Home Brewing Tips for Beginners: How to Brew Your First Beer
Posted by Ron on 1st Jun 2021
If you want to know how to brew your first beer, we have the right information and some motivation to get you started right away! We’ll talk about the ingredients and equipment you need for proper homebrewing and give you a brief step-by-step guide.
You will be amazed at how easy and affordable homebrewing is. In fact, you may even regret the fact you hadn’t started doing it earlier.
Brewing Beer for Beginners: What Do You Need to Start Brewing Beer
Before you start, you need to have the right set of equipment and ingredients. When it comes to brewing beer for beginners, the essentials include:
- beer kit (typically consists of a pouch of brewing extract, yeast, and carbonation drops)
- 4+ gallon pot
- fermentation bucket
- airlock or stopper
- racking cane/auto-siphon
- bottling wand
- PVC tubing (⅜ inch beer line)
- bottles
- caps and a capper
- no-rinse cleaner and food-grade sanitizer
Additionally, you may use a waterproof thermometer and hydrometer for precise measurements.
As you can see, there is a lot of different equipment which can sound overwhelming. To make it easier, start with these two options:
- purchase all the parts and ingredients individually (not the recommended way of brewing for beginners)
- purchase a home brew starter kit (recommended way of brewing for beginners)
For your first time brewing beer at home, a starter kit would be the right thing to do since it comes with all the necessary equipment and ingredients to brew your first batch.
Also, we wouldn’t really recommend all grain brewing for beginners as things like partial mash and all-grain brewing require more advanced techniques.
Beer Brewing for Beginners Step-by-Step Guide
The process of home brewing for beginners looks like this:
- You prepare the ingredients and get the equipment ready (cleaning)
- Add and mix the ingredients
- Add yeast
- Leave the beer to ferment for about 14 days
- Test the beer to see if it’s ready
- Bottle the beer
- Enjoy your freshly brewed batch!
- Clean + sanitize the equipment
The beer brewing for beginners’ process can take you about 21 to 28 days, depending on the style of beer.
Typically, you would need around 20 minutes to mix the ingredients, then leave them to brew for approximately 7 days. After that, you bottle the beer (takes about 40 minutes) and leave it to ferment. Once the brew has been in the bottle for 2 weeks, you just have to cool it down and enjoy!
For more home brewing tips for beginners, product reviews, how-tos, and step-by-step guides, follow our blog updates.
How to Choose the Best Beer Brewing Kit for Beginners
What is the best home-brewing kit for beginners? That can be a tricky question; you have to consider the following factors:
- level of homebrewing skills
- budget
- personal preferences
If you have absolutely zero experience in homebrewing and just want to try it out to see if it’s worth the effort, we recommend getting a 2-gallon homebrewing kit for beginners from Mr. Beer. These guys specialize in kits for small-batch brewing and offer excellent entry-level products that should get you started right away.
If home brewing kits for beginners aren’t your thing and you’re looking for something more interesting, we recommend going with one of Coopers beer kits. Using this DIY homebrew kit, you can produce 6 gallons of delicious beer. Plus, there are plenty of refills featuring some really exotic styles of beer.