In our series Brew & A, we have sought to understand our community, and brewing as a whole on an entirely new level.
Each member that has joined us has let us into their brewing, their lives, and the spirit they share with the community. It's never an easy thing to open up, but as we reflect back on the 30 interviews we've published for Brew & A we're left with an everlasting bond. Who are we? What did we do? How did we do it?
Pushing through the veil of time that time often obscures stories like ours; we have sought to capture the spirit of brewing as it was relevant. To the brewers, the hobby as a whole, and for the time, Brew & A serves as a memorial to the ideas and spirit of a generation of brewers.
Today we look back at the 30 interview we've published so far. Each brewer unique, but sharing the same time, space and community we all call home. I've also included their answers to the final question for all Brew & A's "What's the one piece of advice you wish someone had given you?" as I feel in each case it summarizes the spirit of the brewer.
A.J. de Lange - was the first brewer to join us for Brew & A while we were still working out the now known format. A.J's advice was simple, "Use soft water and check pH throughout the process.".
A.J. de Lange
Dan "Aceclub" Whitted - "To please keep up with all the changing aspects of brewing science. The first book I picked up with regards to homebrewing was Papazian's The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. It's been the main brewing reference that I've used throughout my career despite some of the dated advice contained within."
Sonny "Airborneguy" F - "Join a forum right away! I'll never stop reading books - real books - but with the speed that information travels nowadays, forums full of experienced and even beginners of any hobby are solid sources of information. Rather than a single author, members reap the benefits of the trial and error experimentation of thousands of fellow aficionados. This modern resource truly can't be beat!".
Jim "Homercidal" Hulliberger - "EASY! TEMP CONTROL!
Jim "Pappers" Vondracek - "Fermentation temps. Control your fermentation temperatures. Did I mention that brewers should control their fermentation temperatures?".
Jim "Pappers" Vondracek
Lorena "Yooper" Evans - " RDWHAHB. Oh, I know that I probably did get that. I read "The Joy of Homebrewing". But I obsessed about so many things anyway. Now, I am still quite a stickler for detail but far more relaxed about most things concerning beer. After all, it's only beer. You can make more!".
Andrew "Billy-Klubb" Knapp -"Don't limit yourself to your own imagination. Abuse the hell out of everyone else's' imagination as well.".
Andrew "Billy-Klubb" Knapp
Jay "Jaybird" Webster - "Don't start! It's an addictive hobby and it will consume your entire being... Just kidding (kind of) but really, I think I ended up getting great advice here and haven't made many changes to my process along the way. I went all grain after my first batch, I only bottled my first batch of beer and realized I didn't like that part of the process so I started kegging. I bought a fridge and did temp control early on too. So maybe making yeast starters and doing the proper pitch rates. This isn't really something we here on HBT talked about all too much back in the day.".
Nick "Motobrewer" McLellan - "Fermentation is everything. My initial thinking was to just add yeast and keep it in the temperature range for that strain. I always respected the benefits of temperature control, and it was pretty straightforward for me to accomplish it due to the nature of my work. However I was still more or less ignoring the advice on pitch count and oxygenation until about a year ago. I was making basic starters and shaking, but ever since I started paying closer attention to detailed pitch count (and bought a stir plate) and bought a bottle of O2 I have been consistently getting really good, clean fermentations. Especially on lagers.".
Ed "Shecky" Daigneault - " Relax. I was so uptight about the whole thing when I first began, especially with all grain, that I nearly gave myself a coronary. It didn't take too long for me to figure out that it's just beer.".
Dustin "DisturbdChemist" Palm - "Don't do it because its addictive and your bank account will suffer! lol".
Alex "Qhrumphf" Spencer - "Keep it simple. My first batch was simple. And it came out well. Subsequent batches I started trying to get fancy, and the beer suffered. Once you nail down the fundamentals, then you can start experimenting. But even then, brew a base beer as it is first before you start adding wacky ingredients, because a bad base beer will be a bad beer no matter what you do to it.".
Alex "Qhrumphf" Spencer
Yuri_Rage - " Go big, brew electric, and never shy away from a challenge.".
Kevin "BierMuncher" Mattie - "USE RICE HULLS.".
Bobby "Bobby_M" Mierzejwski - "There is no right way to brew. The journey to finding out what works best for you is 99% of the hobby. Ethanol is the other 1%.".
James "CreamyGoodness" Babiarz - "Honestly? Just buy a cheap autosyphon and a cheap capper. RDWHAHB can drive a person crazy (we are hardwired to worry), so I think I would just rebrand the advice as HISDTB "Hell, I'd Still Drink That Brew".".
Trevor "Laughing_Gnome_Invisible" Clark - "Don't panic.".
Trevor "Laughing_Gnome_Invisible" Clark
Jason "WildGingerBrewing" Merritt - "Control your temps! This is one thing for which I did not have a complete understanding. I live in Texas. Sticking a bucket in the closet is not the best option. We don't have nice, cool basements, and a closet at 74F is not the best place to ferment beer! Getting a ferment fridge and a Johnson Control is the best thing I ever did to improve my brewing. And of course, PKU.".
Leonard "Unionrdr" Cogar - Hm...Well, build some kind of temperature controlled cabinet or something to keep initial ferment temps in check, and to develop a good brewing process asap by getting a book on home brewing before asking a lot of questions. Try mashing, at least as a partial mash experimental beer earlier on. It's not as hard or mysterious as many of us previously thought...".
Ryan "finsfan" Emley - "I wish someone would have pushed me into all-grain brewing sooner. The better beer quality and ability to tweak any recipe is a huge advantage compared to extract. Not to mention the gratitude you feel from brewing beer the same way people have for thousands of years. All-grain should not be intimidating or seem like a daunting step up. There are a few more steps involved and brew days took a little longer, but the payout is worth it. A little reading beforehand is helpful but actually brewing all-grain will teach you a lot just through experience. Get out there and brew HomeBrewTalk!".
Mike "Stauffbier" Stauffer - "This has likely been said a million times by countless numbers of brewers. The advice that I wish I would have received as an early brewer would have been "control the fermentation temp!"...".
Pat "azscoob" Barch - "All grain isn't hard, if you can make oatmeal in the morning and work a valve you are most of the way there, and hey, it's just beer, let it do it's thing and don't fret over the small stuff, it will be fine... And hey you made it yourself!".
Pat "azscoob" Barch
Brian "Cape Brewing" Shurtleff - "I try to give this advice whenever I can on HBT... READ (Palmer's "How to Brew" is a perfect example). Then read some more. Brew a batch keeping what you've read in mind, and then go back and skim what you had read before, and then read some more. I think the quickest way to success in brewing is to absorb as much information as you can, even if it doesn't all make total sense yet, and then brew. As you go through your brew day, you'll be shocked how how all of a sudden things start to click and make sense. Oh... and don't listen to PaulTheNurse... that guy's a train wreck. ".
Jessica "Hello" B. - "I have two pieces of advice, control your fermentation temperature no matter what. At the very least have a way to control the temperature of your beer. That will make or break your end product. Also, do not buy a 5 gallon kettle. No matter what method you use to brew, buy at least a 10 gallon kettle because in the end, you'll wish you had. My first question was "how big of a kettle do I need" and the guy at my LHBS said the 5 gallon would be fine. I believed him and two brews later I was looking at a 15 gallon kettle. I had no wiggle room.".
Thad "GilaMinumBeer" Johnson - " Don't get too caught up in the details of chasing the perfect recipe. Just learn to brew the best you can with what you have available. And don't be surprised when your improvements just cause you make a mess of everything.".
Marshall "The Brulosopher" Schott - "Easy: it's not necessary to start with extract, all grain is just as approachable for new brewers! While I have no regrets, it would have been super cool if when I went into the LHBS to purchase my first kit someone would have informed me that, using a very simple method, all grain brewing was just as simple as using extract with steeping grains...".
Melana DiDomenico Spalding - "Go straight to all-grain. You can do it.".
Melana DiDomenico Spalding
Michael "The Mad Fermentationist" Tonsmeire - " Don't add the whole 5 oz packet of priming sugar that comes with beer kits. Add a weighed amount of sugar based on a calculator that takes into account the actual volume of beer in the bottling bucket, peak temperature, and target carbonation volumes.".
Wesley "WesleyS" Sipanka - "Use Starsan! It seems like such a little thing, but they guy that got me into homebrewing used Sodium Metabisulfate as a sanitizer. So, that's what I started out using. After nearly choking to death the first few times you open up the bucket to sanitize something, you start to tell yourself there has to be a better way.".
Paul "Paulthenurse" Comerford - "Charlie Papazian said it best. Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew. We're not trying to put a man on the moon. If you take care of a few easy things like sanitation you can pretty much be sure that the yeast will find a way to finish the job. Relax, your beer will be fine.".
We sincerely hope you've enjoyed reading Brew & A as much as we've enjoyed writing them. Each story unique, each story their own. These brewers are are the face of modern brewing.
Please join me in raising a glass to all the brewers making a difference in our community and in our brewing.
Salud!
jk. While I read through the whole thing, I wondered; how would I say what I did now? I did go back & touch it up several times before I felt it was done. I guess it is indeed a "snapshot" of my thoughts at the time. Interesting to look back. I'm still perk as a ruttin' buck to have been asked to do the interview. What would I say now versus then? Rehydrate your dry yeast & at least make a small starter to perk up liquid yeasts & make a few more cells to pitch at within 10 degrees of wort temp. Over & above fermentation temp control. And remember; WE ARE THE HOMEBREWERS. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE!
