A simple few ways to greatly improve your beer (I'll get in before everyone else does)....
1.
Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize everything that so much as looks at your beer! An infection due to unsanitary gear is the easiest way to ruin your beer. Throw away the Sodium Metabisulfite you probably got with the kit and ask your local homebrew shop for some star-san or similar no rinse sanitizer. I lost a lot of beer to infections before I got onto the
no rinse sanitizer. It's dead easy to use too.
2. Now you're Shiny and clean, lets add some flavour and body to your brew the easy way -
Malt.
Buy a Kilo of light dry malt extract online or from your local brew shop and replace the kilo of sugar/dextrose in your brew with it. The sugar you would have used in your first brew would have turned into alcohol but not added much in the way of beer flavour or body to the beer making it dry and flavourless. Malt gives you the booze along with loads of flavor and a nice mouthfeel. :icon_drool2:
3.
Hops are your smelly friends. It's true; when you drink a craft beer that was fruity or spicy smells and tastes - that's most likely coming from the hops. Get something simple to start like 25g
cascade or citra and drop them in a litre of hot water straight from the kettle for 5 minutes to make a 'hop tea' and then add it to your fermenter at the same time you add the malt/sugar & tin of beer goop.
4.
Temperature control = flavor control. This has got to do with your yeast. If it's too hot or too cold then, like us people, they're not going to do their best work. I know the packet says that it will work up to 25'c or something like that but at that point they are metaphorically slaving away in the salt mines - not being happy yeasty beasties at all. At high temps especially they will be releasing weird and undesirable flavors into your beer that most people don't want there. Think of it as yeast sweat, do you like sweat in your beer?
So stick your fermenter somewhere cool & dark, on cement floors helps to draw out heat and wrapping a wet towel or shirt around it helps to drop the temp too. Try and keep as close to 18'c - 20'c as possible and don't add the yeast until you are close to those temps.
So to summarize this impromptu lecture on easy ways to improve your beer; make sure everything isn't just clean but sanitized too, replace brewing sugar with malt, add some hops & keep that fermenter cool (around 18'c-20'c). You won't believe the difference using any of these 4 simple steps will make to your beer. You'll be laughing in scorn at your mates as they drink their VBs. B)
Sorry this thread has gone on so long, these are just some of the things I wish someone had told me when I started brewing, I wasted a lot of time & money on making shit beer at the start and almost gave up brewing altogther. Read up on this forum and keep asking questions, people here are usually happy to answer questions and there's a wealth of info here.
It's how we all up our brewing game. :beerbang:
