Top 5 Mistakes that Kill the Perfect Home Brew

Avoiding off flavours is important as you tune your techniques as a brewer. Everyone has different equipment. Everyone has different levels of experience, but these 5 areas are your top cultripes of ruining your brew.

Here are 5 top areas that can ruin your home brew.

1. Clean equipment before the boil and sanitized equipment with everything the brew touches after the boil. Sanitizing prior to the boil is a waste of time. If any contamination happens prior to the boil, the boil will take care of it. After the boil you should consider it a race to get your chosen yeast to take over your sweet wort. Yeast is responsible for many of the flavours so don't allow wild yeasts to compete. Don't let anything that would go moldy come near your wort.  From the time you cool your wort to the time your yeast kicks in you have a risk of  contamination. Once you're past this stage the lack of sugar and the presence of alcohol make the contamination risk very low.

2. Maintain a rolling boil for at least 20 minutes. Boiling gets ride of all kinds of nasties. Having a slow boil does not help. You need to get your wort to be vigorously boiling for at least 20 minutes of your 60 mins boil. Shorter boils or less intense boils leave the risk of off flavours. 

3. Mash temperature. Ever hear of the brewers window? You should have if you do all grain brews. When you mash in your grain temperature is super important.  148F will extract more fermentable sugars and mashing at 156F will produce a more malty lower ABV beer. Although this is not an off flavour it is a huge influence on the taste and mouthfeel of your beer. Calibrate your thermometer regularly and measure you mash with precision. 

4.  Fermentation temperature. All yeast stains have target fermentations. Know your range and make sure that you can maintain this temp range during fermentation. Temperatures too high will give you off flavours. Temperatures on the lower end of the range generally give cleaner flavour profiles. 

5. Lager your finished beer. This is the hardest part. You've finished your beer and you taste it and it's ok or pretty good. Lagering or resting your beer at a cool temperature for 3 to 4 weeks turns good beer in many cases into great beer.  Lagering allows your beer to rest and settle. Some off flavour disappear. Some new flavours emerge and improve the beer. Even your hoppy beers need some rest. Plan ahead and lager your brews.