#homebrewtips

What I did: Brewed the "Hello World" Brown Porter using the partial-boil method.

What I should have done: Sucked it up and bought a kettle big enough to brew it as a full-boil.

After tasting the "Hello World" Brown Porter, I knew I wanted one of my co-workers who is also a homebrew enthusiast to give it a try to get his opinion. Given that he's been homebrewing for quite some time, I knew that he'd be able to offer some insight into how I could make the beer better.

His analysis was that the flavor was good, but that the "mouth feel" of the beer was thin. He said that "mouth feel" is best thought of as the different ways that skim vs. whole milk feel against your tonge: one is thin and has more of a consistency of water, while the other has weight and fullness against your tongue. He suggested two things to improve the "mouth feel" o f my next batch: use an all grain recipe (which I'm not currently equipped to do), try to do a full boil, or both.

So, to brew the Dunkelweisen, I borrowed a 7.5 gallon kettle from my father-in-law and attempted a full boil. Technically, it was no more difficult than the partial boil, and just from looking at the color I'm already guessing that this beer will be much more full-bodied and delicious than the first.

What I did: Siphoned the beer from my primary fermenter (carboy) into the priming bucket with the siphon tube resting on the bottom for a portion of the siphon process, making sure I got as much beer as possible into the priming bucket. This ultimately caused some of the sediment at the bottom of the carboy to end up in the bottles.

What I should have done: Been more willing to sacrifice some of the beer at the bottom of the primary fermenter in exchange for keeping the siphon tube away from the bottom.

I have a friend who homebrews too, and I actually asked him about this one. He said that he almost always ends up with *some* sediment in his bottles, but that much of it can be avoided by just keeping the siphon tube far away from the bottom yeast cake.

Fortunately for me, its only a small amount of sediment. I'm just hoping it doesn't end up in the bottom of my glass, too.

What I did: Used the bottle capper to cap the bottle, then rotated the bottle 90* and used the capper again to make sure all the sides were crimped down

Why I did it: I noticed that several of the caps that I did first didn't seem to be "all the way on" and that several of the edges were not crimped down as you see on other beers.

After using the capper once, the pointed edges of the cap were not all evenly pushed into place. I was worried that this meant there might have been a gap in the seal or that the caps were too small, but using the capper again after turning the bottle 90* seemed to alleviate the problem.

What I did: Skipped right over the instructions for activating yeast before adding to the wort.

What I should have done: Activate the yeast while my wort was chilling in some warm water (per packet instructions) before adding to the wort.

I've never been one for reading instructions. I've always been more of a "dive in there and figure it out, then use the instructions if I get stuck" type of person. Fortunately for me, it didn't cost me this time...

What I did: Steep the grains until the wort reached a temperature of 170*F.

What I should have done: Maintain the temperature of the wort at around 170*F until the grains had been steeping for at least 30 minutes, rather than removing them once 170*F was reached (only around 20 minutes).

The instructions I was using to brew the Brown Porter said to put the grains in a grain bag, then put them in the water as I brought the temperature up to 170*F. I did, and occasionally stirred as instructed. Once the temperature of 170*F was reached, I removed the grains.

The wort at this point was beginning to look dark brown, as expected, so I went ahead and removed the grains and proceeded to boil the wort with the bittering and aromatic hops.