I've been homebrewing beer for a little over seven years now. I've been reflecting on my time brewing lately. I've learned a lot since that inaugural brew day with my dad in my uncle's woodshop seven years ago. My first batch of beer was a Citra-hopped pale ale. The extract recipe was the perfect starter recipe for me. It was simple, light, and tasty.
Partial-volume Extract Batches
I learned a lot through each batch of beer I brewed. My first batch of beer, pictured above, was brewed in my uncle's woodshop. I had been taking a course in college called Fermentation and Distillation. My final project was to brew a batch of beer. It's the kind of class every college kid hopes to take one day.
Anyways, I pieced together a brewing setup with some of my dad's old homebrewing stuff and did it in my uncle's woodshop. The brew kettle was a 3-gallon kettle and I used a propane burner for heat. This first beer was a Citra Pale ale made with liquid malt extract, a little caramel malt steeped in the kettle, Citra hops, and US-05 yeast. Because of the low volume of my brew kettle, I had to do a partial volume boil and then top up my fermenter with tap water before pitching yeast. This setup worked, but the beer didn't resemble a pale ale. It looked more like a brown ale. It tasted great, but the color of a beer can bias people's perceptions of it as I'm sure you know.
Full-volume Extract Batches
To try and lighten up the color of my beer, I wanted to try boiling with the full volume of wort so the sugars would be less concentrated and would therefore carmelize less during the boiling process. Doing full-volume boils, however, required me to have a bigger kettle. As a broke college kid, I wasn't looking to buy a brand-new stainless steel brew kettle. Instead, I found a greasy old aluminum turkey fryer in my parent's basement. It was in rough shape, but I took it upon myself to clean it up and get it into brewing condition.
Brewing with this new turkey fryer brew kettle did lead to lighter beer. My dad, who was always used to brewing extract beers with a partial boil, was surprised that I was able to brew such a light-colored beer using nearly the same methods he had used for years.
Going to All-Grain (Brew in a Bag Method)
I kept brewing beer using this full-volume boil and malt extract setup, but as I made more beer, what I really wanted to do was start making all-grain beer recipes. All-grain seemed like the logical next step in my brewing journey. I started reading about all the different all-grain brewing systems homebrewers have been cobbling together over the decades. Homebrewers are an innovative group of people. It's a hobby that attracts problem-solvers in great numbers. As such, a lot of revolutionary methods have been introduced over the years. One, in particular, caught my eye in my research into all-grain brewing which was called "Brew in a bag." I was searching for inexpensive ways to brew all-grain beer, so this was a natural fit for me. I wouldn't need to buy a cooler and mash tun conversion kit and invest in another kettle to use as a hot liquor tank. All I would need was what I already had, plus a $20 brew bag.
Brew-in-a-bag helped me start learning more about all-grain brewing without having to break the bank by investing in a ton of equipment all at once.
Water Adjustments
Once I made the switch to BIAB brewing, I noticed yet another problem with the beer that I was making: it gave me an insanely dry mouth about 30 minutes after starting to drink it. By this time, I was no stranger to bitter beer. I loved IPAs and pale ales. This was a different experience from that experienced when having a bitter beer. I did some research and asked around the Homebrewing subreddit, and someone suggested that if I'm not checking my pH, it could possibly be too high, leading to a higher level of tannins in my beer and therefore contributing to a severely dry mouth. I thought this was the most believable reason for what I was experiencing so I tried to think about how I might remedy this.
I often switched brewing locations, sometimes brewing in my apartment, sometimes at my parent's house, and sometimes at my Uncle's woodshop. I didn't want to spring for brewing water tests for all 3 locations. If I did have water tests, it would have been relatively easy to figure out what additives I would need to add to my beer in order to get it to the correct pH and ion levels for a specific water profile. I figured that if pH was my problem, I would start there. I invested in a pH meter that I bought on amazon and a small jar of lactic acid. On my next brew day, I simply adjusted the water ahead of mashing and kept an eye on pH during my mash so that I could make slight adjustments on the fly. This approach worked for me and my next batch of beer no longer gave me the insane dry mouth feeling that had plagued my last few batches.
I later on invested in getting a full water report done as well as a small collection of brewing salts. I use these now to match specific water profiles depending on the style of beer I'm making.
Wort-Chilling
One part of my brewing process I still hated was waiting for my wort to cool down before pitching my yeast. At the time, I was still filling a slop sink full of cold water and putting my kettle in after finishing my boil. During the winter, I'd instead put the kettle in a snow bank outside for a while until it cooled down. Neither approach was very quick and it often took more than an hour or two for it to reach an appropriate temperature for pitching yeast. I saw this as a major weak point in my brewing system and decided to invest in the cheapest wort chilling option I could find: a copper immersion wort chiller.
This was a simple addition to my brewing setup but it really helped me on a few levels:
- I was able to get my wort below the hop isomerization temperature (185°F) faster, reducing the amount of unwanted bitterness being added to my beers.
- It helped me pitch my yeast and get my beer into an airlocked container faster, which reduced the risk of cross-contamination while waiting for my wort to cool down.
- It made my brew day faster. I no longer had to wait hours for my wort to cool down, I could simply chill it in a matter of 10 minutes or so, transfer it, and pitch it. I could get to the cleanup stage faster, and trim a lot of time off my brew day.
My last big upgrade
I became proficient in brewing beer over about a one-and-a-half-year span of brewing beer. At the same time, I had recently graduated college and moved to an apartment in a small city in Upstate New York. I knew I wanted to brew beer more often, but I didn't have the outdoor space to run a big propane burner, nor the outside water hookups to make brewing outside easy. I did, however, have more money by virtue of being able to actually save money instead of only spending it.
I decided to invest in a system that would work well in my apartment, that wouldn't be a drastic deviation from what I was already used to, and that would help me maintain better temperature control of my beer on brew day. The Grainfather ended up being the tool for the job in my case, and I happened to catch it at the right time when Northern Brewing was running a 30% sale on all products. I ended up buying my Grainfather for a little over $800 at the time. I had saved up for a few months after starting my first real job after college and rewarded myself with a much-needed upgrade to my brew system.
I've really enjoyed brewing on my Grainfather and still use it today, 5 years later. I don't see myself changing up my setup so drastically again any time soon.
How to Upgrade Your Brewing
If you made it this far in the article, I hope reading about my progress and upgrades over the year has been helpful to you. I hope you feel inspired to make baby steps in upgrading your own system and process. Not every upgrade you make needs to be expensive. Up until I bought my Grainfather, each change to my system or process that I made had been relatively inexpensive. All you need to do is identify a problem with your system that you want to small, figure out the possible solutions, and pick the most cost-effective option that still solves your problem. You may need to get creative, but creativity is encouraged in this hobby. Homebrewing attracts a lot of problem-solvers, so you'll be fine if you tackle your problems with an open mind and aren't afraid to ask for help from the homebrewing community.