Ten GREAT Homebrewing Tips & Tricks to level up your brewing (2023 Edition)

In twelve years of of homebrewing, I've learned a lot, and I've made a lot beer, wine, mead, and cider. Usually the lessons I've learned have come by trying and failing. And sometimes by looking for shortcuts that don't impact the quality of the end product. For beginner homebrewers, there can be a lot of questions at the beginning. So we made this video help pass along some tips, tricks, and hacks for brewing at home. Stay tuned to the end!

What are your tips and tricks? Let us know in the comments!

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[Heisenbrick]

This channel has helped my wine/mead brews tremendously! I am so thankful for this great information. I also bought the Jack Keller book “home wine making”… started reading it from the beginning today and it is not only a fun read but tons of good info and recipes.

[Dogstickfetch]

These are LEGENDARY. I love the cider-to-test idea!!!! Absolutely killer hacks

[CristopherCast]

New tips just dropped, and these are form the FURTURE

[fatbruhskit]

Love all these tips. This is a great reminder for all those small things you can forget. Also, here before Tiger Pat🐯🤠

[greatwolftactical]

The blow off using the airlock is mind is blown

[eddavanleemputten]

Thanks for the tips!

Without even thinking about it, I had started taking pre- and post-back sweetening hydrometer readings from the moment I’d gotten my first hydrometer. Probably my control freak side… or the fact that I needed to keep a record of everything, all the time, for my job in finance and insurance. LOL. It comes in really handy not only in the case you want to make a brew again but also if you keep track of how your brews evolve over time. You might feel some brews could do with a little more or a little less sweetness as they get older. Or, if you make a similar recipe, it can save a lot of time if you know the weight, volume and post-back sweetening gravity of your initial brew. Say your last sweet spot was 1.020. Back sweeten to 1.010 and have a taste. Add five more points. How is it now? Remove a sample large enough to fill your graduated cylinder, add enough sweetening to go to 1.020, taste, add enough to go to 1.025. How is it now? Add more? Add less? Keep notes on the final result you’re bottling. Over time you’ll start seeing patterns as well. It’s also handy if you want to split batches (one sweet, one semi-sweet and one dry).

Is it a hack to say I keep detailed notes on my brews? I’ve learned so much from my notes!

Snap a picture of your hydrometer reading with your phone camera and add a note (name of the brew at minimum, possibly ingredient list for the first reading and just the name of the brew and number of the reading on subsequent readings). Make an album on your phone called ‘hydrometer readings’. When in doubt, you can refer to the photo and complete your notes from that.

Getting maximum bang for my buck out of fruit: use a three-step process:
1. Freeze-and-thaw
2. Pectic enzyme
3. Maceration on sugar/honey
Combining all three means you have a double attack on the fruit’s cell walls aided by osmosis for maximum juice extraction. Water (and juice) goes from areas of high concentration to areas of lower concentration. Dumping at least part of your honey or sugar on the fruit and stirring it through, then letting it sit for 6-24 hours will cause a lot more juice to come out. After maceration, take a sample reading and proceed accordingly from there. I generally do this in a bucket and after maceration I have my fermentation bucket or my wide mouth fermenter ready with a brew bag. Transfer the fruit into the brew bag, use part of the juice to dilute/dissolve any remaining sugar/honey you want to add, add it and stir. Check your gravity. Adjust if necessary, stir again and pitch your yeast.

Whenever I’m too lazy to locate my brewing bags I keep a closer eye on my airlock to make sure I do remove the fruit before fermentation is done, and take an extra hydrometer reading. Then, before it’s done, I pour the contents of the brewing bucket into the secondary vessel through a brewing bag. In a pinch, a large pitcher will to if I want to transfer to a narrow mouth fermenter. Removing fruit before the end of fermentation was a revelation born out of laziness for me! I love that hack!

Too much head space and in secondary but no smaller fermenters available? If you have any kind of device that dispenses CO2 and that you can hook up to a length of tubing, shoot some CO2 through the bung hole of your fermenter, creating a blanket that’ll protect your brew. Replace bung and airlock. It isn’t perfect and won’t last years, but it’ll keep for a few weeks. That’s enough for secondary. If in doubt, repeat.

[cogeek]

I do enjoy making a wonderful easy drinking 4.5% cider from store bought juice. Favorite yeast for it is Nottingham (it's my go to for alot of styles and I like it because I can ferment in the Wyoming resident basement when the fermentation closet dips to the mid to high 50s). Nottingham doesn't ferment as dry as most cider and wine yeasts alot of brewers use for cider and it gives me a nice long lasting head with plenty of lacing which I haven't experienced with the other yeasts. Looking forward to your partiguile video. Also, alot of traditional English breweries will top crop their yeast for future batches. Burton brewing systems take advantage of this or in the case of Yorkshire squares, they will just push the krausen into the next batch with special rakes. Thanks for the great videos. Cheers!

[bluebirdgreenhouse]

I love your channel! Your style respects the viewer by presenting organized information in fun positive presentations. ❤

[simont.]

Your videos are so good. I love how concise, well spoken are methodologic you are. Definitely my favorite on youtube.

[timothywilliams]

Instead of top cropping i will dump a new batch with added nutrients onto the yeast slurry from the last batch. Because there is a ton of healthy live yeast it takes off hard and ferments faster.

I like to plan out the next few beers to use the same yeast strain. I usually brew 3-4 batches in a row off same yeast. Never had any issues.

I also do the same with a wild yeast i captured for cider and fruit wine. I refrigerate the slurry between batches. Kept it going for several years now.

[Bearsharee]

Great tips. You've helped me a lot in the last few months upgrading my brews in meads and country wines mainly. Keep it up I love what you're doing!

[Kannushi]

Elevate blow off tubes high above your vessel and it mitigates product loss. Gravity will keep pulling material down the tube making it harder for solids and liquids to escape but not the gas.

[nicholaswelna]

For tip #4, about what time during fermentation do you recommend removing the fruit bag? Is there a gravity measure you recommend, or amount of time?

[JohnFleshman]

Heh I just used the first tip yesterday.

[shadeslayermasta]

Nice video! Definitely picked up some tips. One thing I would say instead of taking yeast from the fermenter make a bigger starter and harvest before it is pitched. To me it helps to not have to clean the yeast and have less modified strains if that is even possible.

[jasonlayman]

lol great video i'm guilty of #2.

[crisejeremy]

This is the first video I’ve found of you. Glad i did! But go pokes…

[littlebones]

Taking gravity readings before and after back sweetening is something I've always done. It helps you gauge how much honey in general to get to a certain level of sweetness. Great tips!

[TigerPat_]

Great Video ! I save the Sediment from Big Batches . Then pour EM all together in a Gallon Big Mouth Glass Jar, put em in the fridge to separate again . And get a Full Bottle of Brew out of it . One thing tho, my Fig Wine, made with Fresh Figs, not Dried, takes over the taste of the Whole Bottle 🍾 . For me it's a good thing, because I Really like my Fig Wine, it has a Pink Grapefruit juice kinda Taste . Being from Florida I have an aquired taste for that Flavor . 🐯🤠

[ShopTherapy]

question - I tried making hard apple cider from my apple tree like 4 years ago. I used one of those "Fastbrewing Fermentors" - after going through the process, and letting it sit for like 4 months, it tasted awful. I figured I ruined it somehow (contaminated or something). Let's fast forward like 4 years (and forget the fact that I didn't touch this stuff for that entire period). I opened it up (for the first time) and it does kinda smell like alcohol. I'm scared to try and drink it though, cuz I dont want to get sick. Should I just throw it away? Should I try freeze distilling a gallon of it to see if there's any alcohol in it? Is it safe? Just curious what your thoughts are. If I absolutely shouldnt touch the stuff, I want to get it cleaned out so I can try my hand at fermenting again! I should note that for the 4 years that it sat, it was in the basement, with no sunlight, and its' probably between 60-70 degrees year around down there.