Delicious and Simple: Home Beer

For those who love the delicious taste of micro brewery beers, making their own home beer is an option so that the taste can be modified to fit the occasion. Creating a home beer making system is fairly simple and inexpensive, costing under two hundred dollars for the entire setup in most cases. Unless the individual wants to have an automatic system which can run close to three thousand dollars, a simple manual system brews seven gallons of beer at a time on average and can be done simply with a beer making kit.

Equipment and Supplies

Some of the home beer equipment is already found in the kitchen. To make it, individuals will need rubber spatulas, stirring spoons, sauce pans, and pot holders. In addition, the brew pot may also already be in the kitchen, as long as the pot can hold about sixteen quarts and is made of stainless steel or enamel coated metal, then the individual is all set. If this is not in the kitchen already, then the individual will need to buy one so that the beer will not end up tasting like metal.

In addition, individuals will need to purchase a primary fermenter from a brew shop. The fermenter also needs an airlock and stopper so that the carbon dioxide can be let out of the fermenter so that it will not explode during the three to five day process of beginning fermentation, but will also not let any air into the system which will harm the process. Home beer systems also require a food grade five plastic hose for transferring the beer, as well as bottle brushes for doing a thorough cleaning of the bottles, dark glass beer bottles, bottle tops and a bottling machine. All of these supplies should run under two hundred dollars total, so although it is a lot of supplies, once bought, the individual is ready to make beer at any time.

Once individuals have all the equipment for making home beer, then they will need to choose a beer kit, which contains all of the major ingredients for making beer other than the fermentable materials. Buying a beer kit is a good idea for beginning beer makers since it reduces the chances for error. Some advanced beer makers still use kits since they are easy and reliable to use. Other than the kit, individuals must choose what type of fermentable ingredient they want to use and buy at least two pounds of it. Fermentable ingredients include brewer's sugar, demerera sugar, liquid malt extract, and dry malt extract.