John Brewster

A spunding valve is one of those tools that seems complicated until you understand what it does, and then becomes indispensable. I added one to my kegging setup two years ago and haven’t force-carbonated a beer since.

I spent three years fermenting in plastic buckets and glass carboys before buying a conical fermenter, and the improvement in my process was immediate and significant.

Brewing in a 500 square foot apartment taught me more about creative equipment selection than years of brewing in a garage.

The best brewing software integrations in 2025 are Brewfather (for homebrewers wanting real-time device sync), Ekos (for commercial breweries needing TTB compliance), and Breww (for taproom-to-distribution workflows).

Brewing hoses are one of those components that most homebrewers underinvest in and then regret. I ran standard vinyl tubing on my setup for years before switching to silicone — and the difference was immediately apparent the first time I …

Hop bags sound like a minor detail until you’ve poured wort through a plate chiller and found it clogged with hop debris, or spent twenty minutes picking leaf hops out of a whirlpool.

When I started homebrewing in India, finding quality ingredients and equipment locally felt like a real obstacle.

I once found a bag of Two-Row pale malt that had been sitting in my basement for eight months — opened, loosely resealed with a twist tie, next to the water heater.

I brewed my first batch on a camping trip using a single-burner propane stove, a 3-gallon pot, and a bag of extract malt I’d measured out at home.

Fermentation temperature matters more than most homebrewing guides let on. I learned this the hard way when I tried to lager in my garage during winter — ambient temperature was 42°F, fine for lagering, but my ale was fermenting right …