You won’t always get everything right, but there are some brewing mistakes you should only make once. To avoid compromising the quality or taste of your beer, avoid the following errors:

1. Using unclean gear

Unless you clean your equipment well, the leftover taste and smell from your last brewing session will reflect a new beer batch. It’s a messy process that involves assorted gunk like fats and protein, and you don’t want the fermented remnants of these materials to affect the beer’s fermentation, flavor, or finish.

2. Subpar sanitation

Your sanitary measures matter greatly; there are many harmful microbes that you’ll experience during fermentation. And inadequate sanitation exposes you to many health conditions, which may affect the flavor and quality of your product.

Everything that contacts the beer you’re brewing must be sanitized. You can consider a no-rinse brewing sanitizer for healthier homebrewing.

3. Using impure water

Even if you’re comfortable drinking tap water, using it to make beer isn’t the best. When it’s not filtered, it causes a metallic or plastic taste in the brew. And water makes up about ninety-five percent of the ingredients.

The pH, final gravity, and finish will be affected by the chlorinated water’s ion profile and pH.

The tap water may also lack the pH balance or minerals your brew needs to turn out exactly like the recipe. As such, some of the best beers in the world are located in places with soft water.

The alternative is using a water test kit to ensure the minerals and pH balance are compatible and to determine what you can do about bringing it to meet your requirements.

4. Failing to measure properly

You have to be good at following instructions to get the real taste of your brewing recipe. Accuracy is essential, especially when measuring ingredients. You can prevent many brewing mistakes and even accidents just by following the recipe to the letter.

Weight is better for measuring dry ingredients. You can purchase a brewing scale for accuracy.

5. Using old ingredients

Old ingredients will affect the taste and freshness of the new batch of wort. They’re made from organic compounds, which eventually decompose with time. So, you must use fresh ingredients to avoid brewing gallons of skunky and flat wort.

6. Squeezing the grain bag

The grain bag is a porous fabric that houses the grains while they brew. And even if you aim to steep unique grains for additional color and flavor, it’s best to avoid squeezing the bag too tightly.

Otherwise, you may unleash flavors that’ll condemn the beer to a bitter taste. This is because of tannins.

So, it’s better to leave the extraction to gravity.

7. Burning the extract

You can improve the taste of your wort by paying attention to the sediments at the bottom of the fermenter. Settling is natural for malt extract, but the last thing you want is to also burn because it will affect the taste.

Prevent it by removing the vessel from the heat source before adding the malt extract. Also, ensure you constantly stir to completely dissolve the sediments.