When it comes to home brewing at some point you’ve probably been told information that may contradict your own findings or what you find to be true. Or maybe you were taught something you just never questioned why. It’s time to take a closer look at some common myths and misconceptions and see if they hold any weight.

When you first start homebrewing anyone with a bit of experience will have a lot of advice to give. For some reason, brewing knowledge can be a bit like a game of telephone. Someone reads information in a book or is told something by another brewer and they believe it to be the only truth. Thankfully more and more brewers today have been questioning conventional wisdom and pushing the boundaries of what it takes to brew beer at home.

The thing about myths is you don’t know that they’re missed until you try them out for yourself. And when you do, you will have peace of mind knowing what works for you and what makes your beers better. Maybe you will find that what you’re doing is fine and you don’t want to change anything. Or maybe you will find that you’re doing something for no reason and has no benefit to your brew. It’s always a good idea to look around at what you’re doing and ask yourself why. The answer might save you time and stress.

Home brewing is an expensive hobby

Don’t get me wrong. There is an initial investment to get you started. You will have to purchase a home brewing kit. Most of them you can find online but they are not that expensive. For the rest of the equipment most of it you can find in your own kitchen. My advice is to limit the amount of the equipment in the start. Once you brew your first beer and see what the process is like, how much time it requires, and if this is something that you really enjoy then you can think about upgrading and expanding your system.

But even then when you search for a new fermenter, temperature controls, and all the other things there are so many people selling them online. You can find deals and buy from people that have already given up on the hobby. The equipment can last you a long time and then the only thing you really have to focus on is how to make great beers.

And if you compare the cost of starting with homebrewing with other types of hobbies like golf, hiking, baking, or even knitting is not that much more expensive. It’s not going to cost you thousands of dollars if you are organized and keep it simple.

Home brew beer can make you very sick or even be fatal

This might be one of the biggest hurdles that causes people not to get into homebrewing. But in reality, it’s nearly impossible to make something that will make you ill. Beer and many other fermentations are acidic in nature. Their higher acid content or lower PH makes for a hostile environment for harmful pathogens to exist. Additionally, the alcohol that is created during fermentation also makes for a toxic space that kills wild microorganisms.

If you make a mistake you’re more likely to make a beer that tastes bad or it’s gone sour than create a dangerous beverage. You’re bound to make mistakes when you first start. But those mishaps will likely only end up hurting your beer, not yourself.

You should never shake your fermenter

This you will hear all the time and it is true up to a point. Once you transfer your beer into a fermenter you are ready to pitch your yeast. Especially if you are using dry yeast but even with the liquid one it’s a good thing to shake your fermenter. It will help the yeast to dissolve and also incorporate additional oxygen into your fermenter. This additional oxygen will help the yeast to convert the sugars into alcohol and CO2.

Once the beer starts to ferment it’s never a good idea to shake it. You should keep the fermenter in a dark place under the correct temperature. So it’s a good idea to shake the fermenter after pitching the yeast for just a couple of seconds. Then close it with an airlock and leave it to ferment until it’s done. This is another great example that all the information given to you by other people should be tested and explored.

Temperature control is not really that important

Based on the type of yeast you are using and the style of beer you are trying to create you will have specific temperature ranges to get the best result. Now, some people might say they always get a great tasting beer and they never bothered to regulate the temperature during fermentation.

Temperature is the basis of a successful fermentation. Ales and lagers ferment at different temperatures and they give the best results of flavor, smell, body, mouthfeel, and color based on that temperature. You don’t have to stress in each and every second of fermentation to make sure the temperature is perfect. But at the same time just adjusting the temperature of the room where your beer is fermenting would be a great start to creating a tasty beer. When you start with homebrewing your best tool for this is a stainless steel thermometer to just give you an idea of where you are in regards to the temperature. Lagers are usually brewed, during colder months of the year because they require lower temperatures. As for ales, you can brew them anytime and they require higher temperatures in regards to lagers. So just keep it simple. Check the temperature instructions on your yeast strain because it’s there to give you the best result possible.

You have to mash and boil for at least 60 minutes

If you’ve read any brewing book then you’ve probably seen this misconception. For some reason, every recipe out there has an arbitrary number of 60 minutes for mash and 60 minutes for boil.

For mash time I believe the assumption is the longer you steep the grains the more sugars you extract. However, thanks to improved modifications of the brewing malt we use today most of the starch to sugar conversion happens in the first 15 minutes or so. That means you don’t really need to go longer than 15 minutes to get solid wort out of your mash. I usually go for 30-45 minutes to save time and I add a little more grains to make up the difference.

For the boil time, it was thought you needed to add hops near the 60-minute mark to extract the bitterness. I add hops closer to the 30 to 0 minutes for aroma and flavor. We are still learning a lot about hops. And even to this day, we don’t fully know everything about this mysterious plant. But what we do know is that the lines are much more blurred when it comes to bitterness and flavor. It’s true that the longer the boil the more bitterness you get. But why not just cut down the amount of time you boil and add more hops to get more bitter hop character? On the larger brewery scale adding more grains and hops can add a lot of cost. But on a home brewing scale, it costs us cents to add a little more of these ingredients.

You have to use secondary fermentation

For years secondary fermentation was believed to be a mandatory process. Home brewing books and articles talked about how it was important to get your beer, wine, and cider off the yeast to prevent yeast autolysis or off flavors from the stressed yeast. It is usually done by transferring the young beer into another fermentation vessel to remove it from dormant yeast.

Secondary fermentation still has its place in the winemaking world since wine is aged for months before bottling. And you don’t want to ruin all that hard work. But beer and cider are quick fermentations and usually not aged. In fact these days beer and cider can be ready to drink in as little as a few days thanks to quick fermenting yeast. So what’s the point of racking to another vessel that might be a potential point for contamination or oxidation? Your beer is fine to sit on the yeast for weeks with no negative effects.

Bottling is super easy

Bottling is the cheaper way to package your beer and is recommended to all new home brewers. This way you don’t have to invest a lot of money into a keg. Everybody has empty beer bottles lying around that can be used to package your brew. Is it easy? I don’t think so. Many things can go wrong. All bottles of course have to be fermentation grade bottles. That means that they can stand the gas buildup during fermentation. So if you use juice, soda or even glass jars be ready for explosions. The best way to recognize fermentation-grade bottles is if you use beer bottles. They for sure can stand the pressure.

Of course, it goes without saying that all your bottles need to be cleaned and sanitized. Even in this stage, you don’t want to contaminate your beer at the last step of the process. And this also includes the caps.

For the fermentation to continue in the bottles and create additional CO2 you have to add extra sugars to your fermented beer. With this, you also have to be careful. Adding too much or too little will result in not carbonated or over-carbonated beer. Each of these will not be a nice result. Your best choice would be to use a simple online calculator which will tell you how much additional sugar you have to add after you input your data based on the amount of beer you made and other information required.

Mixing the sugar with the beer or adding it straight into the bottles is also a choice you need to make. So it’s not that simple right? But after a couple of batches, you will start to enjoy it. And what is most important you will get a feel for it. Get some experience around it and become a really great bottler.