Hobby – Home Brewing For Newbies

Making home brew has been a very satisfying pastime for many a beer drinker for many years. In recent years it has become easier and easier to make beer in the comfort of your own home. Home brew starter kits and ingredients are now available online, in specialist stores and even in some high street supermarkets.

First-time home brewers would be well recommended to purchase a kit from one of the many places where they can be found. There are various types of starter kits usually ranging from about 20 for the most basic.

When purchasing a starter kit for making your home brew, you should ensure that it has at least the following items: a fermentation bucket, something to extract the beer from the fermentation bucket i.e. a syphoning tube and of course the key ingredients of the brew: yeast and malt extract. Sometimes you will get sugar provided but the cheaper the kit, the more you’ll have to buy. You will of course need some receptacle to store it in.

To prepare your brew, it is first necessary to mix your ingredients in the fermentation bucket: malt extract mixed with hot water and the sugar. Then you will need to add up to another 19 litres of cold water and to allow the mixture to come to somewhere near room temperature before adding the yeast. Add your yeast and then it will take up to 6 days to transform the sugar to alcohol.

After this first process is finished, it will be time to bottle your beer (or to put it in a pressurised barrel). It will need to be primed with enough sugar so that gas can be formed from the remaining yeast, but not so much that too much gas will be produced, usually about teaspoon per litre. After bottling, you wait another 2 weeks and you should have the perfect brew.

Find out more about purchasing home brew supplies online!