The Craft Beer Corner

Now that your beer has been brewed, and has been through its primary and secondary fermentation phase, it’s time that we finally get that beer into bottles so that you can enjoy your very first batch. As with all steps in the brewing process, we will begin by sanitizing all of the equipment that is going to be touching our beer. The equipment that is needed on bottling day, and that must be sanitized is as follows: beer bottles, bottle caps, tubing, auto-siphon, primary fermenter/bottling bucket, (we’ll expand on this), bucket lid, bottle drying rack (if you have one – I highly recommend getting one, as it make bottling day much simpler), beer spoon, hydrometer, and bottle filler. This is also the step in the process where the priming sugar comes into play, so we will be preparing that mixture while our sanitized equipment is drying.

Once all equipment is thoroughly sanitized, we’re going to prepare the priming sugar solution. Priming sugar is used to carbonate the bottled beer, as the yeast has already consumed all of the sugars in the beer and converted them to alcohol, so we need to add additional sugars back into the beer in order to wake-up the yeast in the beer and provide them with a food source to create the desired carbonation in our bottles. Most often, you will find priming sugar in 5 oz. bags, however, for a standard 5 gallon batch of beer, you do not want to use the entire bag. I recommend using between 4 and 4.5 oz. of the priming sugar, and saving the remainder for a future batch that you brew. 5 oz. tends to be too much, and will over-carbonate your beer, and make a huge mess when you crack one open, as well as waste beer that you worked so hard to make. If you want to play it safe, keep it in the 4-4.5 oz. range, or split the difference and go with 4.25 oz.

Yet again, we are not going to use tap water, so make sure to use fresh, bottled watered to mix the priming sugar solution together. To make the solution, all you need is 4 – 4.5 oz. of the priming sugar added to 2 cups of boiling water. Make sure to stir the mixture constantly while it is boiling for 5 minutes. Once the 5 minutes have elapsed, your solution is ready to be added to the beer. We’ll let the solution sit and cool down while we transfer our beer from the secondary fermenter (usually a carboy) and into our bottling bucket. The bottling bucket is usually a dual-purpose vessel, as it’s also your primary fermenting bucket. The bottling bucket is purpose-built with a spigot at the bottom, which is where we will connect the tubing and bottle filler to actually get the beer into the bottles. As with all transfers from vessel-to-vessel, we want to put the auto-siphon down into the beer, and the end of the tubing down into the bottom of the new vessel (bottling bucket). There may still be very small amounts of sediment in the carboy at this stage, so make sure to keep the auto-siphon above the line where there is any obvious sediment. Before activating the siphon, make 1 more check that the spigot on your bottling bucket is closed, lest any of your beer start to dump onto the floor. With everything doublechecked, you can start the transfer from the carboy to the bottling bucket. I recommend having the carboy above the bucket (on a table, sturdy chair, etc.) and the bucket on the floor so gravity will help with the speed of the transfer.

After the beer has been transferred to the bottling bucket, you are now ready to mix in the priming sugar solution into your beer. Before adding the priming sugar solution, take 1 final gravity reading. This final reading is your true final gravity, so grab your notes, and calculate your final ABV. Now, pour the solution into the beer in your bucket, and gently stir for 1 minute. That’s all there is to it. As with all steps, again, gentle is the goal, as we don’t want to needlessly expose the beer to any more oxygen than will happen naturally during this process. Once the solution is stirred in, you’re ready to get everything connected, and your bottles filled. Put the sanitized lid back on the bucket, and put the bucket at a higher elevation than where you will be filling the bottles. I typically put the bottling bucket on the my kitchen counter top, and my bottles on a short side table where I can sit and fill them 1-by-1. Connect the tubing to the end of the spigot on your bucket, and connect the other end to the bottle filler (bottle fillers can be a bit finicky, so I always make sure I have 1 or 2 more laying around and sanitized just in case 1 doesn’t work well, or allows beer to flow after the spring has been closed between fillings). Simply place the end of the bottle filler wand into the bottom of a bottle, and it will begin to fill with beer. Stop filling once there is ca. 1 inch of space remaining to the top of the bottle. Place a cap on the top of the bottle, and use the bottle capper to crimp the top onto the bottle, and you’ve got your beer bottled. Repeat this process for each bottle until everything is bottled up, and you have successfully completed bottling day.

After your beer is bottled, is a final waiting period for your beer before it’s ready to drink. As with the fermentation stages, the amount of time you’ll want to wait largely depends on the style of beer you brewed. You will want to move the bottles to a dark room away from light and heat (just as with all stages of the brewing process), and allow a minimum of 2 weeks of bottle conditioning before drinking. Bottle conditioning is just the term used for the bottled beer to become carbonated by the added priming sugars. At the 2 week point after bottling, crack one open and try your very first home-brewed beer. If the beer isn’t carbonated enough for your liking, give it another week and try again. You can repeat that process as many times as needed. For most beers that would be brewed from a ready-made kit, the beer should be ready to drink within 2 -3 weeks max. If you made your own recipe and went with a much higher ABV beer, this will most likely take longer.

If you made it to this stage, you now have successfully brewed your very first batch of beer using the malt extract brewing method. If you’re like me, you not only learned a lot, but feel a tremendous amount of satisfaction in having brewed your very own beer. Not only can you brew exactly what you want to drink, but it is much cheaper to brew your own quality beer than it is to buy it all the time (up-front equipment/supplies costs aside). Now you can take what you learned on your first batch and apply it to your second batch and beyond. Don’t be afraid to come up with your own ideas and tweaks to recipes and interesting flavor additions. Being in charge of what you brew is half of the fun of the process. I also enjoy revisiting old recipes and brewing them again to see what I think over time, and slowly adjusting and tweaking until it’s exactly what I want in a beer. Wherever you go from here, I hope you enjoyed brewing your first batch. It just takes a little bit of patience, and a little bit of time, but the end result is not only gaining a life skill, but getting to brew and drink exactly what you want. Cheers!

Now that brew day is complete, and your wort has been fermenting, and has turned into beer. You’ve been watching your airlock, and it has slowed down to a very intermittent and less vigorous bubbling. Once the airlock has finished bubbling completely, wait 24 more hours, and at this point, you are now ready to transfer your beer to your carboy for the secondary fermentation stage. This is the fastest and simplest phase of the brewing process, so you don’t need to set aside much time to get this done. The process for transferring the beer for secondary fermentation is largely identical to transferring the wort into the primary fermenter, but there are a few key points to note. As with all steps of the beer making process, we start by ensuring that all of our equipment is thoroughly sanitized, so once again, you want to gather your equipment and go through the same process that was used on brew day. The equipment needed is not as vast for the transfer, so this process of sanitizing will take less time than it did on brew day. Most people use a carboy for their secondary fermentation stage, and this is the norm that comes with most homebrew equipment kits. We’ll assume you’re using a carboy for your secondary, and as such, the items you will need to sterilize/sanitize for this process are as follows: carboy, auto-siphon, tubing, carboy stopper/bung, airlock, and hydrometer.

You may be wondering why you would go through the trouble of moving the beer from one container to another, and why you can’t just leave it to complete the fermentation in the primary fermenter. The short answer is that you can do that, but there are multiple benefits to transferring the beer to a separate container to finish the fermentation and 2 week rest period (higher ABV beers benefit from a longer rest period in secondary). What is actually happening during the transfer is that you are moving the beer off of the settled sediment (bits of grain, hops, and dead yeast/the yeast cake) which can produce undesired or off flavors in your beer. The secondary fermentation also allows more time for your beer to continue letting fine particulates settle to the bottom of the carboy, which will in-turn present a cleaner, clearer finished beer. Secondary fermentation is not required, but it does enhance the final finished product. Most brew-in-a-box kits will recommend this, and while it isn’t technically necessary (especially for a lower-gravity, lower-ABV beer), it is a process that is worth the relatively minimal effort involved to accomplish. Utilizing the secondary fermentation phase is also good practice for when you do eventually brew a higher gravity beer that will greatly benefit from the practice.

Before you start the transfer, take a gravity reading of the beer to have an idea of where your beer is currently sitting. If it deviates greatly from your target, this is the time to make corrections before you transfer to your secondary. This process is the same as the gravity reading we took of the wort before transferring to the primary fermenter. Again, I recommend writing this down somewhere in your beer log so you don’t lose it. At this stage, you can calculate the ABV of your beer with a simple formula. The formula is (OG – FG) X 131.25. That is the original gravity (the first reading you took from your wort before the fermentation started) – (minus) the final gravity (the reading you just took of your beer) X (multiplied by) 131.25. The resulting number is the ABV of your beer. This can continue to fluctuate during the secondary fermentation, so you’ll want to make sure to write down your gravity readings somewhere you can easily reference. If you find your ABV is below your target, you can add additional sugars to your beer before you transfer to the secondary, but as with all things related to that beer, you need to make sure to sanitize anything that will touch any aspect of your beer, so make sure to sanitize the pot you use to mix the water & sugars. If you need to add sugars, you’ll want to dissolve them in clean (bottled) water, and add that solution to your beer. You can use additional malt extract (if you bought extra beyond what was needed for your beer recipe), or any sugar source (white granulated sugar, brown sugar, candy sugar, honey, corn syrup, etc). Just as with malts, the sugar source will have a flavor and color impact on your beer. Darker sugars and malt extracts will produce both more color and flavor than using granulated table sugar, and are more suited to darker beers and vice-versa. 1 cup of most sugar sources dissolved into your clean water solution will add 1% ABV (on average) to the beer for a 5 gallon batch.

Once your equipment is sanitized, and you’ve made any sugar additions (if you’re using a pre-made kit, this shouldn’t be necessary) you’re ready to start the transfer. I recommend a height separation between your primary fermenter and the empty secondary. If you have a carboy harness, now is the time to fasten your carboy into it, as it makes moving around a heavy beer-laden carboy much simpler. Put the primary above the secondary (on a table, sturdy chair, etc.) and your secondary on the floor (if it’s a glass carboy, place a towel on the floor before you set the carboy down). If the primary is above the secondary, it will help the flow of the beer between the containers – gravity is your friend. Just as with the wort transfer, you’ll connect your tubing to your auto-siphon, and will put the auto-siphon into the beer in your primary fermenter, and the end of the tube into the carboy (or whatever your secondary vessel may be). One important note is that oxygen is not a friend to your beer, so you want to avoid splashing the beer during the transfer, so make sure to get your tube in your carboy down into the vessel as close to the bottom as you can. Additionally, just as with the wort transfer, there will be trub (grain, hop, and yeast particulates) that settles on the bottom of the primary fermenter, so don’t put the auto-siphon all the way to the bottom of your fermenter. Just as with the wort transfer process, you’ll be able to see the trub line as it gets closer to the bottom, and again, I recommend stopping before you get to that line so as to avoid transferring any unwanted sediment.

Once the beer is transferred to the carboy, you’re ready for the secondary fermentation phase, but it is at this stage, before we put in the stopper and airlock, that we will add any desired additional flavor/aroma ingredients. If you’re dry-hopping an IPA, adding additional hops to the beer in the carboy at this stage will draw out aroma characteristics (and some flavor as well) but won’t extract additional bitterness into the beer. If you’re making a flavored stout with vanilla or cinnamon, or whatever ingredients you choose, this is also where you would add those ingredients. The only real limit is your imagination, so feel free to experiment. If you’re using a ready-made kit, they would have everything you need included, and most won’t be adding ingredients at this point. Most ingredients will float on the top of the beer, and you don’t need to worry about them being soaked or stirred in at this stage. Indeed you want to avoid any undue agitation, as agitation creates exposure to oxygen, which we want to avoid. Once all of your ingredients are added, put the stopper in the carboy, and the airlock in the stopper (filled with clean, bottled water yet again). It is advisable to fill the airlock with water before you put it in the stopper, as if you overfill, you don’t want that water to drip into your beer. A tip for the stopper is to make sure that the neck of the carboy as well as the stopper itself are dry, as the stopper is smaller than the carboy neck opening, and if it’s wet, it will often want to try to back out of the hole. As with the primary fermentation, you want to move your carboy to a cool, dark place to rest. The secondary takes a bit longer than primary fermentation, and it is advised to let it sit for 2 weeks (minimum). That’s all there is to it. Once more, we’re just waiting on time to take its course, so sit back, grab a beer from the fridge, and pat yourself on the back for a job well done.

Now that we have secured our equipment, and we have our ingredients, we’re going to focus on the best part – brew day! There’s nothing quite as exciting as brewing your first batch of beer, and it can seem a little intimidating, but if you read all of the instructions in advance and follow them throughout the process, you will be able to brew that first delicious batch of beer. Honestly, brewing the beer is the easy part. The hard part is waiting on the beer to finish primary and secondary fermentation so that you can get it bottled (which also has another wait period) and enjoy the fruit of your labor.

Before you get started with the business of brewing your beer, the step 1 is to take stock of all of the equipment that you need, and to get it sanitized. The brew day equipment list you have may vary slightly depending upon your kit/set-up, but the basics that everybody will be using that are needed on brew day are as follows: brew kettle (pot), brew spoon, primary fermenter (including the lid), airlock, auto-siphon, tubing, hydrometer, & thermometer. Make sure you read the instructions for your sanitizer thoroughly, and take your time with the process. Bacteria is the enemy of delicious beer, and you don’t want to go through all of the time and effort, only to have skunked beer at the end. The last advice I will give pertaining to sanitizing is quite important, as most beginner brew kits will have a plastic primary fermentation bucket. Do NOT use a scouring side of a sponge, or any other abrasive tool for cleaning/sanitizing the plastic fermenting bucket. It can scratch the surface of the bucket, and scratches are easy places for bacteria to hide. Also, make sure to use a fresh, clean sponge – don’t use the one in your kitchen that you use to clean countertops; it needs to be clean. Not only do you need a new sponge, but make sure to sanitize the sponge as well. As you use equipment during the process, make sure to put it back in your sanitizing bucket, as you will need several tools during multiple steps, and you want to make sure it remains sanitized.

Your equipment is sanitized, and you’re ready to get started with the actual business of brewing your beer, so make sure to get all of your ingredients in order. If you are using a pre-made brew kit, simply follow the instructions they provided for your specific beer. If you elected to buy your own ingredients, we can follow a similar path and achieve the same result. There will always be slight variances in the exact steps, methods, and measurements for each beer recipe, but we’ll cover the general procedure. I am again assuming that you are following an extract-based brew day, and NOT all-grain (we’ll cover all-grain in a separate blog post).

Step 2 is to steep your grains. Start by filling your brew kettle with 2.5 – 3 gallons of water (remember this is bottled, not tap), and bring the water to 150-165 degrees F – Note: if you’re using a large brew kettle with a built-in thermometer, and the water line doesn’t go at least 1 to 1.5 inches above the thermometer line, you can add additional water so that it covers it). Once the water has heated to the correct temperature range, add your crushed grains to the muslin bag, and tie a knot in the top of the bag. Steep the grains for ca. 20 minutes (while maintaining 150-165 F), then remove the grain bag from the pot/kettle. As you lift the bag out of the water, let the excess liquid drip out of the bag, but don’t squeeze the bag, you don’t need to get it all in the pot. You can now throw away the grains and grain bag. Your water is water no more, and is now wort.

Step 3 is the boil phase, and you need to bring the wort to a gentle, rolling boil. Add the liquid malt extract (LME) & dry malt extract (DME) to the kettle, and stir continuously as the water returns to a gentle rolling boil. It’s important to stir constantly, as you don’t want to malt extract to settle on the bottom of your kettle and burn. I also recommend having the LME already warmed up to make it easier to pour into the pot. About 10 minutes into step 1 where you steep the grains, run the LME container under hot tap water so that it warms up. LME is very thick and viscous, and you want to make the job of getting it into the kettle as easy as possible. I also like to take my sanitized brew spoon to get as much of the remaining LME out of the container and into the boil as possible. It will stick to the sides, and you want to get that into the kettle – the LME & DME is where the majority of your fermentable sugars come from.

Step 4 is where you add your hops to the boil. If you’re using a brew-in-a-bag kit, they will have included all of the hops that you need for this, as well as the timing of when to add the hops, which varieties, and how much of each. If you have a kit with clear instructions, simply follow what they say. If you’re going rogue and decided to do your own recipe, or don’t have a ready made kit with instructions, you can follow some general rules. For a no brew-kit IPA, or hop-centric beer, I’d add the hops in 3 phases – roughly 1/2 of them in first phase, 1/4 in second phase, and 1/4 in the third phase. As this is the boil phase, this is where the bittering effect of your beer will take place during the alpha acid extraction and conversion process under the heat of the boil. If you’re brewing a stout, or some other less bitter beer, I’d add the hops in 2 phases and boil out for a shorter amount of time. After each addition of hops to the wort, you will continue to let the beer sit at a gentle, rolling boil. The general target for the boiling phase is 1 hour, and the longer the hops are in the boil, the higher the alpha extraction. So, if you’re brewing a less bitter beer style and not using a kit, I would wait 30 minutes (halfway through the entire boil phase) before adding any hops, then boil 15 minutes after phase 1 hops added, add phase 2 hops and boil for the final 15 minutes.

Step 5 is a critical step, and it’s where we’re going to make use of the ice, as we now have to remove the brew kettle from heat, and get it cooled down as quickly as possible. Fill a sink, tub, whatever you have that is large enough to hold your brew kettle with cold water, and fill that with ice. Put the brew kettle into the ice bath. As the kettle is hot, the ice will melt quickly, so you will need to be monitoring the kettle and adding more ice as needed. The idea is to get the wort cooled down as quickly as possible, as bacteria growth occurs more easily at warmer temperatures. Once the temperature of the kettle has cooled down to 70 degrees F, we’re ready to move on to the next phase. Before moving on, a couple tips are to have the lid to your kettle (if it came with one) sanitized so that you can keep a lid on the kettle as it cools (this prevents anything from dripping/falling into your fresh wort). If you’re not using a kettle with a built-in thermometer, you’ll need to be vigilant in checking the temperature of your wort during the cooling phase. I’d check at least every 5 – 10 minutes.

Step 6 is where we transfer the wort from the brew kettle to the primary fermenter. Before you start, if you’re using a primary fermentation bucket with a spigot, be absolutely certain that the spigot is closed before you start the transfer. You don’t want to have your wort start pouring all over the floor, and lose the batch you just worked so hard to brew. Take your sanitized auto-siphon, and connect your tubing to it. Place the end of the tubing into your primary fermenter, and place the auto-siphon into the brew kettle. Don’t put the siphon all the way down to the bottom of the kettle, as we don’t want to get the trub (sediment on the bottom of the kettle) into the primary fermenter. As the wort volume drops during the transfer, it will become easy to see the bottom of the kettle and where the trub line is. I always stop the siphoning just above the trub line so as to avoid getting any large bits of sediment. There will always be some sediment that will transfer, but it will settle out during other phases of the beer making process, so don’t worry.

Step 7 is where we add water back to the wort to get it up to the level needed for our batch size (most brew kits assume a 5 gallon batch, but double-check what yours is before adding water back in). Again, this is bottled water, NOT tap water. Add the water to the wort to reach the correct volume for your batch, and make sure that the water is room temperature, or roughly in the 65-70 degree F range. If it’s slightly above or below, don’t sweat it, but it should be close to that temperature range. After the water is added, stir the wort thoroughly. Now we want to take a gravity reading of the wort so that we can calculate the ABV at the end of the fermentation process. Place your sanitized hydrometer in the wort, allow it to settle, and read the number at the wort line. That number is the original gravity (OG) reading. Make sure to keep the OG somewhere safe as a reference. I honestly recommend keeping a brew journal, or at least writing down your recipes and steps, etc. It’s great for trial and error, and let’s you tweak recipes in future. If you write it in a journal, your OG as well as FG (final gravity) and ABV will be right with that specific recipe for future use.

Step 8 is the final step of the brew day, and it’s where all of the real magic happens. We’re now going to pitch our yeast into our wort. Pitching yeast just means to toss the yeast into the wort. If you have a brew-kit, follow the instructions for your specific yeast. If it says open satchel and pitch, do exactly that. If your kit says to rehydrate the yeast first by adding to water then pitching (less common in brew kits), then do that. After the yeast is pitched, we’re going to stir again with our sanitized spoon. Now we put the lid on the fermenter, securely locking it into place, and prep the airlock. You will need to fill the airlock halfway with water (bottled water again, even for the airlock), and gently twist the airlock down into the bung in the lid. Carefully move the fermenter to where you will store it during the primary fermentation (this typically takes around 1 week for primary fermentation to conclude, but could take more or less time depending upon your specific beer and climate). The fermenter should be stored out of direct sunlight, and away from heat sources. Ideally, placing the fermenter in a dark place like a closet works best, but anywhere that the temperature is in the 65-70 degree F range (just like the water we added back to the wort in step 7).

Congratulations! You have now successfully made it through your first brew day. You will notice that typically within 24-48 hours, your airlock will be bubbling. This is your visual clue that fermentation is happening, and the yeast is doing its job and converting the sugary wort into beer. In the next blog we’ll be going over the process of the secondary fermentation, and will be 1 step closer to actually getting the beer into the bottles. For now, sit back and endure the hardest part, waiting on nature to run its course.

Now that you know what equipment you need in order to brew great beer at home, we’ll be taking a look at what ingredients are required. At its most basic, beer is comprised of 4 ingredients; water, malted barley, hops, & yeast. As I am focusing on first-time homebrewers, and as I suggested in part 1 of this blog series, I HIGHLY recommend starting with an extract-based brew for your first attempt. It is far simpler, and much less costly for someone who is trying to brew their first batch of beer. We’ll be proceeding under the assumption that you are doing an extract brew, but we will talk about all-grain brewing in a later blog about homebrewing.

There are a few ways to go about getting the ingredients you need for your first batch, and the specific ingredients needed obviously vary based on the style of beer that you intend to brew, but the general ingredients and suggestions I’ll be making apply to all beer styles. The simplest, and most cost-effective means of brewing your first batch of beer is to get a pre-made homebrew kit for the specific style that you want to brew. As with the homebrewing equipment itself, you can readily, and easily find beer recipe kits online for most styles you may want to try to brew. I recommend going this route for your first time, as it’s super simple, but if you want to piece together the ingredients yourself, we will cover them all, so you can certainly choose that path as well. As for ready-to-go beer recipe kits, you can get them on Amazon, or on any number of other homebrewing websites. You can usually get kits from the same store that has the equipment you bought. Several easy-to-find brands are Mr. Beer, Brewers Best, & Northern Brewers. The recipe kits are often referred to as brew-in-a-box kits, as they come in a box, and have all of the ingredients you need to make that specific style. All 3 of those brands sell kits on Amazon, and you can also go to their websites, or to a homebrew supply website as well. If you live in a larger metro area, chances are likely that you have at least 1 local homebrew supply shop, and the vast majority of those sell beer recipe kits.

For an extract-based brew day, you will need both liquid and dry malt extract. The specific malts used are based on the beer style you’re brewing. Pre-made kits have these selected for you so that your first batch tastes and smells as the style should. The malt extract is the primary source of color, malt flavor, and sugars in your beer. Each beer style has different types of malt required, so each kit will contain different volumes and types of both LME (liquid malt extract) & DME (dry malt extract). One pro-tip for the LME is to run it under hot water for 5 -10 minutes before you need to add it to the water during the brew phase, as it is very viscous, and it pours much more easily when heated up. Don’t microwave it or anything like that, just run the container itself under hot water, or fill a bucket with hot water and put the container in it. By hot water, I mean tap hot, not boiling. In addition to LME & DME, most ready-made beer kits will also have some dry grains of some sort and a muslin bag (kind of a cheesecloth like material). Most recipe kits will have you start by steeping the grains in the muslin bag first before any of the LME & DME is added to the recipe. If your kit doesn’t have any dry grains and a muslin bag, don’t worry, they don’t all have them, but it is more common than not.

The next major ingredient you’ll need/have in your kit are your hops. Make sure to read the instructions before starting the brewing process, as you want to have a clear understanding of the order of operations before you begin. This is particularly important when speaking of hops, as depending upon the beer style, all hops may be added to the boil at the same time, or they could be staged at various points of the boil. The staging is done to control the temperature and volume of hops added for alpha acid extraction (primarily) into the beer. Depending on your beer style, you may also have additional hops that are supposed to be added during the secondary fermentation phase, or for dry hopping. Dry hopping is a bit of a misnomer, as the hops are very much wet, they just are added after the beer has been brewed and fermented with yeast. Dry hopping is done during the secondary fermentation phase, after the beer is transferred from the primary fermenter (bucket, carboy, etc.) and into the secondary vessel. After the beer is transferred, the additional hops are added into that beer while it ferments and clarifies during the secondary phase. This phase doesn’t draw additional alpha acids into the beer, but adds additional layers of hop flavor, and aroma. Dry hopping is most often seen in IPAs as a way to impart additional aromas onto the beer.

The third ingredient involved in making your beer is arguably the most important, as without it, beer wouldn’t be beer, it would just be wort. We are referring to yeast of course, and specifically, ale yeast. How do I know that your first beer is an ale and not a lager? Ale is the oldest type of beer, and by a vast margin the simplest to brew, and the cheapest to brew. Lagers require expensive, more specialist equipment to brew, and are really not beginner-friendly, so most beer-in-a-box kits will be for some form of an ale style beer. Ale yeast has a much larger range of temperatures at which it functions and ferments your wort into beer, and as such, it is much more suitable to the vast majority of climates in the average home. The main key is to not leave your fermenter near a heat source. As hardy as ale yeast is, it still needs to be kept out of direct sunlight, away from warm appliances, etc. I recommend putting your fermenter in a dark closet away from light and heat sources. Ale yeast can impart a very large range of flavors into your beer, including complex esters and phenols that can produce a range of fruity characteristics in the beer’s flavor profile. Your specific beer kit may prompt you to pitch the dry yeast right on top of your beer to start fermenting, or it may have you dissolve the yeast in water, and pitch that yeast solution into your beer. Both methods achieve the same goal, and you should follow whatever instructions your kit calls for.

Lastly, we arrive at the final ingredient, and that which makes up the bulk of your beer recipe; water. The importance of water is often overlooked by a homebrewer, particularly those brewing their first batch at home. The type of water used can have a dramatic impact on the final product, and as such, I recommend steering clear of tap water. Using a high quality spring water or drinking water (bottled water) is the best practice for homebrewing. You will want to ensure that you have more than enough required for your batch of beer. If you’re brewing a standard 5 gallon batch, I’d make sure to have at least 7 gallons on-hand for brew day, as the volume will decrease during the boil due to evaporation, and you will be adding water back to the wort before you pitch your yeast. In addition to liquid water for the actual beer recipe, you’re also going to need ice, and a lot of it. If you have an ice-maker in your fridge, that’s great, but don’t expect that to be anywhere near enough for the brewing process. On my brew days (for 5 gallon batches) I completely use all of my ice maker’s ice as well as at minimum 4-6 additional bags of ice. Ice is needed to quickly cool the beer down to the needed temperature after the boil, and before you pitch the yeast. You can thrown your brew kettle into a bathtub filled with cold water and ice, or into your sink, whatever works for you, but it needs to be ice-cold to quickly drop the temperature. Warm temperatures are a bacteria breeding ground, and you don’t want skunky beer, so the quicker this is done, the better.

That is the basic ingredients needed for an extract-based brew day. If you buy a beer-in-a-box kit, it will come with everything you need except for water and ice. An important ingredient note is that if you don’t get a brew-in-a-box kit, you will also need priming sugar (this is for bottling your beer). Check that your kit comes with priming sugar, and if you buy ingredients piecemeal, be sure to add priming sugar to your ingredients list. In the next homebrewing blog we’ll be talking about the actual process of brewing your beer from step-to-step, and we’ll also give you some pointers and things learned from trial and error after many successful batches brewed. Until then, grab a beer from the fridge, and start planning what you want to brew on brew day. Cheers!

You’ve explored the vast array of beer styles from light, crisp lagers, to black-as-death imperial stouts, and everything in-between. You can blindly identify a kettle sour from a gose, and a Märzen from a Helles. You’ve visited all of your local craft brewers on many occasions, and your favorite craft beer bar knows your order as soon as you walk in the door. You more than dabble in the world of craft beer, and exciting as it is, you thirst for more. The question is, where do you go from here? Perhaps it’s time you roll up your sleeves and give brewing your own craft beer a whirl. Homebrewing beer is as old as beer itself, and for thousands of years, is the primary means by which most beer was brewed. Beer brewing is as much art as it is science, and it can seem intimidating at first, but if you know what to do, have the equipment that you need, and can follow directions, you too can brew amazing beer in your own kitchen.

As you embark on your homebrewing journey, there are several things to think about before you brew your first batch. The first thing to consider is whether or not you’re going to brew from extract, or make an all-grain brew. A decade or 2 ago, extracts for homebrewing were available, but the quality of the products was inconsistent at best. Fast-forward to today, and not only are extracts extremely consistent, but they are affordable, and make the entry-point to homebrewing as easy as following a recipe for dinner. Extract brewing also has the added bonus of requiring much less time, money, and equipment compared to all-grain brewing, and is the process I HIGHLY recommend anybody uses for at least their first few batches that they brew. Believe me, once you brew your first batch from extract, you’re not going to care that you didn’t do a small-scale version of what the big brewers do.

Before you select which style of beer you want to brew, and before you even consider what ingredient to get for your first brew day, you need to get the requisite equipment for brewing. There are several way to go about this, as just like extracts have come a long way in the past few decades, so too has the homebrewing equipment space changed rapidly. You can get individual items that you need in order to brew, or you can buy a purpose-built, all-in-one homebrewing solution. The all-in-one systems do typically contain more than 1 item in their brewing system, and you will need all of the various parts of the system in order for them to work together properly. While they do work very well, they are also very costly, so I recommend going the old-fashioned route, and buying the basic tools you need in order to brew on your stovetop. The basic tools are as follows: brew kettle, brew spoon, carboy (I recommend getting 2 carboys – we’ll expand on this later), fermentation bucket, auto-siphon, silicon tubing, thermometer, hydrometer, bung(s), airlock(s), bottle filler, bottle capper, bottle caps, sanitizer, scale, empty bottles, bottle cleaning brush, and bottle drying rack. This is not an exhaustive list, as there are a lot of items on the market that you can get to make things easier for you, but these are the basic tools of the trade. You can find all of these items online from multiple different brewing supply stores (I recommend checking out Midwest Supplies – and no, I’m not sponsored, they just have really great starter kits for a fair price), and most of them have homebrew starter kit package deals that include everything you need to succeed on brew day for a reasonable price. As all suppliers and kits vary, you’ll want to double-check that your kit comes with all of the basic essentials that I listed. I’ll also make note of some other things you may want to consider, but that aren’t necessary.

Assuming that the brewing equipment list didn’t scare you off – and there’s no need to be scared, you can absolutely brew great beer on your first attempt – we’re going to expand on some of the specific items in the equipment list. Most homebrewing kits will come with anywhere from a 6 – 4 gallon carboy (or carboys depending upon the kit), as the average homebrew batch size is a 5 gallon batch. I like a 6 gallon carboy or fermenting bucket with spigot for the primary fermentation stage, as having the extra room makes everything a lot neater. I also wouldn’t recommend any smaller than a 5 gallon carboy even for the secondary fermentation vessel. 4 gallons can just be too small volumetrically, even if there is evaporation during the boil. Another nice item (or 2 if you have 2 carboys) to make your life simpler is a carboy harness. You don’t want to drop your carboy full of beer, and they’re heavy, so having a harness for your carboy makes that process that much simpler and safer. As for brew kettles, you can get a fancy, purpose-built brew kettle that has a built-in thermometer and ball valve, or as simple as a tall stock pot. No matter which option you choose, I recommend getting at least a 7 gallon capacity vessel if you intend to brew standard homebrewing 5 gallon batches. Yet again, it keeps things much tidier having that extra space with which to work. If you opt for (or your kit comes with) a fermenting bucket for your primary fermentation, make sure that it has a spigot built-in. The silicon tubing is used in many of the steps in transferring from vessel-to-vessel. It’s cheap, and used often, so I would get plenty of extra hosing just to make your life simple. Depending upon your set-up, the length of hosing can vary, but it can’t really be too long, so I’d aim for 6 foot sections on the extra tubing you buy. Most homebrew kits come with 3/8 inch spigot, so make sure your tubing is sized to fit and make a nice, tight seal. Finally, for sanitizer, there are plenty of options out there, and it’s all preferential, but 1 Step is an easy-to-use product that will sanitize all of your equipment in 1 step. Simply add the sanitizer to a cleaning bucket of water, mix, and soak each item in the solution for 10-15 minutes.

This is not an all-inclusive list of all homebrewing equipment out there, but rather the basics that you will need to actually make your first batch of beer in your home. As you progress in your homebrew journey, you’ll most likely start to figure out what you really like about what you have and what you’d like to change, and there are a ton of options out there for additional equipment, and equally as many equipment upgrades. In the next homebrewing blog we’ll focus on the ingredient side of things, and from there, you’ll be ready to brew your first batch of beer. Homebrewing is a journey, a learning experience, and a very rewarding endeavor. There’s nothing quite like getting to enjoy the fruit of your labor, and what better way to do so than by brewing the beer that you want to drink. Cheers!