The Brew Cycle... Taste is the thing

In the brew cycle.  We are focused on learning the techniques of brewing great beer at home. (and as Counterbrew I suggest in your kitchen).  We are putting special emphasis on the fundamental aspects of brewing. Techniques like, sanitation, well established techniques, cooling wort quickly,  when to add hops, how to re hydrate and pitch yeast, how to re use yeast, late extract additions, easy fruit additions, easy bottling, and dry hopping.

We are not focusing on the following.

• Commercial clarity (although we will use biofine, and gelatin finings late in the cycle)
• The brews in the cycle are the beers that I find the easiest to have success with early in your brewing career, none of them require commercial clarity to be awesome to drink.
• Decoction Mashing (I will do another series on small batch lagers, yeast starters ((which I almost never use)) decoction mashing, noble beers)
• Late or High Krausen fermentable additions
• Kegging (although if you can, please feel free)

So what else should we focus on? 

What else should we avoid?