15 tips to help improve your home brewing results

Whether you've made a few beers with home brews with kits or it's your first time brewing with a kit, there are plenty of tips to help improve your beer.

Even 'professional' back yard beer brewers are constantly looking for the best way to improve a recipe, technique and taste.

You should be no different.

Simply following a standard set of beer brewing instructions will result in an OK beer. However, if you implement some of these brewing tips, you will surely get better results both in the taste and mouth feel of your beer!

These tips and tricks are handy to use even if you are using a kit or going all grain.

Here's the tip list and the explanation behind them follows

• Keep it clean! – Make sure your equipment is clean and sanitized!
  It’s non-negotiable. Clean isn’t the same as sanitized. You clean to remove grime; you sanitize to kill invisible microbes. Use PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash) for cleaning, and a no-rinse sanitizer like Star San to finish the job. Even a speck of leftover gunk or a single wild yeast cell can spoil your entire batch. Don’t forget your bottling wand, tubing, and fermenter lid.
• Use a beer enhancer to give your beer a stronger body
  Kit beers often come out thin because they rely on simple sugars. Beer enhancers fix that by combining malt extract (for richness), dextrose (for alcohol), and maltodextrin (for mouthfeel). The maltodextrin doesn’t ferment—so it lingers, giving your beer a thicker texture and better head retention.
• Consider using oak chips
  Want to fake a barrel-aged taste? Toasted oak chips add complex notes: vanilla, spice, char, even coconut. Use medium toast for balance, heavy toast for boldness. Sanitize by soaking in spirits like bourbon or rum, then add to secondary. Time matters—2–3 weeks is plenty for most beers.
• Don't put so much sugar in your bottles!
  Over-priming leads to over-carbonated beer—or worse, exploding bottles. Always measure. Use a digital scale, not a spoon. For consistent results, batch prime instead of dosing each bottle individually. Aim for 4–5g of dextrose per liter for ales. Less for stouts. More for Belgians. There are calculators—use them.
• 'Batch Priming' beer to save time when bottling
  Dissolve your priming sugar in boiled water and mix it evenly into your bottling bucket before filling. No mess, no guesswork. It ensures every bottle gets the same carbonation level and drastically cuts down bottling day stress. It’s the smarter, more consistent method.
• Match the right hops to the right beer
  Each hop has a story. Citra brings mango and grapefruit; Saaz gives earthy spice. Use noble hops in lagers, high-alpha citrus bombs in IPAs. Dry hop for aroma, boil for bitterness. Don’t just toss them in—think about balance, style, and timing. Know your IBU targets.
• Gelatin is a handy fining agent to clear your beer
  Clarity isn’t just cosmetic—it can subtly affect perceived flavor. Gelatin works by electrically binding to haze particles like proteins and yeast cells. Add it cold—ideally under 4°C—and let the beer sit a few days. It’ll drop the haze to the bottom like a snow globe. Don’t use it in vegan beers, though.
• If you pitch your yeast when the wort is hot you will kill the yeast
  Yeast is fragile. Pitching into wort above 35°C (95°F) will kill it—or at least cripple it. Fermentation won’t start, or you’ll get off flavors from stressed cells. Let wort cool to at least 20°C before pitching. Use a wort chiller or an ice bath. Never guess—use a thermometer.
• Consider using a blow-off to prevent the Krausen going everywhere
  When fermentation goes wild, foam builds fast. Krausen can clog airlocks or burst lids. A blow-off tube vents excess foam safely into a jar of sanitizer. It’s cheap insurance—especially for high-gravity beers or during hot weather when yeast activity spikes.
• Increase the alcohol content of your beer by adding more sugars
  Want more punch? Add fermentables. Dextrose is efficient and neutral. Honey adds floral notes. Molasses brings rum-like depth. Just don’t overdo it—too much simple sugar thins the body and strains the yeast. Consider bumping up malt extract instead to maintain balance.
• To avoid chill haze, use a quality copper wort chiller
  Rapid cooling creates a “cold break”—a protein drop-out that helps prevent haze. The faster you drop the temp after boiling, the clearer your beer. Copper chillers are incredibly efficient at heat transfer. Just keep them clean—they oxidize quickly in air and acidic wort.
• Oxygen is good when preparing the wort, bad when bottling.
  Before fermentation, oxygen helps yeast grow strong. Shake the fermenter or use a stone to inject sterile air. But after fermentation, oxygen turns your beer stale—fast. Avoid splashing. Purge bottles with CO₂ if you can. Cap as soon as you fill.
• Temperature control will have an effect on the quality of your beer both when fermenting and conditioning your beer
  Yeast behavior changes dramatically with temperature. Too hot and you get fusel alcohols (think solvent), too cold and fermentation stalls. For ales, 18–22°C is ideal. For lagers, 10–14°C. After fermentation, cooler conditioning helps clear the beer and smooth rough edges.
• Get the bigger kettle or pot, in the long run, you’ll save money
  Boilovers ruin stoves and waste wort. A 15–20L kettle gives you headspace to work clean. Bigger pots also mean full-volume boils, which reduce caramelization and improve hop utilization. You won’t regret sizing up. Ever.
• Just because the fermentation bottle has stopped bubbling, that doesn't mean you need to bottle your beer straight away
  Bubbling is just CO₂ escape—it’s not a reliable measure of fermentation. Use a hydrometer. When readings are stable over 2–3 days, fermentation is done. But wait a few more days—this is when yeast clean up diacetyl (buttery flavor) and other off notes. Be patient.

That all made sense right but do you want more detail?

Let's start with the most basic rule of brewing beer:

Keep it clean! - Make sure your equipment is clean and sanitized!

There are many ways of keeping your gear clean and today we are going discuss our preferred method of sanitization which is by using sodium percarbonate.

Usually provided in powdered form, it is very soluble in water which makes it very handy for quick preparation and an easy soak of your equipment and fermenter. No rinsing is required and it's very easy to order in bulk online.

If you've ever tried to buy sodium percarbonate from a specialist beer brewery shop, you'll know that you can get a small bottle or container of it that will cost you a small fortune.

If you can buy it in bulk from an online supplier, you'll do well to nab some as using it will effectively bring down your cost per brew. 

Use a beer enhancer to give your beer a stronger body

The thing about craft and home brew beer is that while there’s so much variety in style and taste but there is one thing they all have in common:

It's the ‘mouth feel’ which makes a beer feel like it has 'body'. A beer with no body is a sad drinking experience.

If you simply brewed malt with sugar you will get a beer but your beer’s mouth feel with be closer to feeling like water. Which is just wrong, as a full bodied beer enhances the drinking experience!

To get an improved mouth feel, many beer brewers follow the simple tip of using an ‘enhancer’ to do exactly what it says it will do – enhance the beer by giving it greater body and mouthfeel.

Consider using oak chips to add flavor

There's a reason why home brewers seek out new ways to make beer taste better and that's because, for them, the old days of getting smashed on Budweiser are over. 

A great tip for improving beer taste is by aging beer in oak barrels has been a long standing practice for making beer. 

This is because the characteristics of the wood impart into the beer which can add to the drink-ability of the beer.

But who has oak barrels just casually lying around in the shed?

Homebrewers can use oak chips to replicate aging beer in barrels. 

Using wood chips while conditioning or aging beer your beer can impart a range of aromas to the beer, including floral, vanilla, caramel, or coconut tones.

To prevent beer gushers:

Don't put so much sugar in your bottles! 

I've learnt this one personally the hard way. If you place too much sugar into your bottles, the yeast will go to town on it as part of the secondary fermentation and produce an excess of CO2.

When that happens, you're on a trip to gusher town.

So, it doesn't matter if you are placing sugar in the individual bottles or priming the whole brew, cut down on that sugar.

My personal rule of thumb is that for a 750 mls bottle, a FLAT teaspoon of sugar is more than enough to get a great level of carbonation.

If you want to employ a quicker method, you could try using carbonation drops. If using those, put two in a 750 mls bottle and one for a 500 mls bottle.

Speaking of adding sugar, let's talk about:

'Batch Priming' beer to save time when bottling

In short, batch priming is when you add the full amount of priming sugar to your fermenter before bottling—so every bottle gets the right dose without having to measure sugar one by one.

It’s cleaner. Faster. Way less frustrating.

Anyone who's spent an afternoon hunched over a dozen bottles with sticky fingers and sugar granules stuck to everything—from the counter to the cat—knows how tedious it gets. Batch priming skips that mess entirely.

You dissolve the sugar in a bit of boiled water, cool it down, and gently mix it into the beer (after racking to a bottling bucket, ideally—so you don’t stir up the sediment). From there, just bottle as usual. The sugar’s already evenly distributed in the beer, so carbonation happens naturally in every bottle.

It’s one of those tricks that feels obvious after you start doing it.
And yeah—it really is that simple.

It really is. Here's more guidance on how to do it.

How much sugar do I need to prime a batch of beer?

Batch priming’s biggest strength—beyond saving you time—is precision. You can calculate exactly how much sugar you need for your style, your volume, and your taste.

If you’re brewing from a kit, odds are you’re working with 23 litres (5 gallons). That’s the standard batch size most homebrewers start with. The trick is not just how much sugar—but what kind.

And yes, style matters. Ales generally need less carbonation than lagers. You want that crisp fizz in a lager. Ales? They're better with a softer sparkle.

After digging through countless brewers’ notes and forum threads, these are the rough priming sugar amounts most brewers use for a 23L batch:

• Dextrose (Corn Sugar): 3/4 cup or about 95 grams (4–5 oz)

• Cane Sugar (Table Sugar): 2/3 cup or about 86 grams (3.8–4.8 oz)

• Dry Malt Extract (DME): roughly 130 grams

The type of sugar you use can slightly shift the flavor and mouthfeel. DME gives a smoother, maltier finish. Corn sugar is cleaner and neutral. Cane sugar works just fine too—but measure carefully.

Brewing a smaller or larger batch? Don’t guess. Use a proper priming calculator—they take into account beer style, temperature, and batch size. It’s one of the easiest ways to dial in carbonation without going flat… or explosive..

What kind of hops should I use with my beer?

Not all hops are created equal. The kind of hop you use can shape the flavor, aroma, bitterness, and character of your beer in big ways. Whether you’re chasing the grassy notes of a British bitter, the floral spice of a Czech pilsner, or the punchy citrus of a bold American IPA—your hop choice matters. A lot.

After centuries of brewing, there’s a loose global consensus about which hop varieties pair best with different beer styles. Here's a breakdown of some of the classic pairings brewers swear by:

• The English Golding hop is a staple of traditional English ales. It delivers that smooth, earthy aroma that defines bitters, milds, and ESBs. Pair it with another classic like the Fuggle hop for a full-bodied English-style ale with heritage built in.
• Saaz hops are the go-to for lagers. Light, spicy, and floral, they’ve been the signature hop of Czech pilsners for generations. If you're brewing a lager at home, Saaz is a great place to start—especially if you care about aroma.
• Pilsners are deeply tied to the so-called "noble hops"—a group that includes Saaz, but also Terrnanger, Spalt, and Hallertauer. These hops deliver a subtle, balanced bitterness with floral and herbal notes. Pilsners owe much of their crisp drinkability to these varieties. Fun fact: the style originates in what is now the Czech Republic.
• Chasing that distinctive New Zealand lager taste? Try Green Bullet hops. Add a dash of Pacific Jade for complexity and you’ll start nudging toward the clean, bold profile of Steinlager. If you’re using a kit like Black Rock lager, these hops pair beautifully.
• American hops have gone global for a reason—they're bold, brash, and unafraid of flavor. Think grapefruit, pine, mango, diesel. It depends on the variety, but the signature is intensity. Cascade is the poster child, loved for its bright citrus aroma and clean bitterness. Perfect for pale ales and IPAs where the hops are meant to sing.

Chinook is another popular 'north western' hop.

Using gelatin as a fining agent to help clear beer

Basically, gelatin acts as a fining agent. It combines with the 'leftovers' of the beer brewing process and they fall to the bottom of the fermenter thus clearing the beer.

So how much gelatin should I add to my beer?

Many beer brewers have found that between half and a whole teaspoon per 23 litres or 5 gallons will be a sufficient amount. You will probably get diminishing returns if you use much more.

When and how do I add the gelatin?

You can add it any time after fermentation and word on the street that it actually works best when the beer is quite cool.

The suggested time of addition is to add it a couple of days before you intend to bottle your beer.

A good trick is to dissolve it in a half a glass of hot water. You then open up the fermenter or carboy, add the liquid and then shut the fermenter back up.

For many people, clarity of the beer is important to them. If you are making a dark ale, clarity may not be so important to you.

However, finings do remove leftovers that can impinge on the taste of the beer too. The gelatin helps remove the unneeded proteins and polyphenols from the beer.

This next tip is more of what not to do.

If you pitch your yeast when the wort is hot you will kill the yeast

I once absent mindedly pitched my yeast when the wort was too hot, right after mixing the ingredients with boiling water. I knew what I'd done the moment I'd done it but what a waste of yeast!

A genius moment in my beer making career for sure. 

No yeast means no fermentation.

And well, that just sucks right.

Lucky I had a spare packet of good old Safale US-05 and was able to pitch that when my wort was properly cooled. 

Cooling your beer down is not just to assist with removing nasty bugs from your beer and reducing the risk of any infection, it helps with ensuring that your yeast finds itself in a hospitable environment - that is to say if you pitch your yeast too early, you run the risk of killing it (it’s a living microorganism after all). 

So check that the wort is at the right temperature before you pitch. If you are using a kit, the instructions will have a temperature range noted. If you have a plastic fermenting drum, it's quite likely there will be a handy temperature guide stuck to the side which you should use.

As an aside, if you want to get really fancy with cooling your wort, you might want to invest in a wort chiller.

Hydration of the yeast before pitching

Hydrating yeast

If you want to be really serious about pitching yeast, you could try the yeast hydration technique.

It's a handy method that many earnest brewers follow so as to hydrate the dry yeast in water before pitching. The reasoning behind this is that it gives the yeast a good chance to get started properly. 

We are not wholly convinced by our own experience that this necessary but some brewers seem to do this as a best practice measure. 

How to increase the alcohol content of your beer

The shortest version of this tip is the more sugar you add, the higher your alcohol content. 

The theory is simple.

Beer yeast eats the sugar and that produces more alcohol. Some brewers will use dry malt extract (DME) as their additional sugar source. You could of course just use ordinary home baking sugar. That will contribute to a sweeter beer than DME (indeed the historic use of sucrose it's why homebrew got a bad name as over sugared brewed were too sweet).

But it's more complicated than that and adding extra sugar should not be blindly done. 

As a rough guide, an extra pound or 1/2 kg of DME will add an extra half per cent to your beer. 

Doubling that will give you an extra whole per cent.

Roughly.

You can add other sweet things too...

Maple syrup, honey, and brown sugar are all fair game, but don’t just dump them in blindly. They’ll absolutely change the flavor profile—sometimes in complex, unexpected ways. Honey, for example, can add delicate floral or earthy notes depending on its origin. Maple syrup leans rich and woody, while brown sugar introduces molasses tones. All of these will thin out your body unless you compensate with additional malt or a fuller mash.

Now for the real caution: the more fermentable sugars you throw in like an extra load of jelly beans, the more stress you’re loading onto the yeast. More sugar means more alcohol, and more alcohol slows fermentation. That’s just yeast biology—ethanol is toxic to yeast above certain concentrations. Push things too far, and your yeast could stall or die off entirely before finishing the job.

If you're stepping into high-alcohol territory, you need to think ahead. Add yeast nutrients like diammonium phosphate (DAP) or Fermaid K to feed the cells and extend their viability. Without extra nitrogen, yeast can become sluggish or produce off-flavors like sulfur or fusel alcohols. And don’t forget zinc—it’s often a limiting micronutrient in wort.

Some yeasts are built for this kind of heavy lifting. Champagne yeasts and certain Belgian strains are known for their alcohol tolerance, while others (like some English ale strains) will tap out early. If you're going big, look for yeast varieties labeled high-gravity or high-alcohol tolerant—anything with a published tolerance above 10% ABV is worth considering.

You can also pitch a second round of yeast if the first can't finish the job. But make sure it’s a clean strain—one that won’t clash with the ester profile already established. It’s often smart to rehydrate and acclimate the second yeast to high-alcohol conditions before pitching. That way you don’t shock it into dormancy right out of the gate.

Temperature plays a massive role too. Warmer fermentation (18–22°C for ales) will keep the yeast active and help chew through sugars efficiently. But watch out—too warm and you’ll get esters or solventy flavors. Cooler temps slow everything down, especially in winter. If you're fermenting in a cold garage or basement, don’t expect fast results, especially with all that added sugar.

And oxygen? Front-load it. Yeast needs oxygen in the early aerobic phase to build healthy cell walls (sterols and unsaturated fatty acids). So give your wort a proper aeration before sealing the fermenter—either by shaking vigorously, using a sanitized whisk, or injecting pure O₂ if you’ve got a setup.

Point is: you can add sugar. Just know what you’re really adding is complexity. Flavor complexity, fermentation complexity, and risk.

Handle it right, and it’ll pay off in character and punch.

Handle it wrong, and you’ll be left with a half-fermented mess.

In summary, to increase the alcohol or ABV of your beer you can consider:

• Adding extra DME, sugar or produce like honey and maple syrup
• Adding extra to yeast to your initial pitch.
• Adding extra yeast and yeast nutrients late in the usual fermentation process. 
• Using a yeast that can handle a high alcohol content
• At a pinch, you can add baking yeast to your wort!
• Make sure the wort gets invigorated with oxygen
• Keep good temperature control, and don't allow wild fluctuations

Try to not release the "Krausen"!

Occasionally brewing conditions mean that the yeast is so active, the krausen behaves like it is a kraken released from the gates of hell and it foams up like a fiery tempest and blows out the airlock, just making a heck of a mess all over your brewing equipment!

These beer explosions typically occur with glass carboys which allow pressure to build.

A solution to krausen 'blow out' is a using a blowoff tube. 

One simply replaces the standard carboy airlock with the tubing.

The tubing can then release into a bottle, bucket or whatever to help with reducing any blow off mess.

Check out the image to the right for an idea on how to set up the blow off tubing. This example uses a steel tube.

If you're not convinced this tubing is worth the effort, consider this.

A common krausen issue is that the the airlock can get clogged with foam and any added hops. This leads to a strong pressure buildup in the fermenter which when is it great, the barrel lid, bung or airlock blows off, spewing stuff everywhere and making for a very messy and frustrating clean up.

There's even the potential for damaging your equipment.

We suggest if you have brewing conditions where this has happened more than once, you may wish to consider grabbing some tubing from Amazon!

Chill haze and the 'cold break'

You may have heard of ‘chill haze’. This is a really common cause of beer cloudiness where the wort has been boiled and the cooling process has not generated enough ‘cold break’. 

The cold break is the proteins from the beer that are precipitated to the bottom of the beer by the cold temperature.

Using a copper wort chiller allows for an effective way to get more cold break forming and thus reduces the chance of chill haze in your finished beer.

Cooling and refrigeration

One of the reasons why beer does go cloudy is due to improper refrigeration timings and techniques. 

The process of storing beer is called laagering (sounds like lager eh?). Lagers are lagers because they are best stored cold. Nordic Vikings learned this method years ago when they laagered their beer barrels in cold caves over the winter or something...

Refrigeration of storing beer in a cool place helps to clear beer rapidly. The science behind this is at lower temperatures it is more difficult for the yeast, tannins and proteins in the beer to remain suspended. 

Cold stored beer will also clear much more rapidly than beer stored at a normal room temperature. 

If you intend to 'lager' your beer you must wait until that first round of initial carbonation has occurred. This is usually done at a warmer temperature than required for lagering. If you cool your beer too soon, you run the risk of disrupting the yeast from its secondary fermentation process and carbonation may not occur (or it will be very slow to do so).

Get the bigger kettle or pot, in the long run you’ll save money

For many first time homebrewers, the first purchase is a starter equipment kit. Once they have that, all they need is a brew kettle or pot and ingredients. So they get the cheap, smaller size kettle – and then suddenly they find they want to keep going with beer making and so need to purchase the bigger kettle or brewing pot. 

If you have an inkling you are going to do a bit of brewing, get the 5 or 8-gallon size unit, save the smaller ones for making jam! Big is better for most of your brewing equipment needs.

O is for Oxygen, get that element away from your beer

We mentioned oxygen above as being good for fermentation. This is true. 

But no longer when you are ready to begin fermentation or when bottling your beer.

Once your beer is ready to have the yeast pitched in, this is the last chance for oxygen to be exposed to the beer. Once the yeast is in, the fermenter needs to be properly sealed.

The presence of excess oxygen can result in poor smelling beer.

Allowing the fermenting beer to be exposed to oxygen can allow beer spoiling bugs and organisms such acetobactor to sour your beer by using the oxygen to ferment the alcohol into acetic acid – commonly known as vinegar. Keep your fermenter well sealed!

This has actually never happened to us but if you are following best practices with your beer, then do your best to keep the air away from your wort. 

The same goes for bottling – try to avoid getting too many bubbles in the bottle as your pour.

 

The best time to add hops to your beer

Typically the beer wort is boiled with the hops added at crucial moments before it is cooled down to begin the fermentation process. The timings of when to add the hops in the boil can be critical as the different timings can cause the hops to work differently on the beer.

If you are making your own wort (that is you are not using a beer kit) then it's best practice to follow a tried and true recipe, at least as you start out.

If you're at that point, you'll want to understand that the process is sometimes known as the “hop schedule”. A hop schedule will lists the length of time that the hops should be in the boil, not the amount of time you should wait to add the hops.

This allows you to making your timings correctly.

The rough guide is the longer you boil the hops, the more bitterness they will impart. The shorter you boil them, the more flavour will be added. It depends on how you want your beer to benefit from the hops addition.

But what about adding hops to beer kits?

If you are using a simple beer extract kit then you can add the hops when you are preparing the batch of wort. Just throw it with your wort and nature will do the rest.

Some people like to delay adding the hops until a few days later. This is fine, but in our experience of using brewing kits, it makes little difference to the end result in the hop aromas and taste your beer will have. 

Just because the fermentation bottle has stopped bubbling, that doesn't mean you need to bottle your beer straight away

If the bubbles in the airlock have stopped completely, this is not necessarily a sign that the fermentation process has completed. It's quite likely that there's still some fermentation quietly happening in the drum.

So let that play out a bit longer. It could be that you let your beer rest longer than the written instructions that came with your beer kit.

This is because there are still things happening in your beer. The yeast may have consumed all the sugar but additional processes are still occurring - let them because the will make your beer taste better! 

How to properly condition your beer bottles

The short advice is that it's best store your beer in a warm place. This will encourage secondary fermentation (this is sometimes described as bottle conditioning).

The ideal temperature range is between approx 18 - 25°C for 5 to 7 days.

HOWEVER after that period, you should leave them in a much cooler place with a temperature range between approx 8 - 12°C.

You should then leave the beer for a total minimum of three weeks since the bottling date before some well-deserved consumption.

You should not easily dismiss this advice about the correct temperature storage of your beer. I had an experience last year when in the middle of winter I just bottled the beer and left it in the shed for about a month.

When I when to crack open the first beer, there was no fizz, just cold flat beer.

No fizz on the second or third either!

I thought I had ruined my beer somehow. 'Had fermentation actually occurred'? I wondered. Of course it had. The problem was the cold. I brought the beers inside and left them in the living room. I waited a week for the yeast to warm up and do its thing, and boom I had fizzy beer!

If you are feeling like you want to try something new with your beer, try using oak chips.

pH testing

Smart beer brewers will test that their beer is within the ideal ranges for beer brewing. A beer with a pH balance that is out of whack will not produce the best results. You can test for pH using paper strips or for a very accurate result, use a digital pH tester. 



Now what are you waiting for? Take these tips and make great tasting beer!

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