A lot of y’all were interested in the Bavarian SD ale, according to my email, and want to know a bit more about my haphazard techniques. So that’s happening today! Because it is haphazard in my mind as well as in practice, you’ll definitely see that lack of focus in some portions of the post. Those are the spaces where we get to be most creative while brewing. Also, this is likely to be one of those super long articles. You’ve been warned?

Some points to keep in mind while you’re reading this:

I do not enjoy using contemporary brewing methods. AT ALL. They feel overly fussy and excessively regimented to me, so I don’t use those methods if I can get out of it. I believe I’ve made two brews total using some approximation of contemporary methods. I did not enjoy doing this, though Ross enjoyed drinking them.
Those of you who hate chaos will probably not enjoy this article. My method is chaotic. Extremely chaotic. We can also call my methods… uh… fluid? if that feels better. If you need rules, stop reading here because this probably isn’t for you.
Those of you who already brew will probably be horrified by everything you see below. This is the standard response I get from 99% of other brewers I encounter. I think this must be because y’all hate chaos, but I am not entirely sure (please tell me in comments!).
Almost everything I use when brewing is either wild foraged or grown in my garden. Generally it’s just the water I paid for (and sometimes herbs and spices I can’t forage on this continent) if I’m not adding yeast, and it’s the water and sourdough starter I paid for if I am. If I lose running water at some point in the unforseeable future, then I’d be gathering all ingredients from the wild instead of some from stores or my faucet.
My primary focus when brewing is always about water safety and flavor, not alcohol. Alcohol is not the byproduct of this process that I care about, so most of the time when I brew, I’m looking for a 1-2% cap on ABV (alcohol by volume, or what percent of the brew is booze). So roughly kombucha level alcohol, not the 3.5%+ most people are looking for from a beer or similar. I’ve only twice set out to make a strong brew. In one of those cases, Ross loved it. In the other, he had to dilute it because it was so strong, but still enjoyed it despite it not being his favorite. He probably won’t ask me to make a “really strong beer” ever again. To repeat, brewing’s always about flavor and water safety for me, and that bears tremendous import in how I make choices.
This is not beer that I make, and it’s not beer because I almost never use hops. Technically, hops are required for beer. I usually call it ale, and some people would disagree with that term’s use, but I use these beer/ale/gruit/blah blah terms fairly interchangeably (as was done before beer got a technical definition) because they all mean the same thing within the overarching framework in which I brew and the time period my brewing is inspired by (principally Northern Europe in the early-to-mid Middle Ages). I’ve used hops twice that I can remember, and neither time has been in the last 3 years. I found a partial packet of hops in my freezer while rearranging my cultures, and I was surprised it was there. If I had to guess, I left it in my freezer in the event I need to use it as a sedative in herbalist preparations, but I honestly am not sure that’s really why it’s there.
Similarly, I do not typically use malt. This appears to be the most offensive choice I make, but I don’t consider malt particularly important when brewing. Actually, I used malt once. It was fine, but felt like rather a lot of work to go get a specific ingredient from a store, since it takes me about half as much time to gather a sufficient amount of grain in the wild. I know it’s a shocking amount of work to make one’s own malt because I do know how to make it, so I would rather not do that, either. Some people are really into making their own malt, and they’re my heroes. If you didn’t know, malting converts starches to sugar while also producing enzymes such as amylase and proteases to increase the amount of fermentable sugars. That’s why people like malt. More sugar = stronger beer.
I have used Beano before, as a source of alpha-galactosidase when malt was needed but I didn’t want to use it, but it’s also not my favorite because you need a store to have Beano. Historically, there are methods where people chew the raw grain instead of malting in many global cultures. No, I’m really not kidding. That too is beyond what I’m willing to do, but replacing it with a commercial form of alpha-galactosidase helps convert the fermentable carbs (starches) into sugar. Amylase, in contrast to alpha-galactosidase, helps convert starches in general to sugar.
The teff sourdough starter is lovely for brewing. Just sayin’.
I really do not measure anything, and I have no intention of starting. When I know the amount of an ingredient in one of my brews, it’s because the ingredient happened to be in a container that allowed me to quickly determine how much is in there, or it was an herb in my palm, where I can typically accurately measure spice quantities.
I specifically dislike measuring and regimentation of any kind for brewing because I learned this as a survival skill, not a pleasure-oriented skill. That said, it is a fun process for me and I will often design and make seasonal ales based on what’s growing in the wild during that time period.
I view survival skills as skill sets that require intellectual and emotional flexibility, as well as routine practice, so I generally will make it a point to learn the given skill first as a fluid one, and then later I can round it out with more regimented methods if desired. I don’t view a given skill as “survival” oriented just because it’s pleasurable or not, but rather because in a worst case situation, it’s a skill I’d need to survive that would likely need to be employed without any of the modern conveniences we’re accustomed to having. I enjoy it, but I didn’t learn it for pleasure. My specific focus on brewing as a survival skill informs literally every choice I make when brewing and also when gathering supplies to brew.

Stuff I consider to be most important to keep in mind when planning the brew

For me, the most important thing is the season I’m brewing in. This is because I really do forage nearly everything involved. For you, probably the most important thing is where you’re getting what you want to put in there. And also, of course, what you really do want to put in there. Be aware that if you don’t have a brewing shop local to you and you don’t forage and you think I’m out of my mind for refusing to patronize businesses to do this, there are plenty of online brewing supply stores. You can get what you need from them, in the absence of a local store.

Next important concept to me is that grain is not needed to brew. It’s really, really not. Fermentation is needed to brew. Fermentation generally means sugar, not starch, so if you don’t feel like futzing with grain at all, it’s totally fine. Your brews will have less body than the brews of those who use grain or seed, which tends to feel a lot more refreshing on a hot day. You can even use unconventional grains (those are my favorites). Here’s a great example!

It’s completely normal for me to leave grain/seed entirely out if I don’t feel like foraging it or the type I want is out of season. In those cases, I instead focus more heavily on pine and fruit/herb flavors, but I understand that these are not typical ingredients anymore for most contemporary brewers.

Spruce doesn’t grow down here, but loblolly pine very much grows all over here! Okay. I have a white spruce that is now in my house because spring means the highs are too hot for this boreal beauty, but generally speaking in Houston we don’t have spruce. Spruce makes the best beers/ales/whatever.

We also have juniper, which is called cedar in Texas for reasons I still don’t understand. Juniper berries are used to make gin (no juniper, not gin), but you want to leave out the berries and use a smaller number of fronds than you would with pine or spruce. This is because juniper contains a bit of a compound called thujone, and you want to be careful with that. I generally use about 1/2-3/4 the juniper fronds that I do of pine.

The flavor is quite a lot stronger than pine, spruce, or fir, and that also will make you want to use less juniper.

As Mr. Townsend says, though: know what you’re cutting before you do it. If you are not 100% certain what kind of plant you’re looking at, you really shouldn’t be trying to make food with it. That’s a good rule of thumb, in my view, and one I continually stress when I’m teaching people how to forage.

The main reason I like to use pine and juniper is not really because of the flavor itself, though I am glad for the well-tasting nature of most pine and juniper brews. It’s because these plants prevent souring.

I know a lot of y’all are all about those double-crazy IPAs, and I’m glad someone is giving money to those companies so they don’t go out of business. That said, I do not understand why y’all like them, since the only purpose of developing IPA to begin with was to successfully transport them from India, by ship, to England/similar (see Pepper: An Origin Story, Chapter 4 and Chapter 5). The hops used in IPAs (and other beers) are a preservative like the pine and juniper are, so by adding ridiculous amounts of hops, you can let that ale travel for months on end without refrigeration and have it still be drinkable. Depending on how you define drinkable. I generally favor British pub-style ales if I’m drinking something that was brewed the normal way.

Spruce and fir are the best tasting of the 3 options. Pine is better tasting than juniper, but juniper fronds work best as a strainer.

Mr. Townsend mentions in his video that making beer with, or otherwise strongly heating, the spruce needles does kill the vitamin C you’re trying to dodge scurvy with. He’s right about that.

You know what doesn’t kill it, though? Adding extra fronds to the strained brew/wort during cooling (steeping also adds flavor better than boiling does, but boiling does a better job of preventing souring). Obviously you want to give it a few minutes after straining before you add infusion fronds so it’s not too hot, but this technique will restore your vitamins while continuing to prevent souring.

It’s really not fair or reasonable for me to use this strainer as my example, because it isn’t for ale. It’s not even for milk. And, I don’t even own it, though I wish I did. It’s for palm oil, and is a pre-1967 West African example, from Sierra Leone. But this is my favorite of all of the strainers. The article I got this picture from was written by my friend and nålbinding mentor, Anne Marie Decker, after I asked her if she had an article about strainers up yet. She did not, but she kindly wrote one for me to use here (and for other binders to learn from). I also subscribe to her Patreon, although I admit I can only contribute the tiniest fraction of what her work is worth. I hope y’all will find her work as interesting as I do!

Straining

Main takeaway: you have to strain. There’s really no getting around this reality.

Straining is another aspect of brewing I spend a lot of time thinking about. Sometimes I really do use a strainer bag to make it all easier, but most of the time I prefer not to. I don’t have a good reason for that except that I often do use fronds for straining, and it always makes me smile to do it. The picture up there is of a nalbound strainer made from hair. The link in the prior line is for what is commonly referenced as the nålbinding bible, created and maintained by Sanna-Mari. But the strainers are made from hair, not wool. Some of these, if I remember correctly, use human hair, and then others horse, cow, and pig. No limits here. If you click on the link in the caption of the picture above, you can see a really gross one made from pig’s hair. Truly, it’s disgusting. But also so, so interesting!

I really may not remember correctly about the human hair (though I hope I do), and I am genuinely unsure if I do. I was researching primitive methods of straining while I first was working out my brewing methodologies, and that was the first time I came across hair strainers.

I’d also seen articles when I was first getting started indicating that you get better straining from fronds than strainers, but until I find those sources again so I can edit in some citations, y’all just view that as a maybe instead of a definitely (they really do strain well, though, and are fun to watch). Strain with what you want, though I encourage you to try out making your own strainer! If you knit or crochet instead of nalbind (this link is for the main Facebook group for nålbinding, where people are generally quite friendly and emotionally invested in making it easy for people to learn) and wind up making a brewing strainer, please let us see it! Actually, if you make a strainer at all, I’m pretty sure more people than just me want to see it. Post those pretties (or uglies!) in comments, please!

Either way, straining matters. No one wants solid bits in their brews!

In all honestly, I didn’t expect Getty to have any pictures of dock. They had one, and it’s the *exact* part of the plant you need to see. Leslie Saunders/Getty

The Grains

Main takeaway: use whatever grains you want, in the quantities you want. More grain means more body to the finished brew, less grain produces less body, no grain produces a brew with barely more body than plain water has.

You really can use purchased malt. It’s okay to do that, and purchased malt works spectacularly well! Even if everything else you’re doing is weird, you can still use purchased malt. Understand that the point of this article is to show you that you can do whatever you want. Seriously, whatever you want.

You really can make your own malt. It’s a pain, but you can dew eet! See below for a video that breaks this process down.

Dock: My Favorite Seed for Brewing

All the parts of the dock plant are edible (irrespective of which type it is). It’s related to buckwheat, and has a lot of similar flavor characteristics. If you’ve eaten buckwheat, you have a good idea of what this seed is like, too!

I use the leaves in poultice or salve form as a topical treatment for fire ant (and other ants), mosquitoes and spider bites; bee and wasp stings; and contact dermatitis in general. The contact dermatitis I use it on myself for is ragweed, because I am levels of allergic to it that even my doctors find shocking. I am not, however, allergic to poison ivy, sumac, or oak, nor to stinging nettles. People who are say this clears their rashes within 24 hours if they can keep from scratching, 48 if not. That’s the same expected timeline on the skin issues I personally have used it for (on myself or Child Tester).

The leaves can also be eaten, but you really want to cook older leaves down well, as they’re quite bitter. Young leaves are tasty raw and cooked, and I favor wilting the young greens down in some butter and wine with lemon, salt, pepper, and a bit of garlic. Off topic, but if you didn’t know, henbit greens are also amazing cooked this way.

In general, the roots are too bitter for anyone to want to eat (though I suppose you could, so those get used medicinally.

Dock grows in nearly every part of the world in which humans live, it grows everywhere humans live (even Greenland, one of the places it’s native to!), excepting of course, Antarctica. I assume they import their beer alongside everything else they need while doing research down there, so that’s not an issue for those few people.

Anyway, this is my main squeeze, as pertains to brewing. It’s free, and you can’t spit without hitting some, so may as well use the free food!

Other Grains

Main takeaway: you are limited only by your imagination on what grains are acceptable to use. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. If people don’t like what you used, more for you!

Seriously, use any grain you want. It legitimately doesn’t matter. But be aware that if you are looking for some really good body from your beer, you should consider malt. Unmalted seeds do produce a thinner, less… beer-ish brew. But I’ve used millet, quinoa, oats, amaranth (this offers body, but this specific grain can give a gooey texture if you don’t do this carefully), rice, whatever can be in my hands when I’m feeling like brewing. Wheat bran makes a spectacular brew, if you didn’t know. Just sayin’.

Oooo almost forgot: crabgrass seed makes remarkably yes beer. This grain used to be grown as a staple food crop here in the States (and still is, elsewhere), although it was eventually supplanted by maize. Crabgrass also has spectacular yields, at 7x the usable grain per acre that wheat produces. I collect this by sliding the seed stalk out of the plant so it will keep producing. In warm areas, crabgrass grows year round, so this is an excellent and free option. You can even check with your neighbors to see if they use herbicides or pesticides on their lawns: if they don’t, you can ask for their crabgrass! I promise they’ll say “yes, please take all my crabgrass!” and then you’ll be helping yourself and your new neighbor friend!

I typically use 2-4 cups of grain in my brews, but I will sometimes use more or less. For standard beer making, you want an average of two pounds of grain per gallon of water you’re cooking it in. That’s around 5.5 cups for barley, 8.5 cups of buckwheat/dock, 5.25 of wheat, 7.25 of corn, and so on. For reference, only barley and wheat “need” malting. You can more easily skate by without if you don’t use those two grains. I never use those two grains, because I use those for a lot of other things and see no reason to share with beer.

Sugar!

Main takeaway: you must have sugar. The more sugar you use, the stronger the ale will be in terms of alcohol by volume (ABV).

You really do need sugar of some kind. Especially if you’re using unmalted grains. Malting converts the starches in your grain over to sugar, so if you aren’t malting then you legitimately do need to compensate for that with more sugar.

This can be any sugar. Sometimes I really do use sugar that’s been made into a syrup. That can be brown sugar, coconut sugar, white sugar, any sugar! Sometimes I use molasses. That comes with some flavor issues, so be prepared to make recipe adjustments to compensate for how strongly flavored molasses is. A lot of the time I use syrups I’ve saved from making candied citrus peels or other fruit syrups leftover from candying them. I also use honey a lot. I tend to keep a crazy amount of honey in the house, so if I’m feeling lazy or if the other flavors I’m using work better with honey, that’s what I use.

Fruit: Lastly, it’s normal for me to feel like it’s waaaaaaaay too much work to deal with any of those sugar options. That’s okay: we still have fruit! Fruit is really the OG sugar, and you can put any fruit you want, in any quantity you want, in that brew. When I’m using fruit, I do this in two stages. I put fruit in the mash, and I also put new fruit in the wort while it’s cooling. In most instances, I use dried instead of fresh fruit. Not always, though! Sometimes I will forage dock seed and mulberries at the same time, and whatever mulberries survive eating out of hand, dehydrating, and jam-making are perfect to toss into a nice brew!

Other Add-Ins

Main takeaway: add any flavors you want, but start small because small additions can have big effects. Start with 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of whatever you’re trying, and scale up or down from there. Small batches are your friend while you’re figuring out what combinations you like. Herbs you want a stronger effect from go in with the mash; those you’re using solely for flavor go in the wort.

I am a huge fan of herbal add-ins. HUGE!!

No, but seriously I really do like to make herbal brews. Two herbs I almost always use are yarrow and mugwort. In both cases, you want to go really light on this, roughly not to exceed 1 teaspoon per gallon. Yarrow will give you terrible, terrible headaches if you overdo that, and overdoing mugwort will result in you emailing me to tell me all about your crazy dreams.

If you overdid it, I really am interested in hearing about these dreams. So try not to mess this up, but if you do, you’ve got someone on hand to discuss it with.

If you don’t overdo those, they’re lovely bittering agents. When I was still experimenting on quantities, I lived in a complex where parking lot parties were a regular weekend (and sometimes weekday!) thing. I’d come on down periodically, bottle(s) of whatever I’d made in hand, and distribute the brews amongst all the partygoers. They loved these brews (they mostly commented on how freshing they were, which is largely due to the pine and frequent additions of fruit), but I figured out in exactly one batch to go light on the yarrow because everyone had headaches. It took me a bit longer to figure out why their dreams were so crazy, but I cut that quantity down once I did. Except for when they requested “dream beer,” in which case I’d add more mugwort to the next batch. I never went over 1 tablespoon per gallon, and they enjoyed their crazy dreams with that quantity.

Basil is really, really, really good in beer. Especially with blueberries or strawberries. Rosemary I found to be weird and kind of unpleasant. I assume this is because I was already using similar flavors with the pine or juniper, but I didn’t keep on with it to find out. Star anise, aniseseed, fennel, nigella, and caraway are all nice in ale, but you want to limit that pretty drastically because prominent licorice flavors are generally not going to be welcome. Lemon peels, lavender, ginger, galangal, mint, turmeric, vanilla, cinnamon, and cardamom are all particularly lovely.

You can even flavor with flowers!

The Actual Process

Okay, okay, enough details. What you really want to know is what to do, yes? Here we go!

I think you need a picture at this point, but I’m not brewing right now so this picture is from the prior ale article. I have cases of mead conditioning in my bedroom closet (seriously?), more conditioning in my pantry, and more still fermenting. It’s everywhere, so until I deal with my mead situation or actually need to ensure my water is safe, beer is on hold.
Anyway, any pictures about my process are happening from the prior article because I have no new stuff for you. This picture shows herbs (looks like there’s some mint in there alongside the other stuff), either bran or germ (don’t remember), and dock seeds. There are also some leaves and stems in there, as you can see. No hair don’t care.

Step 1: The Mash

Main takeaway: put your stuff in your boiling pot, fill with water, and boil for 2-3 hours.

As you can see from the picture above (and caption), the first step is to decide what goes in the mash. If you missed it above, amidst all my endless details, the mash is simply the stuff you boil to get things going.

What you’ll do is put together your grains and any add-ins you want in the mash. Put those in a strainer bag (you can buy these at home brew shops or online) or just toss them in your pot. Fill the rest of the pot up with water.

Note that it is rare for me to decline to add some kind of conifer at this stage. I tend to select older fronds with woody stems. They do a better job preventing souring, in my experience.

It’s okay if you don’t have a giant pot for this. We’ve all seen the massive homebrew set-ups, and those are very nice to be able to use despite being unnecessary. I use the pot from a broken pressure canner, because it’ll hold two gallons. If I’m making a bigger batch than the gallon of wort this will produce on its own, I either do multiple mashes that I combine (rarely) or I make that one batch insanely strong.

What I mean by “insanely strong” is that I’m putting a lot more grain/other than would be acceptable to me for a one gallon batch in there. That obviously gets a lot less water as a result. Once it’s done boiling, you’ve basically got a concentrate that you’ll dilute into the volume of ale you’re actually making. For me, this is going to be either 3 or 5 gallons, because those are the sizes of carboys I have. Sometimes I do them in individual gallon jugs instead. It’s whatever you want to do, really.

I generally will boil my mash for 2-3 hours. I have no idea how long normal brewers do it for, so this may be vastly different to what y’all are used to if you do brew (please tell me in comments!). The only time I brewed beer “the right way” was done exactly to the specifications of the manager at the brew shop I bought the malt from, so I just followed the directions and didn’t pay a lot of attention to what was happening.

This is the wort prior to me removing the bag. You can see how dark it is.

Step 2: The Wort

Main takeaway: this needs to be strained, then cooled to blood temperature. If it feels about skin temperature, a bit warmer, or a bit cooler, you’ve hit the mark!

The wort is the strained liquid, and that’s the part you need. To get that, you’ll strain the mash. If you used a strainer bag, that just got a lot easier for you! If you didn’t? I’m sorry. I know what you’re going through. I often am too lazy to dig out a bag and I always regret it.

Okay. I don’t always forget it. If I have fronds to strain with, I’m perfectly happy to do that little dance. If I’m using a regular strainer, not so much on enjoying straining.

Flavoring the Wort

Main takeaway: this is your brew. Make it taste like what you think you’d like to drink.

You don’t have to flavor the wort, so you know.

But if you want to, this is where your aromatic herbs go, any pine/similar you want to have the actual flavor from, extra fruits, etc. Sky’s the limit here. But put them in while it’s cooling, not after it’s cooled.

BIG, IMPORTANT ADVICE: have a notebook that you keep notes of your brews in. If you really love a brew, you’ll be sad if you can’t at least approximate it again. If you hate a brew, you’ll be even sadder if that kind of brew happens to you again.

Step 3: Sugaring and Yeasting the Wort

Main takeaway: when your wort is at blood temp, you must add sugar. If you’re using some kind of added yeast, this is also when you do that. If you’re going wild yeast, process is a bit longer and more complicated.

Once your brew is around blood temp, you’ll add your sugar. You’re always using sugar, so this is necessary.

If you are adding yeast, this is also the time to do that. You really can use brewing yeast that you bought. Going your own way doesn’t have to be all or nothing, so if you want yeast geared to specific flavor profiles, please use it freely!

If you’re using sourdough starter, I generally use an eyeballed 1/2 cup per gallon. Sometimes I don’t, though, if I’m looking for a slower fermentation. Sometimes I’m in a hurry so I use more (this doesn’t always taste great, so it’s a last resort, poor planning type of choice).

If you’re using wild yeast, then obviously you aren’t adding anything. But you are going to want to leave that wort sitting in its vessel after you’ve added the sugar for a day or two, and you’ll want to stir it well a few times per day to help it attract the wild yeasts you’re hoping for!

Know that sometimes, wild yeast is really not what you wanted. You never know that until it’s too late, so just be aware it’s a possibility that wild yeast will produce an ale you don’t want to drink. You can still cook with those, though.

So cloudy! This is full of trub because I did use sourdough starter, and probably there was a bit of other stuff I didn’t filter out well enough.

Step 4: Transferring the Wort

Main takeaway: how much work this is depends on you. Ideally, you want as much of the trub to settle before you carefully decant it into your carboy or jug.

When you go to transfer your wort to your vessel, there will be some schmutz called trub in the bottom of your cooking and/or cooling vessels. As you’ve seen above, I get rid of as much as possible as soon as I pull the mash from the heat, but evidently some people do this differently, leaving it all the way to the packaging phase. For those of you who like more technical information, trub is broken down into “hot break,” “cold break,” and “hops debris.” Hot break is basically the gelantinous stuff that forms while the brew is heating up to a boil. Cold break is the stuff that splits off during the cooling process. Hops debris is obvious, and for me not typically relevant. But we’ll say “herbs debris” here because I do always have that to deal with even though it usually isn’t hops I’m getting out of there.

Hot break left in place creates off-putting flavors. Cold break generally will enhance some of the flavors, and hops debris isn’t meaningful beyond the fact that it is has solid matter in it.

The basic method here is to do your best. You could, if that’s your thing, do repeated strainings, but at the end of the day you’re unlikely to get it all.

Carefully decant your brew into the relevant container so you leave as much of this behind as possible.

As you can see, the brew will clarify itself over time.

Step 4.B: To Airlock or Not to Airlock

Again, this is your call. Here’s how you decide:

Do you want the brew to be stronger? Airlock.

Do you want it weak enough you wouldn’t blink about giving it to a child? No airlock.

That second one, regarding the child portion, is not solely dependent on airlocks. But your brews will always have more booze in them with the airlock. If you’re thinking of this at water kefir to kombucha strength, no airlock.

You can see the yuck up top, and you can see the remaining trub as well. Most of that, though not all, is the sourdough starter.

Step 5: The Wait

Main takeaway: Your brew will sit in its container, airlock or no, until it’s done fermenting.

How long does that mean, exactly? It depends on all your other choices.

If you went with smaller amounts of grain and sugar because you wanted this for safe water and not getting buzzed, you didn’t use an airlock (you used a cork instead, if you didn’t know) and your brew will be done in 3-5 days. If those things aren’t all true, there’s an incredible range here.

That specific brew had a ton of sugar in it (if I remember correctly, Ross had to dilute this ale) and had an airlock, so it was an adults only (I don’t count as an adult here) ale that took several weeks to finish fermenting.

You can tell it’s done fermenting when the activity stops. There will generally be some nasty yuck stuck to the sides of your vessel that are a terrible pain to clean without brewing-specific cleaners I still can’t seem to make myself buy (despite my awareness that I need to do so), and there will be no bubbles happening anymore.

Now, you have some choices to make! To condition or not. Either is fine, and your choice should depend on the brew.

These were conditioned, mostly. I believe Ross drank one fresh, and that he assigned me with the task of figuring out what to do with the one with lots of trub. Not really sure what happened there, beyond it being the last bottle and clearly having had some butterfingers that disrupted my decanting. I’m pretty sure I used that bottle in place of water for a loaf of bread, because that’s what I always do with those random bottles of trubby ale that sometimes happen.

Step 6: Bottling and Conditioning

Main takeaway: you’re making the ale, so you get to decide if it stays in a jug/carboy, goes into bottles for conditioning, whether it gets sugar during conditioning to make the brew bubbly, or whether it’ll be a still ale. Conditioning is a rest period that happens in the final container. This allows the flavors of the brew to round out and develop.

Conditioning is where you let your brew sit in its little bottle to get tastier. Like many ferments, beer often tastes better when it’s aged a little longer to round out its flavor profile.

If you’ve decided to drink your brew fresh, you don’t need to transfer it to another container if you don’t want to. I personally choose not to because I hate doing dishes. If you want to put it into individual bottles, please do so. Just tuck them in the fridge when you’re done and they won’t really change much, on account of the cold temps. Also because you’ll drink them faster since already in the fridge!

If you’ve decided to condition your brew, you’ll carefully decant it into beer bottles. Please don’t use bottles that aren’t rated for this, because exploding glass is not a good way to get beer. It’s a good way to meet a new ER doctor, though! Actually, even if you’re not conditioning, unless you’re serving it from a keg or straight from the bigger container (which means this is probably a milder brew and you used a cork instead of an airlock), you do still need to bottle your ale.

If you’re new to brewing, you may wish to order the swing top bottles. If you pick the ones that are sealed with metal caps, you need extra equipment in order to get the caps on. I only use swing top bottles because a box of replacement gaskets takes up very little space, whereas the capping equipment takes up more!

You also can choose to have a bubbly brew by adding a small amount of sugar to each bottle before you pour your beer into them. I usually do half teaspoon per 500mL bottle, full teaspoon for litre bottles, when I choose bubbly. If you are happy with still ale, please feel free to not add more sugar during bottling. As with everything, your preferences should be your guide here!

Conditioning generally takes 2-4 weeks, though this period can be shorter or longer. I’ve made beers before that were pretty bad even after 2-4 weeks. We just left the bottles to sit longer and tested one every 2-4 weeks. Unless you just made a gross ale, it’ll smooth out eventually. Somewhat relatedly, I was gifted some bottles of mead once, and when I opened one it was disgusting. Really, truly disgusting. 8 years later I found the rest of the mead in a cabinet and tried it. It was amazing. I’ve never had to keep an ale conditioning for longer than 4 months, but I have made them where they were really only for chili or baking until I’d given them that very long conditioning period.

Wrapping Up

This is rather a lot of information, because it’s several years’ worth of experimentation and developed habits condensed into something hopefully usable. Y’all let me know in the comments if all this did was confused you and I’ll try to offer some more details!

I intended to grab my brewing notebook and take some pictures of sample ideas for you. And I will still do that, but it’ll be in a later edit when I find my notebook. I spent over an hour digging through bookshelves to no avail, and finally I have given up for now. When I find them, I’ll edit those in and remove this paragraph. If I can’t find the book for too long, I’ll edit those in and republish the artice.

Happy brewing!

How I Brew Ales and Similar