Beer Brewing

Excessive keg foam is primarily caused by an imbalance between the serving pressure and the resistance offered by your beer line. This leads to premature CO2 breakout. Achieving a perfectly balanced pour requires precise calculations involving your beer’s carbonation level, …

When your airlock isn’t bubbling, it typically signals a minor leak in your fermenter’s seal, rather than a stalled fermentation. Yeast activity generates significant CO2, which will escape through the path of least resistance. Always verify actual fermentation via specific …

Your gravity likely didn’t drop due to the alcohol present in fermented wort interfering with your refractometer’s reading. Refractometers measure refractive index, and alcohol skews this. Post-fermentation, you must apply a specific alcohol correction formula to your refractometer’s Brix reading …

Is your latest brew leaving a harsh, lingering bitterness on your palate? It’s likely an issue with hop utilization, the efficiency with which alpha acids isomerize into bittering compounds during the boil. Factors like boil time, wort gravity, pH levels, …

When your beer stubbornly remains hazy despite your best efforts, it’s often due to suspended particles like proteins, polyphenols, yeast, or starches. My experience shows these are typically caused by insufficient hot or cold breaks, improper mash temperatures, suboptimal pH, …

Is your homebrew tasting thin, watery, or lacking that satisfying mouthfeel? The primary culprit is often your mash temperature. Mashing at lower temperatures (typically below 65°C or 149°F) activates enzymes that produce highly fermentable sugars, leading to a beer that …

Is your homebrew unexpectedly sweet with a higher-than-expected final gravity? A stuck fermentation is often the culprit. This occurs when yeast activity ceases prematurely, leaving fermentable sugars unconsumed. Common causes include insufficient healthy yeast, nutrient deficiencies, or suboptimal temperature control, …

Flat beer is primarily caused by two critical issues: compromised yeast health leading to incomplete refermentation for carbonation, or seal integrity failures allowing precious CO2 to escape from bottles or kegs. Thoroughly diagnosing your fermentation conditions and meticulously checking for …

Gushing beer results from excessive CO2, primarily due to microbial infection or over-priming. Infection, often from wild yeasts or bacteria, ferments residual sugars, producing unpredictable CO2 and off-flavors. Over-priming stems from miscalculating priming sugar for a given beer volume and …

Low head retention in beer, often manifesting as a rapidly disappearing foam or lack of lacing, typically stems from insufficient high-molecular-weight proteins and dextrins, inadequate carbonation, or the presence of foam-negative elements like lipids, detergents, or excessive alcohol. Mastering mash …