Admit it: No matter if in a DeLorean, TARDIS, or a hot tub, we’ve all thought about what advice we might give our younger selves if we could go back in time. Aside from handing your past-self a copy of Gray’s Sports Almanac: Complete Sports Statistics 1950-2000 (#1.21gigawatts), you’d probably want to know what you could have done to improve the quality of your beer from the very start of your burgeoning homebrewing career. (Obviously.)

Below is a list that would have been a veritable goldmine to me when I first started brewing, so past-self, if you get this, you owe me… And you can start pay me/us back by investing in Apple stock, anything under $100 a share, and then sell when it gets to around $650— no need to get greedy.  Then, not only could we brag about getting in on Apple before its historic run-up just like all the other dime-a-dozen fish story tellers of the modernized hipster Gordon Gekko variety, but we’ll also finally have the start-up capital we need to open our very own, well funded, state-of-the-art super brewery.  But we’ll need some inspiration first…  Got it.  Book us a brewery tour of, say, Europe (Belgium first, please), where we can undertake extensive “research” into the finer points of beerology. Thanks past-self, you’re the best!

So without further ado, here are the top 40, yes 40, ways to help any homebrewer improve upon their craft. And for those of you just getting started, consider this article a giant life hack into the wonderful world of homebrewing. [A little disclaimer: By no means is this list the end-all be-all of tips to becoming a brew god, nor is tip # 15 necessarily better than tip # 20, so please don’t get irked that ‘Always use Glass Carboys instead of Plastic Ale Pails’ or ‘Kegging is Better than Bottling’ didn’t make the list.] Alight, so without further-further ado…

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