Getting Started With Home Brewing

Joining craft beer clubs and experiencing beers from a wide range of breweries always adds to the temptation of brewing our own beers but hardly any of us ever get around to it. Home Brewing can seem like a daunting task, to set up a microbrewery you need experience in the industry, industrial grade microbrewing equipment, a business premises and a team of staff. However when you’re brewing from home you can create a very simple operation in a spare room of your house, or in a garage. The equipment you’ll need will be affordable and won’t take up a huge amount of room.

Where to get everything I need?

The first thing you need to do to get started is focus on where we’re going to get our equipment. You don’t need to fabricate machinery in order to get started you just need to visit a brewery shop. Most major towns and cities feature at least one brewery shop, google your city and see if you’ve got one. So long as you’ve got access to a car you shouldn’t have a problem transporting everything you need. However an easier option and sometimes cheaper option can be to purchase the equipment online the following sites will have everything you need;

BrewUK

Art of Brewing

Home Brew Online

What you’ll need?

The best way to get started here if you’re a true novice is to buy a full brew kit Coopers or the Micro Brewery are some of the easiest kits that I would recommend using. These kits will have everything you need from sterilisers to a fermenting bin, this will save you a lot of time and anguish over ensuring you have all the equipment you need.

How do I get my ingredients?

If you’ve just started out I’d recommend using a beer kit rather than sourcing individual ingredients for a recipe. Some people have the perception that any kit will have be of unexceptionally low quality when you source you kits well you can still brew some great tasting beer. If you ever fancy experimenting with brewing wine as well I would defiantly recommend Beer Smith’s blog on wine kits here. A lot of the beer kits in the shops and online are more tailored towards traditional real ales, however if you prefer to stick to craft beer Brew Craft Beer and Brewly are ideal.

Great Beer Recipes

If you’ve got a little bit more experience or are feeling a little bit more adventurous and would prefer to brew your beer using a recipe, the following websites are full of great recipes to try out:

Beerrecipes.org

Brewers Friend

Colchester Home Brew.

There’s a great book by Euan Ferguson, called Craft Brew: 50 Homebrew Recipes from the World’s Best Craft Breweries, which is a great read if you prefer to have a physical book in front of you.

Great Home Brew Beer Guides

Once you’ve bought all of your equipment and have finished brewing your first beer kit you may decide to get a little bit more adventurous. There are several guides online such as Home Brew Academy  and Home Brew Manual which will aid you on your quest to develop home brewing skills and become a craft beer brewing master.

Good luck and remember small steps – you won’t be the next Brewdog in a month or two…..but after that who knows!