Been homebrewing beer for eight or nine years, now. Learnt a lot and will continue learning a lot. IMHO, blogs are the perfect way to share things you’ve learnt but I’ve yet to share much “brewing wisdom” on my blog.

Here are a few things I’ve learnt, so far. Some of these are quite obvious, some I’ve learnt the hard way, some are somewhat controversial, and some are more matters of opinion. I could classify them, but I won’t.

A few of these things I’ve learnt while working at a wine-making store, after having brewed for several years. Some I’ve learnt through fellow brewclub members or the Interwebs. Most come from direct experience.

• There’s a difference between a steel scrubby and stainless steel scrubby.
• A rubber bung can stick so strongly to the inside of a carboy’s neck that the carboy can explode under pressure from fermentation.
• Some of the best beers are brewed during the weirdest brewing sessions.
• From brewing, you get a new perspective on all sorts of things, from biochemistry and physics to hardware and grocery stores.
• Any ingredient can find it’s place in beer. (I’m especially fond of playing with spices, herbs, grains, sugars, and fruits.)
• Whatever crazy thing you think of in terms of brewing has probably been thought up by somebody else. (Turns out, I’m not the only one brewing with hibiscus flowers.)
• It’s important to taste everything you brew, at every step. (A yeast starter is especially important to taste before adding to your wort.)
• Everything which touches your wort after boiling needs to be thoroughly sanitized. (Sanitizing anything else is overkill but it’s easy enough to do that it doesn’t matter.)
• Yeast is a strange beast: some yeast strains are really finicky, others can withstand almost anything. (Any strain which has been used for beer can produce great results.)
• There’s something strangely fun about reusing yeast.
• Dropping wort on top of a yeast cake makes fermentation take off like crazy.
• In some conditions, primary fermentation can be over within 24 hours.
• Grain freshness doesn’t really matter but the freshness of every other ingredient does matter quite a bit.
• A cheap digital scale with 1 g precision is among the most useful tools in a homebrewer’s arsenal.
• There’s no correlation between the quality of the beer and how “hi-tech” your equipment is.
• Find a no-rinse sanitizer you like and use it extensively.
• “Clean as you go” is an important rule.
• A Bruheat boiler makes a very cool mash-tun for step mashes if you put a false bottom or grain bag in it. (I use a zapap-style “bucket with holes” in mine.)
• There might be ways to achieve the same results as a decoction but it’s still fun to do, once in a while.
• It’s essential to clean a Bruheat’s heating element between mashing and boiling.
• A PDA or smartphone has its place in the brewery.
• It’s perfectly possible to brew in an apartment, especially if you have storage space.
• A basement makes an excellent site for a homebrewery.
• The more room you have for brewing, the more room it takes.
• Auto-siphons do make life a lot easier and there’s probably no reason not to use them.
• Splitting batches is an efficient way to experiment with diverse ingredients.
• Brewing gets you to experience beer in a new way.
• It’s much easier to do several brewing-related activities on the same day than doing them on separate days.
• Siphoning a sanitizing solution through your equipment is an efficient way to sanitize everything.
• Those bottle-washers you put on your faucet are really useful for both bottles and carboys.
• A spray bottle is an excellent tool to quickly sanitize equipment.
• To make a gallon of StarSan solution, you can use 8 g of StarSan.
• Cold outside weather might be the most efficient way to chill wort.
• Brewing on a whim is fun.
• Throwing beer away should only be done when there’s a huge problem. (Even then, you could probably make vinegar or something.)
• Don’t be afraid of brewing sour beers.
• There are many ways to add coffee in beer.
• “Hot side aeration” isn’t anything to worry about.
• Do stir the mash, there’s a reason brewing is called «brassage» (“stirring”) in French.
• A restaurant-size long-handled skimmer works well as a way to stir the mash as well as to skim the wort.
• As there probably no way (at home) to produce the exact same beer twice in a row, it makes more sense to make every batch significantly different from all the previous ones.
• The more frequently you brew, the easier it is to maintain your equipment.
• Brewclubs make every aspect of brewing more enjoyable.
• Papazian’s “Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew” is a brewer’s mantra.
• Anything you start worrying about makes brewing less fun and probably doesn’t matter nearly as much as you think it does.

There are many things I still haven’t learnt. Some should be obvious

• How to make bottling fun, even when I’m alone.
• How to plan my brewing sessions so that I have everything set up beforehand.
• The volumes of some of my vessels. Haven’t graduated any of them, actually.
• Whether or not I should skim the hot break.
• The perfect moment to rack to secondary.
• An efficient way to stagger my brew so that I do several activities on the same day.
• The joys of using a refractometer. (But I’m getting one soon.)
• The importance of proteins in brewing.