Brew Your Own Beer

Get Your Equipment

You can either go online to sites such as northernbrewer.com, or visit your local homebrew shop, but you will need some equipment to brew your own beer. At a minimum, you will need a brew kettle, a fermenting vessel such as a 5-gallon carboy, a fermentation lock, a means of siphoning, and a way to bottle your brewed beer. Most homebrew shops are laid back places, so let them know that you are starting out and don't want to spend a lot of money.

Get Ingredients

Most homebrew shops or sites will sell recipe kits which include malt extract, hops, and yeast. Some may also include extra grain for flavoring. Get a kit, and make sure they include instructions. Ales ferment at room temperature and are ready sooner than lagers.

Keep it simple your first few times out. Not only will simple recipes cost you less, but they also have a better chance of coming out well.

Sanitize Your Equipment

Everything that will touch the beer needs to be sanitized. Sanitizing kills naturally occurring bacteria so that your yeast, instead of the bacteria, ferments the beer. For new brewers, iodine is an easy way to sanitize since it works more quickly than bleach. Soak your equipment in accordance with your sanitizer's instructions, then rinse it off. Put it on a clean surface so that it stays sanitary.

Brew Your Wort

Put the ingredients for your beer into your brew kettle and bring it to a boil. You will typically need to boil your wort for one hour, and may need to periodically add ingredients during the boil, such as flavoring and aroma hops. Stir the wort so that it does not burn on the bottom of the pan.

Chill Your Wort

When the boil is completed, immediately cool it down to an appropriate temperature for your yeast, which is typically room temperature. Active home brewers will use a wort chiller, although you can also try doing a short boil of 1-2 gallons then adding 3-4 gallons of very cold water to get to a five gallon batch.

Rack and Pitch

Transfer your wort to your fermenting vessel with a sanitized siphon, and pitch in your brewing yeast. Cap the bottle with a fermentation lock filled with water, and leave it in a dark corner to ferment. If your recipe calls for it, transfer it to a secondary fermenting vessel after a week or so to further refine.

Bottle and Carbonate

Once your beer has fermented, transfer it to sanitized bottles using a sanitized siphon. Follow your recipe's instructions for carbonating the beer, such as adding a small quantity of yeast or unfermented sugar to the bottle, and cap the bottle. It should be ready to drink in about a week. Enjoy!

Ales ferment at room temperature and are ready sooner than lagers