If you are new to small batch home beer brewing, we have 7 hacks that will make your new favorite hobby more enjoyable. Here we go!
#1 – Warm your hose ends with hot water to make them more pliable and easier to attach your hoses to your equipment. Use hot tap water from the faucet and allow the ends to soak in the hot water for one to two minutes. It can be a major headache attaching a new hose on a fermenter spigot for the first time but this hack helps a lot! (Do not use boiling hot water! This could melt your hoses!)
#2 – Use a plant stand to elevate your fermenter when you are ready to bottle your beer. Plant stands are normally very durable, stable and made from steel. Find one that has a flat top like the one pictured for best results. If you use one of these on a table top or counter top, it makes bottling your beer go much smoother and helps the beer flow faster through your tubing. There is nothing worse than bottling your beer on the floor but this hack will keep you off your knees! (Make sure you are placing the plant stand on a stable surface!)
#3 – Use a potato chip bag clip to secure your steeping bag to the handle of your brewing kettle. These things are super cheap and you can usually get a pack of five or six for a few dollars. Some like the one pictured are made from durable plastic that can resist lower levels of heat and the springs are a little stiffer than the long clamp type. There is nothing worse than trying to fish your steeping bag out of your boiling hot kettle!
#4 – Warm your liquid malt extract bottle in a pan of hot tap water from the faucet to help with making it easier to pour. This will also help to ensure you get most of the contents of the bottle into your kettle of wort with less hassle and mess. (Do not use boiling hot water or place the pan on a heat source! This will cause the plastic to melt and will create a mess!)
#5 – Use a five gallon bucket to sanitize your bottles and beer making equipment. A five gallon bucket is just the right size to hold all twelve beer bottles for a gallon batch as well as your bottle caps, hoses, and bottle filler. We like to use a liquid iodine sanitizer and we save the contents of the bucket to sanitize our fermenter and air lock for our next batch when we are done with bottling.
#6 – For your one gallon beer recipes, use one and a half gallons of spring water to brew your wort. Most recipes call for one and a quarter gallons of water but it is never enough to fill twelve beer bottles due to evaporation while boiling your wort. We have consistently produced quality batches with this amount of water and there is virtually no impact on the strength or taste of the beer. Also, we have never had an issue with our fermenter being overfilled and foam bubbling out.
#7 – Use different colors and designs of bottle caps to differentiate your different batches of brews. There are all kinds of options out there including USA flag designs to solid colors.
