Brewing for Beginners Part I - Getting Started

Always with me on brew days.

In honor of national “Learn to Homebrew Day,” which takes place on the first Saturday of November each year, I thought I would start a series on home brewing and how easy it is to make great beer at home.  I’ve been brewing at home for years, and with a little bit of preparation, you can make whatever kind of beer you like in your kitchen or in your garage. 

When I got started brewing several years ago, I started with a Basic Home Brewing kit from The Homebrewery in Ozark, Missouri (Map).  Their kits are as good or better than any found online, and the service staff is very knowledgeable and friendly.  Plus, they’re local.  The kit includes almost everything you need to brew your first batch, from boil to bottle, including some very good instructions.  There are only three things missing from the kit that you will need:

1. Bottles – get your friends to save all brown bottles that aren’t twist off for you.  You’ll need just over 2 cases. Make sure that they are very thoroughly rinsed out.  You don’t want to have to try and get out what grows in the bottom of beer bottles. There’s a reason home brewers call it “beercrete.”
2. A heat source – a stove will work, as long as it can boil enough water, but I use an outdoor burner and brew in a garage. Keep in mind if you are boiling on an electric range that it can take a very long time to boil large volumes of water on a stove top, and you may want to get an outdoor burner instead. 
3. A stock pot – to start, you can use anything that will successfully boil 2 to 2.5 gallons, but the larger volume you can boil the better.  Avoid uncoated aluminum if possible.  It can add a slight metallic taste, but enamel pots are just fine, and stainless pots are the best.

Homebrewery's standard equipment kit.

You might also invest in a good starter book.  In my opinion, the absolute best beginner’s book for brewing is The Complete Joy of Homebrewing by the modern father of homebrewing, Charlie Papazian. 

The basic process of making beer is deceptively easy, especially if you use extract (which I highly recommend for first-timers).  The basic process goes something like this:

Heat as much water as will fit in your pot (at least 2 gallons) up to 170 degrees F.  Steep your specialty grains according to the instructions, then remove them.  Add your malt extract and boil, adding the hops as indicated in the kit.  Cool the unfermented beer (which is called “wort”) to about 70 degrees F as fast as possible without contaminating your beer with bacteria. Put it into the fermenting bucket and pitch your yeast.  Set it somewhere dark and at room temp.  In about two weeks, bottle it according to the instructions. 

Since each recipe differs somewhat, I’ll not go into specifics, but I do have some tips for how to make sure your beer is delicious and you don’t have any moments of sheer panic.

Cleaning is everything.

First rule of brewing is to keep everything clean.  Wash everything before and after you brew to ensure that you don’t contaminate your beer with bacteria which will cause bad flavors.  This rule is especially important for anything that comes into contact with the beer after the boil, but it’s a good idea to clean and sanitize everything.

Watch your Boil.

Keep a spray bottle of clean, cold water on hand for the beginning of your boil.  Beer tends to boil over in the first few minutes of the boil process.  Spraying down the foam on the top can help to reduce the likelihood of a boil-over, which can be very messy (especially on your stove). 

Also watch for boil-overs whenever you add hops.  When first added, hops can form a “thermal blanket” on the top of your brew, which can cause it to boil over.

Cool it quick and clean. 

If you do not have a fancy wort chiller, you can partially submerge your pot in a sink of ice and water to speed the cooling process.  Remember to make sure not to get any unclean water into your wort. 

If you are boiling 2 or three gallons of wort, you can cool your beer very quickly using sanitized ice.  The night before you brew, boil a couple of gallons of water.  When it’s boiled for ten minutes, let it cool until cold enough to put into gallon-sized Ziploc bags.  When you’re ready to cool your wort, chuck these babies in the boiling pot and stir.  The water you’re adding is sanitized, so you won’t actually be contaminating it.

I’m breaking a cardinal sin by telling you this next part.  When I started, I would boil 2.5 gallons, and then add cold city tap water to make up my 5 gallons.  The result was not perfect, as Springfield’s water contains some sanitation chemicals which will affect the overall flavor, but it was good enough for those early batches and got me by until I could boil a full 5 gallon batch at once.  If you’re outside of the city, I wouldn’t try this with well water, though.  The bacteria in your well can’t hurt or kill you if added to your beer, but it might make it taste pretty awful, and who wants 5 gallons of awful beer?

Final notes.

That’s pretty much the quick and dirty version of how to brew beer.  Next up, we’ll talk about fermenting and bottling.  Remember, even if you do everything wrong, the beer you make won’t kill you.  There is no harmful bacterium that can live in fermented beer. Any contamination might make it taste odd or awful, but it will still be beer, and it will still be safe to drink.  Remember Charlie Papazian’s now-famous home brewing motto: “Relax.  Don’t worry.  Have a homebrew.”