Although it's covered in my other course, the complete
kit, I want to touch on some of the fundamentals behind
home brewing. These become so much more important
when you're brewing from grain you're investing more
time management, so you want your beer to be okay.
The biggest part of this is cleaning and sanitizing. So
always use products that are made for cleaning and
sanitizing. I recommend PBW or Powdered Brewery
Wash and Star San as the standard cleaner and no rinse
sanitizer. PBW will do a really good job of taking the
visible grime off your fermenter and bits and pieces. Star
Scene is a no rinse sanitizer. So, this means you can spray
it on and not wash it off.  So, use these two products
together with some elbow grease. It'll mean your beer is
going to taste clean and it's not going to become infected.
Never use abrasive scourers or pads to clean your gear
and always wear gloves.  Cleaners and sanitizers aren't
great for your hands and your hands aren't really good for
the beer either. You've got microbes in the cracks of your
skin and under your nails that might lead to infections in your beer later, so always wear gloves,
particularly with all grain beer where you're going to have
a lot of hot liquids and hot grain.
You want enough healthy yeast cells and you want them
to be rehydrated properly before you pitch them. An 11-
gram pack of fresh, healthy yeast is going to do the job.
You want to rehydrate this in warm water. If you pitch
directly dry into your fermenter, this can destroy up to 50%
of the cell walls. Check out my other course, the complete
kit for further instructions on how to rehydrate yeast. This
step is really important you want to make sure the yeast is
viable before you pitch it and you want to make sure
you've got enough healthy yeast there to do its job.
The other key area you need to pay attention to is your
fermentation temperature. Your yeast will have a
preferred working range. It's really important that you
ferment at this working range. If your yeast works too
hard, it's going to create some really bad flavors. It's also
going to make high alcohols which can lead to hangovers
and headaches, which you definitely don't want. If it's too
low your beer just might ferment. While fermentation is
going to be sluggish, this can lead to sugars in the bottle
which if they're kept fermenting they're going to cause
problems like over-carbonation and explosion. So always
ferment at the right temperature and always use a
hydrometer to make sure your fermentation is progressing
the way it should. There's a wide range of things you can
do to brew at the right temperature. These range from
choosing the time of year when you brew or choosing the
right type of yeast to suit the ambient temperature, even
down to setting up your own fermentation fridge with an
external thermostat. If you can control your wort's
fermentation temperature, that will have a huge impact on your beer's flavor.
The last key area you want to pay good attention to is
quality ingredients.  So, your beer is only going to be as
good as the ingredients you put in to it.  This means that
your grain needs to be within its used by date, the hops
need to be fresh and green, the yeast needs to be a
premium brewing yeast, make sure your water is
drinkable. If you can put really good ingredients into the
process, you're going to get a really good beer at the other side of it.
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