Organizing Your Brew

Something funny seems to happen when brewers get to the boil, they get distracted and disorganized. The Phantom’s seen it happen to many a brew partner and himself, so this month’s tips are some simple techniques to fight the fog of brewing.

• Keep Notes! – TPB doesn’t care how you do it: Promash; notebook; index cards; bubble gum wrappers. If you can take notes and look back you’ll know exactly what you did right. You don’t do anything wrong, right?
• Make a checklist. It seems silly, but you’ve got a computer or a notebook. Put all the the things you need to accomplish with times and check them off.
• Organize your boil
  • Lay down some foil and mark it with your boil checkpoints (60, 20, 0, etc). Place your hop additions, irish moss, minerals in each of the slots and work left to right.
  • Label a set of cups with your boil time and fill each of them with the appropriate hops and chemicals. This is really great since you can ask your wife or girlfriend to throw the “yellow” cup or the cup with “20” on it when you’re busy cleaning carboys. This has saved the Phantom some effort in the past.

TPB would like to thank Todd Bissell of Foam on the Brain for instigating this tip with his suggestions. Remember if you have a simple idea or tip email phantom@maltosefalcons.com. tpb