The first time I homebrewed, I originally set out to make a Belgian dubbel. But I quickly learned that making an ale with assorted sugars and finicky yeast would have presented too many challenges for a beginner, such as myself. I ended up opting for something more straightforward – an English-style Extra Special Bitter (ESB).

To figure out which characteristics I wanted to emulate and avoid, I sampled around a dozen commercial ESBs. What was I looking for? While subjective, my preferences leaned toward a low bitterness with enough hop structure to balance the malt sweetness; a solidly medium mouthfeel that didn’t feel at all thin; a zesty carbonation restrained enough to avoid evoking soda. My favorite ended up being one of the world’s classics: Fuller’s ESB, from the U.K.

Based on my likes and dislikes, my friend, who owned a brew-on-premise (BOP) facility, wrote up a recipe and together we churned out more than two cases of astonishingly good brew using the equipment at his shop. (I give him 100 percent of the credit.)

Thanks to help from some extremely experienced homebrewers, my subsequent attempts have almost all turned out well. To write this guide for anyone interested in brewing beer for the first time, I’ve asked three of the nation’s top homebrewing pros for their best advice.

How Did Homebrewing Start?

All brewing started as homebrewing. Some archeologists believe hunter-gatherers in Africa started making rudimentary grain-based alcohol tens or even hundreds of thousands of years ago and began drinking and serving it to their families on the regular. Because they made it part of their daily meal, tribal gatherers – primarily women – likely took on the task while men hunted.

This sort of arrangement carried through myriad civilizations – from ancient Babylon to Colonial America – and usually found homebrewing women selling their surplus for profit. But consistently across time and space, men have seen the potential for profit and taken brewing outside the home and out of women’s hands.

Fast forward to the late 1970s. Homebrewing beer had been illegal in the U.S. since the Prohibition, but stealthy entrepreneurs and beer enthusiasts subversively continued to practice the art. Thanks to lobbying by a winemaking-shop owner named Nancy Crosby and a few colleagues, then-President Jimmy Carter legalized homebrewing on the federal level once again.

In 1978, Colorado brewing instructor Charlie Papazian established the American Homebrewers Association (AHA), and in 2017, the organization estimated that 1.1 million homebrewers produced 1.4 million barrels (1 bbl = 31 gallons) of beer that year, equaling one percent of American beer production.

Is It Worth Splurging on Expensive Equipment and Kits?

Our ancient forebears probably would have marveled at all of the options we have for homebrewing today. All the whats, wheres, whens and hows depend on personal preference, budget, level of expertise and time and space considerations.

If you want to drop some cash right away, consider buying a newbie-friendly all-in-one system like the well-loved Grainfather G30, Brewzilla All Grain 3.1.1, Brewer’s Edge Mash & Boil Series 2 or the Anvil Foundry.

But my advice to a first timer is to make sure you like brewing before making any greater investment than you have to, as it can get very expensive and overwhelming quickly. Before you splurge on a sophisticated set-up or eat up your energy with equipment you don’t understand, try it out with an employee at a BOP or with a colleague who knows what they’re doing. Most of the 2,000-plus homebrew clubs around the country host an annual Big Brew Day the first Saturday in May and Learn to Homebrew Day the first Saturday of November to teach and promote the hobby to the public. Otherwise, any one of them should happily introduce you to local homebrewing vets who’d more than welcome a one-time apprentice.

With your guided tutorial(s) completed, consider moving on to a brew-in-a-box kit. Untold numbers of professional brewers unknowingly started their careers on an everything-included Mr. Beer starter kit that can prepare beer in 30 minutes. Some shops put together their own. Whichever you choose, make sure it’s fresh.

If you’d rather spend more money and less time – not to mention mess and learning curve – you can skip right to a WiFi-enabled automated machine that allows you to simply pick a recipe, order a pre-packed box of ingredients and dial in your digits.

Purist Nancy Rigberg, co-owner of Philadelphia’s Home Sweet Homebrew supply store, strongly suggests taking it step-by-step instead of skipping the fundamentals.

“It’s like the meal kits. You can get everything pre-packed and you don’t have to know anything, which kinda sucks because you don’t learn anything,” she says. “Work your way up. Learn how to crawl before you learn to walk before you run a marathon.”

If you opt to embark on your own old-school homebrewing adventure, read on.

What to Know Before Homebrewing

Where Should I Homebrew at Home?

Most DIY homebrewers start over their kitchen stove. Space constraints will determine how much you can expand your system but you’ll be golden if you have a cool (temperature, not style) garage, basement or shed where you can take your hobby to the next level.

When selecting your spot, know that homebrewing can get messy and even dangerous, particularly if your water boils over or your beer over-ferments and explodes.

What Equipment Should I Buy?

Start small by using an oversized pot you already own or, as mentioned, by buying minimal equipment until you grow into bigger and better. And shop at your local homebrew shop if possible. You’ll get personalized advice and answers to all your questions. Rigberg says you can typically get everything you need, including ingredients, for around $100.

Here are the most basic tools you’ll need for a first-time brew using canned base-malt extract and specialty grains:

Cleaner: Paste made from baking soda and water works as well as anything you can purchase in the store.

Sanitizer: Don’t skimp on sanitizer. Either buy a no-rinse, homebrew-specific brand or dilute one ounce of bleach per gallon of water. Rinse out the bleach solution after you use it.

Soft Sponge: A non-abrasive sponge won’t scratch up plastic in a way that leaves indentations where bacteria can fester.

Stirring Spoon: You’ll need to stir your wort (unfermented beer) with a plastic, wood or stainless-steel spoon long enough to reach the bottom of your brew pot or whatever vessel you’re using for boiling.

Measuring Cup: Any size. Any material.

Strainer: A fine-mesh straining bag or colander will keep hops and other solid waste from transferring from your kettle to your fermenter along with your wort.

Brew Pot: This is the kettle where you boil your malt, hops and any other ingredients. Get an 8-10 gallon pot for a five-gallon brew.

Heat Source: Your stove should suffice as long as you’re brewing five gallons or less. If not, consider a turkey fryer.

Fermenter: Though many homebrewers favor a glass or plastic carboy that resembles an office water cooler jug, the AHA recommends starting by buying a bucket with a sealed rubber lid that contains a hole for the airlock. You’ll need a 6.5-gallon bucket for a standard five-gallon batch.

Airlock and Bung: Homebrew-sized fermenters need an airlock to release gas pressure building inside the tank. Some set-ups call for a bung to secure the airlock. Generally, you’ll need a bung for a carboy but not for a lidded bucket.

Auto-siphon and Food-grade Plastic Tubing: I like how the AHA puts it: “A siphon and tubing is a great way to streamline moving hot wort or finished beer around without the hassle and mess of lifting and pouring (and spilling!) large quantities by hand.”

Hydrometer: A hydrometer measures the gravity (sugar density) in wort and beer. You don’t need a hydrometer per se, but you should really get one if you can. There’s no better way to take gravity readings, which let you calculate alcohol content and tell you if your fermentation has finished.

Thermometer: Like the hydrometer, a thermometer is technically an optional instrument. But you’ll sure wish you had one when you want to figure out whether your wort is at the right temperature to pitch your yeast. Buy a calibrated thermometer that can hold up to high heat.

Bottling Equipment: Most early-stage homebrewers bottle instead of keg because it’s easier and doesn’t require a draft system. Before you bottle, buy:

• A bottling bucket with a spigot
• A spring-loaded bottle filler with vinyl tubing that fits the spigot (usually 5/16”)
• Five ounces of priming sugar for a five-gallon batch
• 54 empty beer bottles (brown glass bottles are best for keeping out light)
• Beer bottle caps
• A bottle capper

Where Do I Find a Recipe?

Now comes time to choose your recipe. It makes sense to start by cloning a beer you like. Many breweries now make some of their recipes and instructions available in brewing magazines and elsewhere.

Annie Johnson – AHA Homebrewer of the Year, former recipe developer for PicoBrew and recipe writer for Craft Beer & Brewing magazine – advocates starting with a simple style (a.k.a. not a lager, sour or, ahem, a boozy Belgian) and recreating it until you perfect it.

“English brown ale, a nut brown, a pale ale, they’re forgiving. If there are boo-boos you can cover it up with hops,” she says. “And get a house beer. Jumping to a different style each time is fun, but you won’t necessarily get better. The goal is to replicate. You want to have consistency.”

Depending on whose recipe you use and what type of malt they recommend, you need to next decide whether to do an extract, an extract with specialty grains, a partial mash or an all-grain brew. Most beginners start with canned extract malt as their starch source instead of futzing with whole grains, though the AHA is encouraging newbies to experiment with extract for the base plus a one-step addition of specialty grains for more color and depth of flavor.

What Ingredients Do I Need?

Once you select your recipe, it’s time to shop for ingredients. Follow the recipe’s recommendations or consult with an expert to determine whether to buy dry or wet yeast, and hops that come in pellets, whole cones or an alternative formulation like powder. Johnson says go for dry yeast; it’s cheaper and doesn’t take as much work. Pellets are the green standard for hops.

Make sure you have everything you need – including a solid understanding of your recipe – before you start your brew day.

Be Sure to Sanitize

Okay, you’ve got your equipment, recipe and ingredients. It must be time to brew, right? Not quite. First comes the most important step of brewing: sanitizing, sanitizing, sanitizing.

Don’t make homebrewing’s biggest mistake by failing to clean and sanitize literally everything that will come into contact with your wort and beer. Contamination can spoil your beer, bigtime.

Further, remove all soap residue that can create off-flavors, and don’t forget about your bottles.

Johnson says, “I buy Pacifico and after we drink it I run the bottles through the dishwasher cycle with no soap.”

You can dip your bottles in sanitizer instead but running them through the hot cycle requires less manual labor and does a decent job of sanitizing, too.

How to Homebrew Beer

Before we break down the homebrewing process into bite-sized pieces, let’s take a down-and-dirty look at the brewing process as a whole. Beer starts with grains – usually barley – that contain starches. The starches, in most cases, become accessible to the brewer during the malting process, which usually occurs at a malthouse, before they reach the brewery. Once at a brewhouse, a step called mashing uses hot water to convert the starches to sugar; that sugar water gets boiled in a kettle containing hops, which give the beer its bitterness along with key aspects of aroma and flavor. This hoppy sugar water, called wort, moves to a fermentation tank where it meets up with the yeast that will turn those sugars into alcohol and carbonation. After resting, to let the chemical reactions do their work, and a few other optional steps, the finished beer is finally ready to drink!

Mashing

Extract Plus Specialty Malts: First, you must mash your grains, called malt, to convert their starches into sugars that your yeast can transform into alcohol and carbon dioxide during fermentation. Don’t worry about mastering the science. If you buy canned malt extract, you simply have to dump a few cans of goo into a boiling pot to make that happen. If all goes well, chemistry will take care of the rest.

The AHA is encouraging extract-using homebrewers to add one simple step to what I’ve just described, and that’s to steep a bag of specialty malts first. This adds color and complexity to your brew without adding the headache of coaxing enzymatic conversion from whole-grain base malts. With or without specialty grains, the entire brewing process takes about two hours.

The AHA says in order to use specialty grains, “Slowly heat water to the suggested recipe temperature in a brew pot on your stovetop. Place specialty grains in a grain bag or cheesecloth and tie off the ends so the grains can’t escape. Steep your specialty grains in the brew pot and water to the suggested recipe temperatures and time. Remove grains. Let the bag drip over the brew pot and then remove.”

Take your boiling water off the heat and follow the Extract-Only instructions below.

Extract-Only: If you haven’t already boiled your water and taken it off the hot burner, do so now. Stir in the extract until it dissolves completely then return the water to a boil.

Hopping

Once the liquid reaches a rolling boil, add the hops in stages according to the recipe. The instructions will probably tell you to add them with a certain amount of time left in the boil. That is, a 30-minute hop addition occurs at the 30-minutes-to-go mark.

With that, you’ve officially made wort! Once cooled, take your first hydrometer reading to record your original gravity.

Pro Tip: Take detailed notes on all of your readings in a dedicated notebook, along with ingredients and other variables so you can repeat successes and avoid failures.

Fermenting

Pour cold water to the halfway mark of your cleaned, sanitized fermenter. Then, use the cleaned, sanitized siphon and tubing to transfer your wort after it’s cooled to the suggested temperature for the yeast you are using. Fill your fermenter with cool water until it hits the number of gallons called for in the recipe, and let the wort sit until it drops to the correct temperature.

Use this time to clean and sanitize your airlock and bung, if you have one. To sanitize the airlock fill it with no-rinse sanitizer or inexpensive, high-proof liquor. Though oxygen proves detrimental to yeast function during active fermentation, at this stage you’ll want to introduce a bit of oxygen by shaking the fermenter vigorously for up to two minutes to promote cell growth. Do your best not to splash it again until it’s ready to bottle.

Store the fermenter in a relatively cool, dark, out-of-the-way place, checking after 12 to 72 hours for bubbles in the airlock and a foam on top called kraeusen. If your beer stops bubbling or kraeusening, read the gravity two days in a row to see if fermentation has merely paused or stopped completely. (If fermenting properly, the gravity should eventually fall to its intended target. If it’s stopped, you may need to pitch more yeast or move the fermenter to a warmer room.)

This part of the process requires patience, as it can take one to four weeks, and sometimes longer, for full fermentation.

Priming, Bottling and Drinking

Hooray! You’ve hit your final gravity and bottling day has arrived. Bottling can present challenges for two hands alone, so invite a friend to assist.

As you may suspect from your brew-day experience, you can’t just jump into putting beer in the bottle. Because most of the carbonation that gets created during fermentation escapes through the airlock, you’ll need to prime your beer with sugar so the remaining viable yeast can turn it into carbon dioxide a second time.

Add five ounces of priming sugar to two cups of boiling water and continue to boil for 10 minutes. (If you brewed less than five gallons, use one ounce of sugar per gallon.) Pour the sugar water into your bottling bucket then use your auto-siphon to transfer beer into the bucket. Try not to splash the liquid around, and stop before you get to any hop or yeast sediment that’s collected at the bottom of the fermenter.

Connect the bottle filler to the spigot of your bottling bucket using the tubing. Insert the bottle filler into the bottle and push to the bottom until the beer flows. Fill the bottle to the rim of the neck and remove the filler. Once you’ve filled your bottles, cap them with the capper (yes, your caps, capper and everything else need to be sanitized) and place them in sturdy, out of the way boxes, which you may then seal in garbage bags to facilitate cleaning up any explosions.

Store at room temperature for two to three weeks. Your beer is ready to drink when the bottles make that satisfying and familiar fizzy noise upon opening.

How do you know if you’ve done it right? Your beer tastes good and as AHA executive director Julia Herz says, “Hopefully you can’t help but want to brew ten more times.”

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