1. Don't forget to clean all your stuff before you use it. Stuff you do not need to clean are things like tubing, your cooling coils, and your pumps.

2. When you unlock the immersion coils and counterflow coolers, USE THEM.

3. The above items can be used with electric kettles to double as immersion/counterflow heaters to help you maintain that mash temp.

4. Mash temperature. If you follow the recipes exactly, you'll often end up with too much liquid and a mash that's too hot. I have tried adding boiling water until the mash hits 65C, but this often results in not enough thermal mass to maintain the temperature without constantly adding more water. Conversely, if you do exactly as it says, you will often find yourself with not enough capacity once you do the mash out. The solution here is to either upsize your mash tun where possible, or when you can, see #3. (Also see new section.)

5. When it asks for 50g of coriander, that's equivalent to 50ml of coriander.

6. Pumps are extraordinarily useful for moving liquids from one container to the next. They do not, however, speed up the water out of the faucet (unless I'm retarded and hooked it up wrong).

7. You have a lot of time and unlimited ingredient quantities. Use it. Experiment.

8. When buying stuff, it is important to make sure you pick up ingredients before gear, or else you'll be a little screwed.

9. The brew pots you unlock later on have spigots on them that allow you to use tubing to move the liquid around. They are much better for reducing contamination.

10. When using conditioning containers, do not forget to put the lid back on unless you like flat beer.

11. Oak barrels are nice, but don't forget they impart flavor to the beer. If you are attempting to brew something with specific flavors, keep this in mind.

12. Plastic is not necessarily a bad thing.

13. If you happen to add a little more or less, don't panic. It'll be fine.

14. If stuff overflows, also don't panic. It'll be fine.

So, using the counterflow coolers and/or immersion coils can be a little tricky.

However, it is fairly simple. For the immersion coil, you simply place it inside the pot and hook up the intake to the faucet and the outtake to the sink. This will circulate cold water through the coil and cool it down.

The counterflow cooler has four holes by comparison and works by using water flowing in the opposite direction of your chosen liquid to cool it down faster. They will be labeled as Water Intake, Water Outtake, Wort Intake and Wort Outtake. The faucet goes to the water intake and the sink goes to the outtake.

The Wort Intake goes from your Brew Pot spigot and the outtake also goes back into the Brew Pot. This allows you to cool your wort down even faster.

HOWEVER: As this cooler uses water to cool down your wort, it is also possible to use it to heat up your wort. By running the water intake and outtake into an electric kettle set at a specific temperature, it is possible to use the counterflow chiller as a counterflow heater. I haven't quite figured out the proper temperature to set the electric kettle to, but you definitely do not want to leave it at 65C, as this will not sufficiently heat the wort. I'd recommend starting at 69C (no, this is not a joke) and increasing by .5 until desired temperature has been achieved (though by then the hour will have probably elapsed).

Disclaimer: The following information is how I personally brew in game. This does not necessarily mean it is the optimal or best way of doing things.

So, you're starting to do your first brew. A couple of things (these may or may not be repeats from the first section):

1. You WILL spill stuff. This is okay.

2. The first mash-tun you get access to is the picnic cooler, which has same capacity as a small mash-tun, but worse insulation. If you follow the recipe exactly, you will most likely wind up overfilling. More on this later.

3. Gear makes a big difference.

Okay, onto the brew.

Part One: Preparation and Selection. This is assuming you have already chosen a job/recipe.

1. Select a job and/or recipe to brew. If this is a job that requires specific flavor notes or strengths, see Part Two.

2. Ensure you have all the necessary ingredients and tools for the job/recipe. This can be done by pinning a recipe and then checking the catalogue's pinned recipe section. This will show you all the stuff necessary to brew that particular recipe. Anything you have in stock will have a check mark next to it; anything you don't, won't. You'll want to make sure you've got it all in stock.

3. Gather the necessary tools/containers you'll be needing at this time. These will most likely consist of: Boiling Vessel, Mash-Tun, Heat Source, and Grains. In order of setup, I usually put the burner and mash-tun out, set the pot up to be filled in the sink (either directly in or with tubing). While these are filling, this is when I'll be dumping my grain into the mash-tun.

3A. When possible, you will want to upsize your mash-tuns. For small batches, use a medium, and for a medium, use a large. The reason for this is primarily to give you a little more wiggle room when it comes to your hot water (sometimes called strike water or hot liquor if Oz and James are to be believed) so you don't spill. Grain does take up space, and sometimes your grain+the amount of total water you're gonna use doesn't quite add up.

3B. This only applies to later in the game once you have access to things like the counterflow cooler and an electric kettle. Once you get access to these items, if you're lazy (like me), you'll want to set these out to. More in the next bit on why.

4. Filling pots and stuff with water takes a lot of time. Don't be afraid if you speed up time and it overfills, that's okay. You can always pour/boil/let more water off later, and in my experience, as long as you're close enough, it's good enough.

5. Once all of your kettles/pots/grain and all that is set, move onto the next part.

Part Two(If the job requires a specific quality and/or modification to a recipe):

So your job needs a tweak to a pre-existing recipe or has specific requirements.

1. Check the flavor note requirements. As far as I am aware, these are talking about flavor notes, not standard flavors. Some jobs can be done simply by adding more of a specific ingredient in a pre-made recipe (or less). Others might require you to make your own recipe. Fortunately for us, we have the X-Ray mode, as well as detailed flavor notes on all of our ingredients. This makes it relatively easy to make our own recipe.

1A. If you have a specific color/clarity requirement, this can largely be set with grain/yeast selection.

2. Use the Recipe Creator. In Guided Mode, it can be a little tricky, but you basically just add the step it tells you and then futz with the "INGREDIENT NAME" to select an ingredient and quantity. This is typically where I'll be looking at flavor notes when I'm trying to create beers with a specific number of flavors/flavor strengths. Even if you use it in manual mode, it is incredibly useful to be able to pin it while brewing.

3. If you are trying to specifically control the number of flavors and oak is not one of them, use plastic.

4. You can vary the number of days for conditioning/fermenting. Sometimes you might want it to go a little bit longer. I have not yet really figured out the exact effect of longer conditioning, but sometimes it seems to help. Maybe someone a little smarter can chime in here.

5. If you need extra carbonation, adding more sugar (not necessarily more yeast) will help in the conditioning phase.

6. This is a bit of a cheese move, but unless you have a specific bitterness limit, just load up on hops for flavor. Onto Part Three.

Part Three: The Actual Brew

Really early on, there's not a lot of stuff to keep in mind. It's fairly simple, as you don't really have the tools to do better. However, there are two things you want to do if you are trying to keep contamination down.

1. Keep it covered when possible.
2. Boil your water first, and then let it come down to the desired temperature before you start feeding it to the grain. This eliminates the contamination accrued during the filling of the kettle, and just takes time (most of the time).

Now then, you've got your pots and kettles all filled, your grain's in your mash-tun and you're ready to put fire to stuff. Right?

Sort of.

1. If there is an electric kettle being used here at all for mash temperature regulation, you'll want to let it boil first, then bring it down to 69C to reduce contamination.
2. I've only unlocked the small electric kettle, but that things take forever to come to temp. Make sure this has boiled and come back down to 69C before you start boiling your actual brew kettle/pot.

Once this is done, then you can start heating up your kettle/pod. Bring it up to 100C, then down to whatever your recipe calls for. If you are doing the counterflow temperature regulation method, you'll want to aim for about half of what the game tells you to use for mash steeping. While your main boiling vessel is cooling off, you'll want to rig up your counterflow cooler/wort plate(this is as far as I've gotten so far).

If you hover your cursor over each port, it should tell you what should be hooked up to it. These coolers will have four ports - two intake and two outtake for water and for your wort. I've found that hooking things up in sequence will usually reduce the amount of times it decides to not work on you. You'll need to uncover your mash-tun and your electric kettle here to do so, but it'll be okay. NOTE: Hook up the mash-tun to the cooler AFTER you've filled it, and make sure you don't accidentally put the water outtake into your mash-tun - you want the wort outtake to go back into your mash-tun.

Once this is all hooked up and your water's down to the appropriate temp for what you're doing, you'll want to (where possible) use the spigot on the brew kettle to fill the mash-tun. Pouring works too, but if you can avoid it, use the spigot - it'll cut down on contamination. Once the temp has reached 65C, this is when you hook up the mash-tun to your counterflow's wort in/out ports.

Once all your tubes are hooked up, DON'T FORGET TO OPEN THE TAPS. I've forgotten to do this way too many times. If done properly, your mash temp should hold steady at 65C give or take a half a degree or so.

Speed up time by one hour and disconnect the mash-tun from the counterflow cooler.

Put the mash-tun on the floor and with your boiling vessel on the table, empty your boiling vessel into the mash-tun. In real life, this is probably sacrilegious and terrible brewing practice, but it works in game so I'm doing it. Once that's done, reverse their positions and empty the mash-tun into your boiling vessel using gravity only, and then put it back on the burner with the lid off.

Re-locate your counterflow cooler, you'll need it again to cool the wort this time. I usually put it on the left side of the sink and hook it up ahead of time. This is also when you want to go down the list for your hops.

This is where I go down the list and grab all my hops at once - bittering first, then flavoring. This allows me to wait for it to boil until contamination levels aren't dropping any more, and then just dump them in. I dump the bittering ones in first, skip time, dump the flavoring hops in, skip time, and then remove the hops and turn off the flame. This is where you want to move a little fast.

COOLING YOUR WORT

If you do not have any cooling tools, put the lid on and skip time.

If you have an immersion cooling coil, it's like a counterflow chiller with only water in and out. Set that up, and fast forward until 20C has been reached, or to whatever temp you desire for your chosen yeast. You can take this time to set up your fermentation vessel and your heating pads if you have any at this time.

If you have a counterflow or wort chiller plate, hook it up like you did the mash-tun earlier and open the taps. This should immediately start cooling your wort down. I usually already have my fermentation vessel and heating pad set if I need them ahead of time, so here, I just skip time until my desired temp.

Once it's down to temp, disconnect and use the tap to dump it into your fermentation vessel. A pump here speeds things up a lot.

This is where you want to dump in your yeast. For the earlier ones that are okay with 20C, just toss it in there once your wort's fully transferred. For those that require a specific temperature range afterwards, keep an eye on the temp while adding your yeast to make sure it doesn't drop too much.

Add whatever extra ingredients here you want, and then close it back up. DO NOT FORGET TO PUT THE LID BACK ON HERE.

Skip about fifteen days or so (or however many you want), and it'll be ready for conditioning - which is more or less the same thing. Transfer from one vessel to the next with a pump, add your stuff, lid it up, and go.

Once again, DO NOT FORGET TO PUT THE LID BACK ON HERE.

The other thing is to keep track of your total liquid quantity. You can use a larger container if you don't want spillage.

On those rare occasions where you mess up and don't have enough liquid to qualify for the batch size, just add little more water in and let it condition some more.