BeerBorg

OK, so we have the post with unpopular opinions that about turned my brewing procedures upside down. Id like to hear what you all believe are absolute facts about brewing!


I have learned and absolutely believe that fermentation temperatures are a must for brewing good beer!

For most styles and yeasts. Certainly all of my failed batches were caused by infection or improper ferment. I would put sanitation and temperature control as the two singularly important processes. Which assumes a good recipe. The only reason that I qualify the temperature control is that Westmalle yeast has produced good results for me whether fermenting in the 60s, 70s, even to 84 degrees.

Keep clean!!!!!
And temperature control is very important.
There are a number of others too.
If your water tastes good, it'll brew good beer.
Use fresh yeast and use enough of it.
Use fresh ingredients.
One minor one that helps especially when you start this hobby is to take good notes.

Absolute facts?

Brewers make wort - yeast makes beer.

The Hat's First Rule of Homebrewing:

If you like the beer you made, YOU DID IT RIGHT!

I didn't mean to sound flippant, but sometimes results count more than procedure.

That being said, I second fermentation temperature. All sorts of funky off-flavors can creep in if you're even a couple of degrees higher than the upper recommended temp for the yeast.

I also second keeping things clean. When you think of the entire process, from the pots and utensils all the way to the bottle caps, a lot of stuff comes into contact with the beer, so there's always potential for infection somewhere along the line. Washing vessels, utensils, racking equipment, bottles, and also properly sanitizing them, is essential to keeping your beer safeguarded.

One other absolute fact I'd impart:

This is supposed to be fun. Enjoy the entire process, from recipe formulation to cracking a nice, cold homebrew and tasting something wonderful that you created. If you're diligent about some of the essentials, you'll be able to do this for many, many years.

RDWHAHB!

Sanitation..... There are all kinds of ways and techniques to make good beer and everybody might have their own little differences on how to do it, but sanitation is the bottom line for everybody. I have always been big on this, have never had to dump a batch because of an infection and no bottle bombs and have brewed 100's and hundreds of gals of beer since I started brewing in 2010. And I won't knock on wood on this because I know this is true. Sanitation A Known fact.........

Inkleg wrote:RDWHAHB!

I do not know this one. What's that abbreviation mean? Lol

RayF wrote:

Inkleg wrote:RDWHAHB!

I do not know this one. What's that abbreviation mean? Lol

Relax
Don't
Worry
Have
A
Home
Brew

I of course agree with sanitation and temperature control*** and using fresh yeast and pitching enough of it and all that as best practices to make beer you will most certainly like to drink.

But honestly this would be my one absolute true fact:

People made beer without doing or understanding ANY of those things for far longer then we have had them or understood them.

So no matter what you will make beer. Whether it is beer you want to drink or not is something else, but you still will make beer, and even if it tastes horrible it won't hurt you. Fermentation, be it by yeast or bacteria is magical like that.

That's why people made lots and lots of beer back in the day. And drank it. Sour, bretty, funky or not, they still drank it unless it tasted like baby puke. They learned to blend it. They learned to take old sour stuff and blend it with fresh not sour stuff. They learned to drink it fast and make more right away to avoid such things. But they still drank it. And why they make kraut, pickle, kimchee, fermented sausages and cheese. It make food last and made "old" food safe.

Fermentation is magic. A gift from the gods. Or god. Or space aliens if you like.

That's my one and only absolute fact.

Anything else I would say is best practice.

*** And I'll just reiterate temperature control is relative to the yeast, and I see far too many people push yeasts to the lowest possible temperatures they support in order to make "cleaner" beer. Which is a waste of perfectly good yeast. Use a clean yeast if you want clean beer. Don't try to make West Yorkshire taste like S-05 by making it sad. Some yeasts actually do well and make their best flavor profiles with some amount of temperature change. Again assuming you want flavor. Which if you do not, then stick with a flavorless yeast.

An absolute fact...hmm.

People who know you WILL tell you what they think you want to hear about your beers or your brewing.

Sanitation (one can never be too clean)
Temp control
Oxygenate the wort before pitching.
And last but not least...Patience

:: I'm just being devils advocate again here but ::

Again I'll say yes sanitation is absolutely best practice to make most modern styles of beer.

But I would argue that is not an absolute fact that it is required to make beer or be done for brewing - some types of beer you can still buy today are put into barrels wooden barrels that are very much not sanitized, and have been inoculated/infected with all the same sorts of bugs that you are trying to kill off with said sanitation, and then used over and over again in their fully infected state. And it's done on purpose. Because those bugs DO make beer. Maybe it's not a style of beer you like, unless you like flanders reds, browns, gueze, lambic, etc... But it is beer.

Of course to make *good* beer doing that you have to know what your doing, IE lay off the bittering hops, and sometimes be even more patient then the normal amount of patience we advocate. And maybe do some blending. But folks who brew such things do all that.

I guess I will say that it is an absolute fact that you need good sanitation to make modern style ales and modern lagers. But that's not all there is in the world of beer. So it's not an absolute fact about "Brewing".

:: devils advocate mode off ::

Kealia wrote:Absolute facts?

Brewers make wort - yeast makes beer.

THIS!!!!

Everything else blossoms out from this base fact. Everything else is fine tuning and means absolutely nothing if you don't have happy, healthy yeast.

Crystal malt is not needed in every beer recipe.
A 60, 20, 5 hop schedule is not needed in every beer recipe.