The intimidating complication of home brewing

Since I haven’t had much time to brew lately, and as I’m gearing up to a season of many brewing experiments, I’ve been reading a lot, and listening to many brewing related podcasts (2 good ones are Basic Brewing and Beersmith) and the main point I’m getting here is that this is a very complicated world, and that I’m very glad I went for it without thinking.

When I started brewing I done no research besides one or 2 reads of John Palmer’s crush course to brewing – simple, 2 page instructions, and that’s it. And it worked! I made beer and didn’t need anything beyond for almost a year of casual brewing, and when I was ready, I delved in.

I think many newbies are making the learning mistake of going all in, making complicated hard beers in all-grain or BIAB (Beer In A Bag) and get overwhelmed, so the drop the hobby for a while, or all together – don’t! Make a simple beer with extract and just ease into it, have fun, enjoy your beer and learn slowly, that is what I’m doing.

Don’t get caught overwhelmed by the over complication of terms (efficiency, mashing, IBU’s, EBC’s etc, etc, etc…..), just make beer, and learn as you go.