After I drank my first IPA, I started to ask everyone and anyone I knew, how was it that a brewer could infuse so much flavor and aroma into a beer…
Soon enough a technique stood out… dry hopping…
Not knowing any better, I began to wonder, why aren’t all beers dry-hopped? I began to fantasize that if I ran a brewery I would just dry hop everything… heck, I would dry hop mead…
Obviously I didn’t know any better… it wouldn’t work because every beer style has different characteristics that allow the beer to express some sort of uniqueness…
Munich Dunkels for example are very malty rich and complex… the strong hop aroma of an IPA would keep the nice maltiness of a Munich Dunkel to stand out…
Improving your home brew is NOT about finding techniques like dry hopping… it’s about the little details that make style-specific characteristics of beer stand out… little details that are usually learned through experience over the years…
Ignoring these little details is like doing your laundry with febreeze… it may smell okay on the surface but deep down you know it’s dirty and it stinks…
The most common step where brewers go wrong is recipe formulation
Most rookie brewers think that “more is better”…
This is the fastest way to take your beer out of style…
There is a reason why I teach beer style progression, and it’s to illustrate how careful additions or changes in brewing process affect the beer style…
My favorite example is going from a Pale ale to an Amber ale…
One of the biggest flaws I see in home brewed pale ales is too much caramel… there is a reason why the beer style is called “Pale”… it should be lighter in color, which means it shouldn’t be darkened by crystal or caramel malts…
Color aside… pales ales have more of a hoppy characteristic… adding too much caramel keeps the hoppy characteristic from standing out…
Can you brew a hoppy amber ale?
Absolutely, but it won’t be a pale ale… that’s the lesson I’m trying to get across…
Adding too much of something is what keeps most home brews from being better… adding alcohol or brewing a higher ABV than permitted by style is another typical rookie mistake…
I’ve heard brewers say they want to brew a 7 or 8% ABV pale ale…
Again, can you brew a higher alcohol pale ale…
Sure
But, that’s not a pale ale… it would actually be closer to an Imperial or India Pale Ale (IPA)… again, IPAs were created as a result of adding more alcohol and hops to pale ales so the anti-bacterial properties of hops and higher alcohol content would keep beer from spoiling during long distance transportation…
In fact, that’s the KEY characteristic of ‘export’ versions of beer styles… either higher alcohol or higher hop levels or both…
Is adding more better?
I wouldn’t exactly say it’s bad, but it’s different… you need to understand the consequences of these little details to brew a better beer…
Like I said, it is possible to “add more” to your recipes, but this leads to the next little detail
Muddy Flavors
Whenever you are about to add more to a recipe, you have to be mindful of how the addition is going to add to the beer…
You can mix different varieties of citrusy hops to a beer and get a good combination… if you start to mix citrusy and earthy hops then that’s not the same…
Some flavors clash and just don’t go well together…
This is something that takes experience and can be opinionated… despite being hispanic, I still don’t like the idea of jalapeño beers… at least not the ones I’ve tried, but that doesn’t mean I won’t ever not brew one if I can think of a way to balance the flavors or find a way to complement a recipe…
Citrusy hops and ‘roasted’ is another example… beers with roasted characteristics have a coffee like flavor… citrusy turns that into a stale-like coffee flavor…
The best way to learn what goes with what is by getting into food pairing and tasting flavor combinations…
Expert itamae (sushi chef) Jiro Ono once said “You must taste good food in order to make good food”… in other words, your idea of what tastes good can be subpar in the palate of someone who’s tasted better flavors…
The same applies to beer… you have to get out and taste great beers… bottled craft beer is a good place to start, but whenever possible get to the brewery and taste good flavors… good combinations…
Overtime you will know what you like and what you don’t… I can tell you stone fruits (cherries, peaches, etc.) are good for chocolate, roasted like flavors or sour beers…
Ideas are everywhere if you are willing to go out and seek… when I decided to brew a bacon beer, I had no idea what beer style I was going to brew… or what else I would add, until I came across a Bacon Fried Sundae (Vanilla ice cream with fried bacon)…
That’s how I figured that vanilla and bacon could be flavors that would complement each other… and my Vanilla Bacon Cream Ale was born…
Last…
Proper Carbonation
More often than not, I see brewers use the standard 5 oz of priming sugar sold at home brew supply stores… main reason?
That’s what you see in just about every recipe from the most reputable magazines and brewing books…
Again, improving your beer is not in techniques… it’s in taking care of all these little details…
Carbonation does more than create foam and make you burp…
Carbonation cuts through malt sweetness and body of the beer… some beers that are supposed to be malty can be affected by too much carbonation…
Other beers may be TOO malty from lack of carbonation… this is possibly the biggest difference you’ll see when playing around with carbonation, but there are even more subtle things to consider when looking at carbonation…
The CO2 in the beer plays a part in releasing aromas, whether they are malt aromas or hop aromas…
It’s one of the things that makes an IPA or even a pale ale different than an Amber ale…
It’s one thing to consider if you wanted to brew a hoppy amber ale… how will you get the hop aroma out of the beer without cutting through the caramel or crystal sweetness of the beer?
Even more geeky… CO2 can produce some carbonic acid or from another perspective, push oxygen out of the beer… on one hand that’s good for long term storage, but that aside… less oxygen means the pH can drop…
Beers that have a finishing pH of above 4.5 can sometimes seem dull… so much that some brewers will add phosphoric acid to brighten it up, but that’s not the only option when you keg your beers… you can boost carbonation and find a similar effect…
When you focus on little details like these you will start to improve your beers beyond belief… you will know because you will taste flavors other people haven’t tasted…
You will know what made the difference while most brewers will go on thinking they haven’t found the right technique or the right recipe…
Cheers!
