Getting into home brewing can seem challenging. A lot of people think that you have to invest a lot of money to buy all the necessary ingredients and equipment. Nobody wants to make a financial commitment when they are just starting and don’t really know if they will like the process of making beer. The simplest and easiest way is to buy a home brewing kit. A lot of them are available online and can be a great resource for beginner brewers.

In your standard brewing kit, you will get all the ingredients to make beer. Some of them also come with basic equipment like a fermenter with an airlock and often even cleaning and sanitizing products. The choice of different brewing kits should be considered based upon what you need and also keep in mind that any equipment you buy will be reused again when you continue making beer in the future.

Ingredients and equipment

As brewing kits will come with all the needed ingredients some of the brewing equipment you may find in your own kitchen. A good stock pot that you might actually already have, ideally a 2-gallon one to give you extra room to work with. Another thing you will need is a scale and a good stainless steel thermometer. To save you time and effort you might also look into getting a bottling kit. You can always save bottles from the beers that you have bought and then just buy some caps and a cheap bottle capper.

There are many ways to make beer but probably the easiest way is to use some form of malt extract for the fermentable sugars. Malt extract is basically condensed wort or unfermented beer. It can either come in liquid form or a dry malt form. For both of them, you just need to add water to make the wort. Kit also uses some steep grains to add complexity and depth to your beer.

To start any good recipe is with water. Water makes up to 95% of beer. So water choice is actually quite important. My recommendation is to avoid tap water. It’s simply too unpredictable to know what is in your water unless you pull a water test or a report. The mineral content in the water can greatly impact its flavor, mouthfeel, and even the general fermentation health. You can technically make good beer with tap water but you will definitely need to add a Campden tablet. It will help to wipe out chlorine chloramines in the water which can leave your beer with a bad flavor. Instead, you can buy some spring water. Its mineral content is much lower and it will give you a clean tasting beer.

First brew day

Start by heating up the water to 160 degrees F. Brewing beer can be messy especially if you have a boilover. Once the water is to the temperature it’s time to add the specialty grain bag. By steeping the grains at warm temperatures helps extract those fermentable sugars, flavors, and colors from the water. Typically we try to mash between a certain temperature range. Usually between 148 to 156 degrees F (64-69 degrees C) leave the grains in the hot water for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes.

After that time safely pull out the bag and now prepare to add the dry malt extract. Be warned once heat or water comes in contact with the dry malt it gets very sticky. With the heat still off slowly add it in and then give it a stir. We don’t want any clumps at the bottom that will stick together and burn. Once it’s dissolved turn back on the heat and bring it to a boil. This is where you need to keep a close eye on the pot. Now that we have malt extract in there you are very likely to get a boilover. If you notice it is about to boil over kill the heat immediately.

With a rolling boil, it’s time to add the hops. Hop flavor, aroma, and bitterness contributions are greatly impacted when you add them to the boil. The longer you boil the more bitterness you will get. To measure the precise amounts of hops you need to use a scale. Usually, hops are introduced at the 60-minute mark, 15-minute mark, and the last addition when the boil is turned off.

Chilling it down and pitching the yeast

After the boil is over you need to chill the wort down to yeast-pitching temperatures. The yeast that will convert the sugars in the wort into beer through fermentation only works in certain temperature ranges. If the wort is too hot it will likely kill the yeast. So you want to chill it down below 70 degrees F (67 degrees F, 19.4 degrees C) and there are a few ways to chill it down. You can let it sit with a lid overnight. But that comes with the risk of infection from wild bacteria and yeast. You can also try sticking it in the fridge for a couple of hours. The fastest way would be to make an ice bath in your sink and set the pot in it. It should get down to the right range within an hour.

The important thing to know is that after the boil ends beer is susceptible to infections which can easily ruin your beer. This means that nothing should touch your wort unless it’s been sanitized.

Once it’s chilled down it’s time to add it to the fermenter. With the fermenter clean and sanitized you can now add chilled wort. You can top off the wort with a little more water to the 1.25-gallon mark. Now finally we can add yeast. Sprinkle it in, close up the lid, and give it a good shake for about 60 seconds. Close the fermenter with an airlock and with that, the brew day is over and the beer is on its way. Set the fermenter in a cool dark place. It can take about a week or more for the beer to fully ferment.

The bottling process

If you are not using any tools to determine when the fermentation process is finished the best choice would be to let the beer ferment at least 2 weeks. Also, a good indication is when your airlock stops creating any bubbles or noises for a couple of days in a row. Then you will know that your beer is ready to be bottled.

Bottling is a process of filling up the bottles with a little extra sugar and then beer and capping them. Adding more sugar will restart fermentation in the bottles which will create more CO2 and eventually bubbles. To know how much sugar you need to add you can use an online calculator and fill in all the details requested. They will give you an amount of sugar you need to add to achieve good carbonation.

When your beer is ready transfer the beer from the fermenter to the bottle using a bottling wand. Try to make sure not to make any bubbles or shake the beer to prevent oxidation. You want to have about an inch or two of headspace from the top of each bottle. Once you get all the bottles filled add a cap on the top and seal it. Place the finished bottles into a box. Carbonation will take another full 2 weeks to reach its peak.