Portland is well-known for its craft beer, so I have grown to enjoy sampling various microbrews. Recently, people have started to brew their own beer at home. This is a particularly popular obsession for many aficionados of craft beers. If you are looking to get into making your own beer at home, you are absolutely not alone. David and I have definitely thrown around the idea of trying to brew a batch. However, it’s something we haven’t yet done because we haven’t had a chance to find out what we’d be getting into before beginning. Homebrewing will take time, energy, and a fair amount of space in your home, so it’s a good idea to make sure that you are truly prepared before you start. There are plenty of resources out there that you can use to make sure that your homebrewing is easier, simpler and even faster. Follow these general steps to be sure of that.
Read Up
First things first, you want to make sure that you are not diving straight into it without any prior knowledge. Look into the process and what it entails before you get started. This is the only way to make sure that you really know all the ins and outs. You might think that you know the basic process, and perhaps you do, but the more sources you read from, the more of an intimate knowledge you will gather, to the point where you are then able to approach it in a much more methodical way. A homebrewing guide can help demystify the process, and you will be in a much better position to get brewing. There are plenty of resources online, but you can also browse books on this topic at your local bookstore or on Amazon. Local breweries are also a great resource. The people hard at work over at your local microbrewery are also probably more than happy to chat and share tips about their passion: brewing great beer.
Allow Space
You might be surprised how much space it takes to make beer, and it’s a good idea to think about this beforehand as best as you can. Make sure that you are allowing space for your little venture. Since brewing takes a fair amount of time, I would recommend finding a space in the home that is out of the normal beaten path. This will prevent it from becoming an irritating obstacle for your everyday life. You might want to use a shed, basement, or garage, especially if you are making particularly large quantities. Of course, you should definitely make sure that anyone you live agrees with the site selected for brewing.
Experiment
Finally, remember that the more you play around with it, the more likely it is that you will chance upon your own perfect brew. From talking with my friends who brew beer, they definitely enjoy the process of tinkering with various ingredients to achieve that perfect beer. That is a kind of pleasure which you can’t easily replace, and as such you should allow yourself plenty of time so you have the opportunity to actually experiment at your leisure. Do that, and you will be more likely to come up with some beautiful flavors which you can then build on in the future. Invite friends to tastings or give away bottles as gifts and find out what they think about your brew. With each small tweak to the process, you’ll be able to taste how those changes affect the flavor and use that knowledge to find the perfect beer.
Take Notes
Brewing beer is definitely a science. As such, you should keep a journal of your brews. List the different ingredients and the ratio of those ingredients so that when you find that perfect batch you can easily recreate it. Save a space in the journal for your tasting notes. Write what flavors worked for the beer, what flavors didn’t work, and what your overall rating of the beer was. Include input that you receive from friends and family as well. This will help you look back to compare various batches that were successes with those that weren’t quite up to par. In comparing different batches you can find trends in the ingredients and their ratios that will help you determine what to avoid and what to try in the future.
This is a contributor post, which has been reviewed and edited personally by me before being published. Links to external reviews are meant to provide additional ideas to readers and do not reflect my personal opinion or review of products.
Featured photo credit: Tookapic