Tips to Improve Your Home Brew From Kit to Craft
Whether you've made a few beers with home brew kits or it's your first time, there are plenty of tips to help improve your beer. Even 'professional' backyard 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 mouthfeel of your beer! These tips and tricks are handy to use even if you are using a kit or going all grain.
1.Keep It Clean & Sanitized
Key Takeaway:The Golden Rule
It’s non-negotiable. Clean isn’t the same as sanitized. You clean to remove grime; you sanitize to kill invisible microbes. Even a speck of leftover gunk or a single wild yeast cell can spoil your entire batch. There are many ways of keeping your gear clean, but a great two-step process is using PBW (Powdered Brewery Wash) for cleaning, and a no-rinse sanitizer like Star San to finish the job. Another effective sanitizer is sodium percarbonate. Usually provided in powdered form, it is very soluble in water which makes it handy for a quick soak of your equipment. No rinsing is required and it's very easy to order in bulk online. Don’t forget your bottling wand, tubing, and fermenter lid—anything that touches the beer post-boil must be sanitized.
2.Use a Beer Enhancer
Key Takeaway:Build 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. To get an improved mouthfeel, many brewers follow the simple tip of using an ‘enhancer’.
3.Consider Using Oak Chips
Key Takeaway:Add Barrel-Aged Complexity
Want to fake a barrel-aged taste? Homebrewers can use oak chips to replicate aging beer in barrels. Toasted oak chips add complex notes: vanilla, spice, char, even coconut. Sanitize by soaking in spirits like bourbon or rum, then add them to your fermenter for secondary fermentation. Time matters—start checking after a week, as 2–3 weeks is often plenty for most beers.
4.Don't Over-Sugar Bottles
Key Takeaway:Avoid "Bottle Bombs"
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 and produce an excess of CO2, leading to over-carbonated beer or worse, exploding bottles. Always measure precisely. For consistent results, use a digital scale, not a spoon. My personal rule of thumb is that for a 750ml bottle, a FLAT teaspoon of sugar is more than enough.
5.Batch Prime Your Beer
Key Takeaway:Save Time, Bottle Consistently
In short, batch priming is when you add the full amount of priming sugar to your fermenter before bottling. It’s cleaner and faster. You dissolve the sugar in a bit of boiled water, cool it, and gently mix it into the beer (ideally in a separate bottling bucket to avoid stirring up sediment). This ensures every bottle gets the same carbonation level and drastically cuts down bottling day stress. Here's more guidance on how to do it.
6.Match Hops to Beer Style
Key Takeaway:Flavor with a Purpose
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. Don’t just toss them in—think about balance and timing. A quick guide:
- English Ales: Use English Golding and Fuggle for earthy, smooth aromas.
- Lagers/Pilsners: Stick with noble hops like Saaz for a spicy, floral character.
- American Ales: Go bold with Cascade for citrus notes, or Chinook for piney, spicy character.
7.Use Gelatin for Clarity
Key Takeaway:A Simple Fining Agent
Clarity isn’t just cosmetic. Gelatin works by electrically binding to haze-causing particles like proteins and yeast cells, causing them to drop out of suspension. Add about half a teaspoon dissolved in a little hot water to your fermenter a couple of days before bottling, ideally when the beer is cold (under 4°C/40°F). It will drop the haze to the bottom like a snow globe. Note: this method is not suitable for vegan beers.
8.Pitch Yeast at the Right Temp
Key Takeaway:Don't Kill Your Yeast!
Yeast is fragile. Pitching into wort above 35°C (95°F) will kill it or cripple it, leading to off-flavors. Let wort cool to at least 20-22°C (68-72°F) before pitching. Use a wort chiller or an ice bath, and never guess—use a thermometer. A good trick is to also hydrate your dry yeast in lukewarm water for about 15 minutes before pitching to give it a healthy start.
9.Use a Blow-Off Tube
Key Takeaway:Prevent Messy Explosions
When fermentation goes wild, the foam (Krausen) can build fast and clog a standard airlock, creating pressure that can blow the lid off your fermenter. A blow-off tube is a wider-diameter tube that runs from your fermenter into a jar of sanitizer. It’s cheap insurance against a messy cleanup, especially for high-gravity beers or during hot weather.
10.Increase Alcohol Content (Carefully!)
Key Takeaway:More Sugar, More Punch
Want more punch? Add more fermentable sugars. Dry Malt Extract (DME) will add body and alcohol, while Dextrose is efficient and neutral. You can also experiment with honey or maple syrup for unique flavors. But don’t overdo it—too much simple sugar thins the body and strains the yeast. To maintain balance, consider bumping up your malt extract in proportion to any extra sugar.
11.Use a Wort Chiller
Key Takeaway:Prevent Chill Haze
Rapidly cooling your wort after the boil creates a “cold break”—a process where proteins and tannins clump together and drop out of solution. This dramatically improves clarity and helps prevent "chill haze" in the finished beer. A quality copper wort chiller is incredibly efficient at heat transfer, dropping the temperature from boiling to pitching temp in minutes.
12.Control Oxygen Exposure
Key Takeaway:Good Before Fermentation, Bad After
Oxygen is your friend *before* you pitch your yeast, as it helps the yeast grow strong and healthy. Shake your fermenter or use a sanitized whisk to aerate your cooled wort. But after fermentation starts, oxygen becomes the enemy. It makes beer taste stale, like wet cardboard. Avoid splashing when racking or bottling. Keep your fermenter well-sealed and cap your bottles as soon as you fill them.
13.Get a Bigger Kettle
Key Takeaway:Save Money in the Long Run
Boilovers ruin stoves and waste precious wort. A 15–20L (4-5 gallon) kettle is a bare minimum, but an 8-gallon kettle gives you comfortable headspace to avoid messes and allows for full-volume boils. Full-volume boils can improve hop utilization and reduce wort caramelization, leading to a cleaner-tasting beer. You won’t regret sizing up.
14.Patience After Fermentation
Key Takeaway:Don't Rush to Bottle
Just because the fermenter has stopped bubbling, that doesn't mean your beer is ready. Bubbling is just CO₂ escaping and isn't a reliable measure of fermentation. The only way to know for sure is to use a hydrometer and see stable readings over 2–3 days. After that, wait a few more days for the yeast to clean up byproducts like diacetyl (buttery flavor). Be patient; your beer will taste better for it.
15.Properly Condition Your Beer
Key Takeaway:Temperature Matters After Bottling
After bottling, store your beer in a warm place (around 18-25°C or 65-77°F) for about a week. This encourages the secondary fermentation that creates carbonation. After that initial period, move the bottles to a much cooler, dark place (like a basement) to condition and lager. This helps flavors meld and the beer to clear. I learned this the hard way one winter when my beer wouldn't carbonate in a cold shed. Bringing it inside to a warm room for a week fixed the problem!
