5 Tips To Successfully Brewing Homebrewed Beer

Today is "Learning to Homebrew Day!" Yes, this is an official holiday in the beer world!! In honor of this awesome holiday, we have presented 5 of the most helpful tips we wish we knew while learning how to make beer. 

1. The key to a successful brewed beer is in the sanitation. You can make the most yummy beer, but if you forget to sanitize, say goodbye to your 'liquid gold.' This happened to us once in the early years. We had sanitized EVERYTHING ( so we had thought.) We bottled our beer, came back two weeks later, and saw floaty-s in the beer. It wasn't just one bottle, it was all of them.  We thought it was yeast that got into the bottles during transfer. To make sure it was ok to drink, we took a bottle to Brewmaster, a local brew supply store, and they confirmed it as bacteria. We had to ditch the beer. We figured out we didn't sanitize the bottles good enough. Something must have been at the bottom of the bottles that we missed while cleaning them. Lesson learned!

2. Don't drink so much beer that you boil over.  You have to drink beer while you brew, it's the law of home brewing! But just watch yourself on brew day! We had a brew day where four different brewers (two had won awards for their beer, the others were just learning) came over, with their equipment and supplies. One of the award winners kept saying through out the day about not boiling over. You can lose a lot of beer when it happens and then your recipe is off. (There are work arounds, it just plain sucks when it happens!) This advice quickly turned into bragging rites, with the more beer he drank. Soon his warnings turned into jokes, "How can you tell a beginner brewer from an expert brewer? If he boils over!!!!!" And guess who was the only one to boil over that day? Yep, the "expert"of the bunch! He will never live this story down!!! 

3. Don't forget to transfer your beer! Always write down your transfer/ bottling schedule on a calendar. We forgot to transfer our beer into secondary in a timely manner ( 2 weeks is the norm, we transferred at 6 weeks!) As a result, the water in the airlock got so low that air got into the carboy and bacteria started to grow. We had to dump 10 gallons of beer. 

4. If you're brewing in California, or a place that is experiencing a drought, make sure to capture your water as you are cooling it with your wort chiller. We run our water into barrels so we can later use the water for hydrating our plants.

5. It's ok to start with an extract for for first time to get the hang of brewing. There is a big learning curve when starting to brew. Start slow and small. A kit is a great way to learn to process and jargon, while successfully creating  a drinkable beer!

So Happy "Learn To Homebrew Day!" We hope you find these tips helpful. We would love to hear any tips you have!  And feel free to learn more about brewing with our article, "Making Beer."

Cheers!

Fourth of July Beer Themed Party Ideas

I love the Fourth of July!  Every year, our family goes to the Alameda Parade and watches the bands and community groups walk by.  I'm the "embarrassing" one in the family as I am always hootin' and hollerin' with each group that goes by.  I find it interesting that I'm only one of the few that does that, but that's another story.  After that, we usually go party hopping and find a good place to watch the fireworks in the evening.  This can be a hard task since often enough, the fog rolls in and seeing the firework display in any of the cities in the Bay Area is close to impossible.  That's our tradition, and I now you have yours!  If your tradition is to host a Fourth of July Party/ BBQ and are looking for a beer theme, well you've come to the right place.  Here is a collection of ideas that may inspire you!

Have a Safe Fourth of July.  Please let us know of any DIY beer themes you come up with, we would love to hear about them! Cheers!

Beer Bottle Labels:

Buy and Download from this great etsy store

Download for Free Here

Idea's for Red Solo Cups:

Image found on blogs.babycenter.com

And don't forget the food:

Get the recipe

Get the recipe

                                     

DIY: Turning Your Beer Bottles into Drinking Glasses

There are a lot of fun things you can do with beer bottles once you've drank the beer.  Today we are going to go over how to turn you beer bottle into a glass.  We have been using Ken Supplies Bottle etcher.  In our experience we found that this tool provided a less jagged lip, which means it won't cut you lip when drinking from it.

Step One:  Use the etcher to score your beer glass.  See Video here.

Step Two:  Dip the bottle into boiling water for one to two minutes.

Step Three:  Lifting the bottle straight up and down, plunge it in to ice cold water. Wait for it to break off.

Step Four:  You may need to do Step Two and Three a couple of times.

Step Five:  Look at the lip.  If there are chips in it, you may need to sand it.  We use the P80 sander.

Step Six:  You will need to sand it with a machine and by hand.

When you are all done, rinse the glass out and feel free to use.  You can also take it one step further by gluing the top of the bottle to the bottom.  Then you get a beer goblet.

DYI Beer Bottle Centerpieces (Vases and Candle Holders)

Just because you have a lot of beer bottles sitting around your house, doesn't mean you have a drinking problem, it means you appreciate good beer!  But I have to admit that when I take out the recycling, the neighbors know it's the Swihart family from the beautiful noise our beer bottles make when they hit the bin!  And, let me tell you, it's loud! So I thought it would be a great idea to highlight 2  ways to up-cycle beer bottles, so that we don't  disturb the neighbors!!!

1) Take that bouquet of flowers sweet hubby brought home and distribute it,in beer bottles.  Tie the beer bottles up in raffia, lace, or ribbon and voila, a center piece.  Most importantly you've saved yourself about a 6 pack worth of recycling worries.

2) Cut the bottom of a beer bottle off and use the tops as candle holders.  (Tutorial on cutting beer bottles coming soon!)  Again add the fluff and you're set!

Now you can tell your friends and family that you have multiple reasons for drinking as much beer as you do... it's not only for the appreciation of a great homebrew or craft beer, but it's a lifestyle.  You can now decorate with beer!