[lindak]

I keep a brew day tool box-- it contains all of the smaller individual pieces and parts I need to brew and get fermentation going:  air locks, stoppers, hydrometer, thermometer, whirlfloc, gypsum, lactic acid, hop bags, etc..  I have a slot for everything and when cleaning up I make sure everything is stocked for my next brew.  It saves me a lot of trips up and down the stairs. 

[homoeccentricus]

When you read that someone force carbonates at 40 psi, and you decide to give it a try yourself, first learn to recognize the sound of gas coming out of the pressure relief valve.

[santoch]

on brew day, look at the alphas of the hops you actually bought.  Plug these values in to your software, but keep all of the additions from 20 mins and later the same weights as in the recipe.  For those earlier bittering additions, adjust the weights until you hit your IBU target.  This can include changing it for more or less boil time, too.

in my cooler mash tun,  I preheat it with boiling water before mashing in.  Then I add the full strike water a degree or two above the strike temp that my software calculated using 0 for the thermal mass. when it drops to the strike temp, I mix in the grains, stirring the whole time to avoid dough balls.  It hits the target mash temp every time doing it this way.  Don't forget to take the temp of the grain as part of this process.

I always imagine that there is a slow, fine, invisible rain of bacteria and wild yeast at all times.  Nothing touches my cold side beer unless its sanitized and then re-sanitized just before use.  Even the tabletop is sanitized and covered by paper towels which soak up the sanitizer liquid When I put a sanitized tool down on it.  There's also a bucket full of sanitizer with hoses, etc, ready to dip something into it as a last sanitation step before being used.

[ynotbrusum]

A few simple tips - and I use a lot of those already mentioned, such as bucket heater on a timer, but some very simple things that are so obvious:

Put the propane tank in a large laundry tub with a little water to keep it from freezing up in cold weather.

Consider using hop bags with drawstring closures held by small spring clips to attach to the kettle for easy removal and less hop matter to carry over into the fermenter.

Don't discard an old dishwasher tray or silverware holder when you are getting a new dishwasher - they  make an excellent tray/bin to dry things up off the ground and upright.

A wine de-gassing rod with flexible "fingers" can be used to aerate wort - it really works quick.

I had a simple 2X2 frame built and attached to the ceiling of my garage to store 9 empty kegs - essentially it is looks like a hashtag with a square frame around it and 1/4 inch plywood slats on the bottom of each section to make sliding the kegs in and out a breeze (I know that a picture would help, but I am not at home presently).

A simple periodic mopping out with some light bleach solution can keep your keezer smelling fresh and free of mold.  I have a dedicated long handle mop with "Sham Wow"-type wipes that I use to make the chore even easier.

Use a large desk calendar mounted to a wall in your brew area to track your brewing - it lets you check at a glance how long beers have been fermenting/what the brew calendar will be (if you plan ahead for events)/ and which beers are getting a bit long in the tooth in your keezer.

[denny]

Wow, you guys rock!  These are all great and almost all of them will end up on the air.  I might even build a seminar around them!

[santoch]

Don't get all riled up about extraction efficiency once its in the 70%+ range.  You are better off concentrating on being able to reproduce the same efficiency time after time than trying to maximize it.  Trying for too high extraction can cause over sparging and increased tannin astringency.  If you can hit the same extraction efficiency time after time, then you can easily make small changes to the recipe to tweak and dial in on what you want to brew.  It also helps when taking recipes from others, since you can adjust their recipe to your efficiency and you'll be confident that you'll brew something that ends up close to their target.  This is all impossible if every beer you brew is a crapshoot efficiency wise.

If you are getting low efficiency, then something else is wrong -- mill gap, channeling, or water chemistry are the 3 most common contributors to low efficiency.  Check your mill gap, try Denny's batch sparge technique and/or adjust your water chemistry using Martin's bru'n'water till you get a reasonable efficiency.  Then practice your technique until you can hit it every time.  Taking notes helps with reproducibility.

[AmandaK]

Denny, you already know my thoughts on this, but I'll say it again:

There is little point in trying to make a crazy version of a beer style if you can't make the base beer in the first place. Figure out how to brew a proper beer first before trying to make a 'bacon Pilsner' for your second beer or some such nonsense.

[narcout]

If using hop bags, clipping the drawstrings to the rim of the kettle makes for easy removal (easier than fishing them out of the kettle with a spoon).

Running wort through a hop bag or metal screen filter on its way from mash tun to kettle will catch a fair amount of fine grain particulate that vorlaufing didn't remove.

Using a metal ruler to take measurements while filling your boil kettle up with one or two quarts of water at a time, you can plot the points and solve for the equation which allows you to input the height in inches of your wort and returns the volume (easy way to measure pre and post boil wort volume if your kettle isn't graduated).

[riceral]

Lack of bubbles in the airlock doesn't mean the beer if finished fermenting. The only way to check this accurately is to check the specific gravity. It it remains unchanged after 2-3 days, then it's ready to bottle or keg.

[klickitat jim]

Denny, you already know my thoughts on this, but I'll say it again:

There is little point in trying to make a crazy version of a beer style if you can't make the base beer in the first place. Figure out how to brew a proper beer first before trying to make a 'bacon Pilsner' for your second beer or some such nonsense.

Of course unless your Pilsner already tastes: like bacon, then it's just a matter of labeling it as such

[tesgüino]

Around here the amount of chlorine or chloramine in our water vary depending on the amount of rain. Campden is cheap insurance against Band-Aid beer.


 

[kgs]

I measure out hops, finings, etc. into custard cups, put them in a row, and put post-its under them labeled with the name, quantity, and time. Similar to baggies, but if you're indoors, less waste, and easy to read.

I have two wooden spoons I use for measuring (one for my 5-gal kettle, the other for my 8-gallon), calibrated with gallon markers.

I almost always mash the night before these days. I'm an early riser, so I will often have a brew done by mid-morning.

I get my gear out the day prior, but on my to-do list is a brew-day checklist, so I don't keep going back for that one little thing.

When I was a new brewer, I would open my fermenter every day, obsessing about the brew's progress and taking lots of measurements. Now I don't open the fermenter until I have to (to add something) or until I'm reasonably sure the beer has finished fermenting.

[pete b]

I always use a timer during the mash and boil, from setting it so I don't forget to check the strike water temp all the way to the end of the boil, I set a timer for the next thing that needs doing. For instance, if I'm doing a 60 minute boil with no hop additions between bittering and a hopstand, I'll set a timer for 50 minutes to remind me to add Irish Moss with ten minutes left.

I keep in mind the temp of the malt. If I mill my malt the night before and bring it upstairs it could be 15 degrees warmer than when I mill it in the cellar on brew day. For this reason I started always leaving it in the cellar after milling the night before so I don't have to adjust my usual target for strike water.

I always keep a wand chiller in my freezer. It is a food grade plastic stick shaped to have maximum surface area filled with water and frozen and is used in foodservice to quickly bring soups etc. down to a safe temp fast. Before getting an immersion chiller I used it along with an ice bath to chill my wort, and still do with small batches. I also place it inside the coils of my immersion chiller to greatly speed up chilling. It also can cool a too high mash temp in a pinch.

[dannyjed]

Denny, you already know my thoughts on this, but I'll say it again:

There is little point in trying to make a crazy version of a beer style if you can't make the base beer in the first place. Figure out how to brew a proper beer first before trying to make a 'bacon Pilsner' for your second beer or some such nonsense.

I wholeheartedly agree!

[hopfenundmalz]

Make sure an immersion chiller is empty when you put it in. If not you have to heat the interior water up to a boil along with the metal. I know by the longer time to boil when I forget to empty it out.