Brewing your own beer is not an easy process. From start to finish it can take weeks, and it is obvious that the longer it takes to do something, the more chance there is that that something can go wrong. Therefore you need to be practically parental in the way you bring along your home brew. It is something that rewards careful planning and cautious management. How well you have done will only be confirmed when you first taste your newly-brewed beer.

The fact is that there are some aspects of the process that are beyond your control. You can buy the best equipment, recommended by experts and talented amateurs, you can follow the recipes right down to the last miligram and final punctuation mark. However, there is still the chance for something to be not quite right, and this is where you will find yourself calling on people who have been there and done that.

It has been seen on several different home brewing forums that a person goes from start to finish in brewing their beer, bottles it and leaves it for drinking and when they come to it, sometimes months later, it doesn’t taste right. Asking around to see what the problem is, they are asked by someone who has been brewing for more than a decade: “What kind of water did you use?”. And something as basic as the pH balance of the water used can interfere with the quality of a beer. Don’t be discouraged if something small knocks your brew off – put it down to experience and learn.