home brewing

Basic Equipment to Start Brewing Beer By Gregory McLaw

In order to begin brewing your own beer at home you will first need to have a taste for good beer. If you enjoy drinking Bud, Coors or Miller ad nausea you probably won't care much for homebrew. However, if you have already acquired a taste for a variety of micro-brews and enjoy trying new and different beers then you are a prime candidate for brewing your own beer.

To get started making your own beer at home I recommend purchasing a brew kit and one or more extract ingredient kits. You will also need a pot that will allow you to boil 2 or 3 gallons of water (the bigger the better), and enough beer bottles for 5 gallons (about 54 if they are 12 oz. each). The bottles should not be a twist top.

Virtually every local and Internet homebrew store sells kits that do not have a gasket seal on the fermentation bucket. Since sanitation is critical in home brewing I recommend a fermentation bucket that has a seal to help keep your beer from becoming contaminated. About 90 percent of the kits sold on the internet and in local stores use an inexpensive food grade type lid with no sealing gasket.

Find a kit that contains a 6.5 gallon primary fermenter, 6.5 gallon bottling bucket with bottling spigot, 5 gallon Better Bottle PET secondary carboy fermenter, instructions, C-Brite sanitizer, twin lever capper, triple scale hydrometer, airlock, pre-drilled universal carboy stopper, liquid crystal thermometer, siphon hose and shut-off clamp, Fermtech auto siphon, bottle filler and a bottle brush.

One of the more difficult tasks in home brewing is transferring the liquids. When making beer, you can't start a siphon with your mouth due to the hazards of bacterial contamination. The auto-siphon solves this problem completely. I was amazed how well this worked the first time I used it. Just pull up then push down a couple of times and the siphon starts. Also get a kit with a Better Bottle PET Carboy for secondary fermentation, to produce clearer beers. This carboy has less weight than glass, an equivalent performance, and no chance of breaking. This kit is a great value for beginning brewers.

Pick out an extract kit of a beer that you would like to try. Read these instructions and you are all ready to brew. Lastly, go to makebeerathome for information on the brewing process.