatin, but after it's like HOLY MAN IS THAT CLEAR! If appearances matter to you, it works! In the past I didn't care about how the beer looked. Now I kind of do, for showing off to my friends etc.

 

0.50-0.75 tsp added to the sparge water. This is for a 6.75 gal post boil kettle volume prior to draining and chilling. If you don't need to acidify your sparge water, you can add it to the kettle.

I notice a significant difference between 0.50tsp and 0.75tsp and haven't felt the need to try 1tsp.

 

Meticulous record keeping. Documentation of failures and successes have led to ever increasing proficiency. This applies to all aspects, fermentation temp, water adjustments, starter size and the list goes on.

 

Campden tablets, fermentation temp control. And yes, brewing sober. I brewed one batch with a friend and we ... welll... got shitfaced. The beer wound up tasty, but I got lazy and thought leaving the mash tun and kettle til the morning to clean was a good idea. What a mess.

 

I once, and only once, left a mash tun for 3 days before cleaning... in July. Even our goats were afraid to approach the result when I dumped it. Didn't puke but it was close.

 

I've gone 3+ days on cleaning before, and yea, not good. Talk about a true sour mash! It's unbelievable how badly something can spoil in just 24 hours.

Another method that has greatly improved my beers has been kegging. At least for IPAs, or any beer that you want as fresh as possible. When I bottled, I could never achieve those tropical, dank flavors and aromas that I strived for. My bottled batches were always just meh.

Now, I'll typically dry hop as fermentation begins to slow, then won't open the lid again until I rack to the keg. Purge the keg of Oxygen with CO2, and that gives me some seriously fresh beer.

 

putting in as much oxygen as possible before pitching
using secondary vessels
temperature... not just following standard procedure on this either... sometimes stressing is a good thing
re-circulating
using "cara" malts...
ignoring hop addition "trends"
multi-step mashing(decoction/protein rest and other grain specific mash proceedures)
steeping most specialty grains
cold-crashing when necessary, not when not(style dependent)
patience(when needed)
a lack of patience(when not needed - over-attenuation actually a bigger flavor problem than under)
using fresh grain
really paying attention to how fine you mill
reading a lot about brewing
watching a lot of videos about brewing
trying new things and learning from them(good or bad)

 

"How To Brew" by John Palmer
Listening to the guys at the LHBS (selectively, b/c they're old school)
All Grain brewing
Not freaking the f*** out on brewday when things don't go as planned
Less Crystal in hoppy styles
Conan yeast
Making yeast starters
Kegging/reducing oxizidization
Paying attention to water profile/"building" my water
Adjusting pH with Acidulated malt
Mashing long and sparging slow

 

I'm a simple brewer (all extract), and not a brewing scientist like most of you in this forum. When I brewed my first two beers I chose generic recipe ingredient kits (an amber and a pale ale) that I didn't really like. They we just okay. I then started choosing my recipes for beers that I liked or were popular with craft beer drinkers, so I have brewed only clone recipes that have had good reviews. So choosing proven recipes is highly recommended to be sure to get some good beers into your fridge.

 

It's an art, like anything else creative. You can produce decent stuff right away, but it usually takes a bit of experience to get better at it. And then there's always that one lucky bastard with the Midas touch...... I know a guy like that, kind of. Simplicity and dumb luck come into play too, even with the best and worst of artisans.