Bad habits. We all have them, and they seep in to any activity we do regularly. I think most of us start out following brew-day instructions to the letter, but once we get comfortable, we might also get a bit…lazy. It starts innocently enough: accidentally forget to do something during brew day, determine that the batch wasn’t a total disaster, and when it happens again, don’t get too anxious about it. Pretty soon, the bad habit becomes part of the routine.
We spend so much time focusing on dialing in our recipes or getting our process down to an exact science that I think it’s time to celebrate the other side of brewing that not many of us want to fess up to. Some of these habits might be okay from time to time and probably not affect much, but with others, you very well might be playing with fire.
6. Forgetting to Label Beer Bottles
I think most of us have bottles of mystery beer lurking in our beer fridges and basements. Most of us are certain we can remember what it is because it has a blue cap on it, and who wants to take the time to write up twenty-five-plus labels? Six months later, we can’t remember if the beer in the blue-capped bottle is a Pilsner or a wheat beer. It’s hard to see through the bottles well enough to determine much past it being a stout or not-a-stout, so all that’s left to do is crack that baby open and take a sip. I like a good mystery just as much as the next person, so if a little adventure here and there floats your hydrometer, go for it.
5. Not Taking Notes on Brew Day
I probably can’t stress the importance of taking notes on brew day enough. What if your batch turns out super great and you want to make it again? What if it turns out so bad you’re mentally scarred for life? The only way to remember what to do (or not to do) is to write down what happened not only on brew day but also during fermentation and even after packaging, if it’s a beer you let age. So many brewers say their best batches happened after making a mistake, and you might want to repeat that down the road. That said, many brewers are more into a one-and-done method when it comes to brewing. They don’t want to make the same batch twice and aren’t terribly concerned with dialing in a recipe.
4. Letting Beer Ferment Too Long
Speaking of forgotten things, raise your hand if you’ve ever brewed a beer and forgotten (or gotten too busy/lazy) to package it. If you’ve sanitized everything within an inch of its life (and this is one habit we should never let slide!), you won’t likely have to worry about an infected batch, but you might have to worry about wild yeast strains changing things up. There is a small chance of off-flavors resulting from sitting too long, but if your yeast is fresh (as opposed to a strain you’ve repurposed a few times) you should be all right. However, if you left it for longer than six months, you might want to check the flavor before you go to the trouble to bottle.
3. Not Taking Gravity Readings
I am so guilty of this, far more often than I want to admit. But there you have it. Taking gravity readings is important for many reasons. Right after brewing, you need to test the original gravity of the wort so you can compare it to other readings later on. When it’s time to package or move to secondary, you’ll take a second reading to make sure the yeast cells are done working—if your beer is under-attenuated, it won’t taste as great. The other benefit is that once your yeast has clocked out, you’ll know your ABV, and whether or not your beer is session-worthy or more suitable for consuming slowly and in smaller quantities.
2. Forgetting to Aerate Wort before Pitching the Yeast
You’re homestretching it and can’t wait to get your tired, aching carcass into the recliner after a long day of brewing. Neglecting to aerate your wort before you pitch your yeast isn’t a total tragedy, but it could mean your yeast activity is slow to start or your fermentation will get stuck. If this does happen, you can try aerating later to see if it will inspire some yeast activity, or you can re-pitch the yeast and hope for the best.
1. Sticking a Non-sanitized Anything in Your Wort
I think most of us have had that moment: you accidentally drop something in your wort once it’s on the cold side, but you just spent an entire day brewing it, so there’s no way you’re going to throw it out unless you know for sure something is wrong. Pretty soon, you find yourself being a little less cautious with your sanitation, even sticking your entire arm into the kettle (once it’s cooled, of course!) for whatever reason. Yes, you do run the risk of contamination, which sucks. If you have any off-flavors you’ll know right away that it’s done for. But sometimes luck is on your side, and after the yeast cells do their thing, your beer tastes fantastic (and you can have fun with it by asking your friends to guess the secret ingredient). Of all the bad habits on this list, though, this is the one that should be reserved for true accidents and not something you fall into doing on a regular basis.
Time to confess: what are your brew-day bad habits?