Home Brewing Equipment

Before you can being a homebrewing project, you need to assemble your equipment and make sure that is clean. A little organization will make brewing a pleasure. It's a good idea to recruit a friend or fellow beer lover to help you brew --especially the first time you try it.

You can buy a homebrewing kit or visit a homebrewing shop to assemble or update the ingredient and tool you will need.

Basic Ingredients

Water: Seems obvious that you would need water to brew beer, but the kind of water makes a difference. The better the water, the better the beer. Try to start with 22-30 liters (six-eight gallons) of spring water.

Malt: This is the basic material that gets transformed into beer. Usually it's some kind of barley grain. Buy online or from a local store.

Yeast: These live organisms turn the sugars into carbon dioxide (the bubbles) and alcohol.

Hardware

Brew kettle: This container will store unfermented liquid ('wort') to be boiled. Often a five-gallon glass carboy (like a large water bottle) is used. Hops and other ingredients are added through the spout at the top.

Fermenter: A container with a lid, it will be used to hold the cooled wort. Yeast will be added to carry-out the fermenting process. Two are required if secondary fermentation is part of the recipe.

Bottling tank: You'll siphon the fermented beer into a container before bottling. Like all the equipment, it's essential that this be completely clean.

Beer bottles: You'll need clean beer bottles for storing the final product (assuming you and your friends don't drink five gallons of beer right out of the tank). Dark brown bottles are best, to keep beer from being spoiled by light during storage.

Bottle filler: A spring-loaded device used to fill the bottle when the end is pressed. Available, as is the other equipment, from any of dozens of homebrew kit sales sites online.

Capper: Optional, but helpful, to put caps onto the bottles. Corks or screwtops are alternatives, but each has drawbacks. Cork can splinter or introduce mold into the brew. Screwtops need to be seated properly in order to ensure a tight seal to avoid oxygen spoilage.

Tubing: Various siphon tubes, copper and/or glass and/or hard plastic. Sometimes the copper tubing is formed into a wort chiller. Formed in a spiral around the tank, cold water flows through to draw heat away from the boiled wort. Helpful, not essential for many recipes.

Other items: A thermometer is essential to check the temperature at various stages. A hydrometer is helpful, to measure something called 'specific gravity'. SG is a measure of the density of some material relative to water. Not critical but extremely helpful. A timer with a loud bell or buzzer, so you don't forget those time critical moments.

Heat source: You'll need a method for boiling and cooling. Air will often take care of the cooling need. Heating can be carried out by a dozen different methods, usually some kind of Bunsen burners or electric heating coils.

Final Preparation

The equipment should be cleaned, and many recommend sterilization with a dilute bleach followed by rinsing in boiling water. At least part of the environment should be able to be kept cool, below 13ºC (55ºF) for part of the time.

Be prepared to spend a few hours on two different days to get things ready.