I came across these on a Dutch Hobby Brewers Site and thought worth sharing.
You won’t go wrong following these tips.

Thanks to
Bertens Beter Bierbrouw Tips

and Google Translate!

1. Work as cleanly as possible. Brew in an area that is easy to clean (at least on a smooth floor that can be mopped). Don’t wait to clean. Immediately remove any splash of mash, wort or beer. Rinse all tools well immediately after use. Always make sure to remove all traces of cleaning agent before reusing the brewing equipment (cleaning agents can have off-taste).

2. Do not use chlorinated copper cleaning agents but acetic or citric acid. Poisonous copper oxide is formed under the influence of chlorine-containing agents.

3. It is also better not to use chlorine-containing agents for stainless steel, although a short contact time can do no harm.

4. Preferably do not brew in the middle of summer. In the summer there are many more microorganisms in the air and there are also many more flies that can spread unwanted infections.

5. Carefully record the entire method of preparation of the beer. So not just the recipe, but also different working methods and possibly new equipment.

6. Brew with mind and with feeling.

7. Always strive to improve your beer, brewing method and equipment.

8. Study the brewing process through any study material you can get your hands on. But watch out! Not all literature is equally good.

9. Join an Internet Forum and participate actively. You learn a lot by asking questions and giving answers!

10. Visit various professional breweries and feast your eyes and ears!

11. Talk to others about the hobby while enjoying a home-brewed beer.

12. Join a homebrewing club.

13. Keep the recipes as simple as possible.

14. Brew regularly (at least once every 2 months).

15. If you want to win a prize in an amateur brewers competition, brew a beer that fits exactly within a beer type. Before brewing, taste a few samples of the style and try to collect as many recipes of that style as you can.

16. Don’t experiment too much. Trust recipes that have been proven to be good.

17. Be very careful with spices! Some herbs overpower the taste of a beer if you only use a very small amount.

18. Before adding herbs, make an extraction by boiling a small amount with water. Add some of the extract to a neutral beer to get an idea of ​​the strength of the herbs and to assess whether that flavor can be combined with beer.



19. Spices that are known to give nice flavor nuances in beer when added in moderation are: coriander, orange peel, lemon peel, licorice root, ginger, cinnamon and cardamom.

20. Use regular tap water and not mineral water. Many mineral waters contain a lot of salts.

21. Bottled water has very few salts. This water can be used to soften hard brewing water. However, it is an expensive method.

22. Add a small pinch of table salt or calcium chloride to the brewing water if you want to brew a sweet beer.

23. Add gypsum (CaSO4) to your brewing water if you want to brew a really bitter beer.

24. Do not correct the pH of the brewing water, but of the mash. The pH value changes due to the substances in the malt. Therefore, always check the pH value of the mash and not that of the brewing water.

25. Only use brewing salts for pH correction if it fits the type of beer you want to brew. Brewing salts can introduce unwanted taste nuances in the beer. CaSO4 in particular can give an unpleasant bitter taste. Using calcium chloride will give a sweeter beer.

26. Check the pH with every brew. The value can vary greatly, especially the malt has a major influence on the pH. By using dark malt you get a lower pH value than with light malt.

27. Beware of dark malts. In addition to roasted flavours, dark malts can also produce phenolic and unpleasant bitter flavours. Furthermore, dark malts can ensure that the beer does not drink well.

28. Always use fresh raw materials. Buy from a supplier with a high turnover. Chew some malt and check that the grains are crisp and taste fresh. Hops must have a fresh color that can differ per hop variety. The hop flour should look bright yellow. An orange or brown color indicates old hops. Never buy hops that smell like sweaty feet.

29. Buy hops that are vacuum packed in foil packaging.

30. Malting is a profession in its own right. There is excellent malt for sale, so why bother? Brewing a good beer with good raw materials is an art in itself!

31. Store malt and unmalted grains in well-closed barrels so that mice and other unwanted animals cannot reduce your stock.

32. Preferably keep hops as cold as possible and in tightly closed plastic bags or glass jars (to prevent oxidation of the alpha acids).

33. At metal recyclers and Op shops you can often find very useful items for the hobby.

34. Copper is a metal that has a number of unique properties. In the past, copper has been widely used for the manufacture of brewing equipment. Due to the toughness and flexibility, it is easy to make complicated constructions.

35. An excess of copper ions is toxic to yeast and humans. Never ferment in a copper kettle. When using a copper siphon filter, you don’t have to worry about too high a concentration of copper ions.

36. Plan a brew, prepare a yeast starter in time and make sure you have all the necessary ingredients at home.

37. If you want to imitate commercial beer, try getting the yeast from the original. You can grow the yeast yourself from the sediment of a bottle, eg. Coopers Pale Ale, if you work carefully. Always buy a bottle as young as possible, with time all yeast cells will die and you can no longer grow anything.

38. There are more and more liquid yeasts on the market that, when grown further under sterile conditions, give a better result than dried yeast.

39. You can order a wide variety of Liquid yeasts from the Internet.

40. Always have a gas flame nearby when growing yeast. Disinfect as much as possible using the flame.

41. To get the yeast starter going quickly, maintain a temperature of 25C.

42. Stir the yeast starter regularly to promote yeast growth.

43. Grind the malt as coarsely as possible (no whole grains should fall through the mill). This makes filtering a lot better and you are less bothered by leaching of unwanted substances from the chaff particles. The loss of yield due to coarser Grinding is so small that only the most economical amateur brewer can worry about it.

44. A properly adjusted roller mill always gives a better Grind result than a Malt mill with rotating discs.

45. Carefully remove all malt dust after Grinding. This dust can be a major source of infections. Use a brush and vacuum cleaner for this.

46. ​​By starting at a higher temperature (63 ºC or higher) you get beers with a better foam shelf life and more body.

47. Stir the mash well after adding the malt. There should be no air bubbles trapped in the malt.

48. Adjust the thickness of the mash to the type of beer you want to brew. For a sweet beer you need to mash more thickly (1 kg of malt on 2.5 liters of water) than for a dry beer (1 : 3.5 or higher).

49. The malt that is now available to us is broken down much further during malting than it was a few years ago. This allows much shorter mashing schedules. Adjust old recipes as needed.

50. Do not use a standard mashing schedule, but tailor the schedule to the beer type. .

51. Preferably use gas to heat the Mash. The added heat is much easier and more direct to regulate than with electric heating. When using an electric heating element directly in the mash kettle, you can experience unwanted caramelization.

52. Stop heating the Mash just before you reach the desired temperature. The larger the mash boiler, the higher the temperature continues.
53. Always stir the Mash well, especially when you add heat, but also regularly in between. This makes the dissolving process during mashing better and faster.

54. Do everything you can to prevent oxygen absorption during mashing (so don’t stir too fanatically). If the temperature rise is caused by adding hot water, do not let this water splash into the mash kettle, but pour it around the edge of the kettle.

55. Check the pH of the mash with each brew and if necessary add lactic acid to the mash to achieve a pH of 5.4 (at 60 – 63 C). This pH value is necessary for the enzymes to work properly.

56. Always cool the Mash on which you want to do the iodine test to room temperature. The test does not work properly at high temperatures.

57. Carry out the iodine test on a white saucer, this way you can better judge the result.

58. Use betadine iodine instead of iodine tincture. Betadine iodine works just as well and is less perishable.

59. Do not filter with netting or cloth, but with a perforated (stainless steel) filter plate or a siphon filter (a copper pipe in which slots have been sawn through which the wort leaves the mash tun, whether or not by siphoning).

60. Let the Mash settle for about 3-5 minutes before filtering. That way you give the filter bed time to form.

61. Pour back the cloudy wort and wait at least 1 minute before opening the wort drain valve again. The fine material can then settle for a while.

62. Prevent any oxygen uptake from hot wort. This means the following for filtering and rinsing. Run the filtered wort through a hose into the collection vessel to prevent the wort from splashing. Carefully pour the cloudy wort back into the lauter tun. By using a siphon filter, oxygen uptake during filtering and rinsing can be drastically reduced.

63. Add the rinse water in 2 or 3 stages.

64. Never let the grain dry while rinsing.

65. Take your time filtering and rinsing. The sugars need time to dissolve in the rinse water.

66. Check the pH of the rinse water and add lactic acid if necessary to achieve a pH value between 5.2 and 5.6. The rinsing water must not have a pH value that is too high to prevent the leaching of undesirable substances from the chaff (bitter, tannins and dyes).

67. Never aim for the highest return. As so often, quantity comes at the expense of quality.

68. Let the wort boil vigorously. In total, 6 to 10% of the wort should evaporate. Never put a lid on the kettle. If too much water evaporates, turn the gas flame lower. Buy a larger burner if too little water evaporates.

69. To get a nice hop aroma, you can add hops to the very first wort that comes into the boiler. In combination with a hop dose 5 to 10 minutes before the end of cooking, this gives a very good hoppy result.
70. Boil the wort for lightly colored malty beers for about 60 minutes and for dark caramel-like beers about 75 minutes.

71. If the final beer has a taste that is reminiscent of boiled vegetables, you will have to boil longer in the future to allow the substance dimethyl sulphide, which is responsible for this taste, to evaporate well from the wort.
Cooling quickly after cooking also helps prevent this flavor from forming.

72. Wort hopped with hop flowers is easier to filter than wort hopped with hop pellets (the hop flowers form a filter bed while the fine hop powder can clog the filter cloth).

73. Chill the wort as quickly as possible. In the summer you have to cool the wort further down than in the winter because the cooler temperatures ensures that the wort cools down a bit.

74. Always create a yeast starter. The yeast you add must be in top condition. The best time to add the yeast starter is just before the foam layer on the yeast starter starts to collapse.

75. Aerate the cooled wort well. This is not a matter of pouring once from some height. A decent aeration is done with an aquarium pump, a sterile air filter and a ceramic air stone. Aerate the wort for 1 minute per liter of wort you have.

76. Always keep a supply of fast-acting dried yeast on hand in case a Wyeast yeast doesn’t start up quickly.

77. Get to know your yeast. Work a few times with the same yeast so that you get to know the properties of the yeast a little better.

78. Use a fermenter that can hold 2 to 3 times the content of the wort you are fermenting. This way you will not have problems with the large foam formation by aerating with an aquarium pump and air stone (very large foam formation).

79. Close the fermentation vessel during fermentation with a tight-fitting lid and airlock. This way you have the least risk of infections.

80. Move the fermenter a few times if fermentation has not yet started. The movements of the wort promote the rapid start of the fermentation.

81. Insulate the fermentation vessel with blankets or sleeping bags in the winter months so that the temperature does not drop too much and the fermentation can take place at an even temperature.

82. Play with the fermentation temperature. Low temperatures enhance the malty/hoppy character. High temperatures provide more fruity flavors and higher alcohols.

83. Do not open the fermenter every so often to determine the SG for example, but let the yeast do its work quietly and keep an eye on the progress of the fermentation via the water seal.

84. Do not remove the hop resins that are formed during fermentation from the foam top.

85. Constantly check the temperature of the fermentation using an electronic thermometer. Via a sensor of an electronic thermometer in a stainless steel canister that you have attached to the wall of the fermentation vessel, you can continuously measure the temperature in the vessel without having to remove the lid.
86. Transfer the young beer just before the main fermentation is complete. The young beer is protected by the carbon dioxide that is still formed. Furthermore, if the main fermentation has not completely ended, there are still plenty of active yeast cells in solution that can ensure a good breakdown of the diacetyl (butter-like taste) formed during fermentation.

87. Some amateurs let the beer age in the fermenter. Do not do this. Autolysis (the disintegration of finished yeast) can cause an unpleasant taste and reduce the foam stability.

88. Lager the young beer in a glass bottle or stainless steel lager tank. Do not use a plastic jerry can because plastic is oxygen permeable to a limited extent. Close the bottle or barrel well and use a water seal to prevent overpressure.

89. Don’t lager the beer too long. The beer does not have to be crystal clear before bottling, the water seal may well leave a bubble. As a rule, aging at room temperature (16 – 18 C) between 10 and 14 days is more than sufficient.

90. Rinse all bottles well at least twice with water after pouring out.

91. Immerse the bottles completely in the cleaning agent and disinfectant.

92. Allow the cleaning and disinfecting agent to act for a sufficient time (10 to 30 minutes depending on the agent and concentration).

93. A stubborn hazy layer that sometimes remains in a bottle after “normal” cleaning can be removed by rinsing the bottle with an acidic solution (for example with hydrochloric acid or another strong acid). Then rinse the bottle twice.

94. Sulfite has no cleaning properties but does disinfect well. Clean first and then rinse with a sulfite solution. Small residues of sulphite are not harmful to the beer, on the contrary they can improve the shelf life of the beer.

95. Add fresh yeast when bottling to ensure good secondary fermentation.

96. The amount of sugar that you need to add for the refermentation is between 4 and 7 grams per liter of beer. The exact amount depends on the temperature of the young beer and the amount of fermentable sugars still present and the beer type.

97. Give barrel beer less sugar (maximum 3 grams of sugar per litre).

98. Immediately after bottling, rinse the outside of bottles with some lukewarm water. That way you prevent foamed beer from serving as a source of infection.

99. After bottling, keep the beer warm for 14 days (20-24 C) to promote a smooth refermentation.

100. Keep your beer dark and cool.

101. Taste every home-brewed beer very critically. Is the beer good enough to serve it to your neighbor or mother-in-law?

102. If the beer has a medicinal taste, you should rinse cleaning agents containing chlorine better in the future.

103. Taste the beer with multiple tasters. What do they think of the beer?

104. Enjoy, but drink in moderation.