I want to brew my own beer. What do I need?

I have no idea where you read that starter kits aren’t ideal, that’s how I started and I don’t think I would have done it any other way looking back.

A kit like this…

http://www.northernbrewer.com/brewing/starter-kits/deluxe-beer-starter-kit.html

… is not only fully functional but very upgradeable. It’s more or less what I started with and many of the pieces I’m still using today despite making significant upgrades to my equipment.

Aside from that you’d just need a brew kettle, some ingredients, and a bit of know-how.

Excellent beer book/site…
http://howtobrew.com/intro.html

Bleach can be used but it’s generally undesirable because it requires enough rinsing to ultimately defeat the purpose of sanitation. Things like StarSan and One Step are far more common for brewing.

Online starter kits can be okay if they include some equipment besides the ingredients. As a beginner, you will probably be starting with malt extract and perhaps some additional grains to steep in water.
You will, of course, be using a specific type of brewer’s yeast and hops.

At a minimum, you will need a large pot for boiling water. This should be stainless steel or enamel. The size of the pot depends upon the size of the batch you are making. Typically, kits make a 5 gal batch. If you are making your beer in your kitchen on the stove, then a 6 gal. S/S or enamel pot is the minimum. If you are boiling outside, say with a propane burner upon which you can set your pot, then a larger pot is even better. The beer will foam up, so you need more room in the pot.

After your boiling and hop additions, you will cool the beer as quickly as possible to avoid contamination. There are a variety of cooling methods. You can buy a wort chiller – Recommended – ( or make one yourself) that is a coil of copper tubing with a garden hose bib on one end and run cold water through it to cool the wort quickly. The discharged water comes out the other end of the wort chiller, which can have another hose attached to drain the chilling water to the desired area. Water the garden with it.

Once the wort is at the right temperature for your yeast, you will need a fermentation container. This can be a food-grade plastic bucket with an airtight lid or something more sophisticated. The lid must have a hole in the top to secure a fermentation lock that lets the carbon dioxide from fermentation out, but lets nothing in.

After a few days fermentation will taper off or cease. Its now time to rack (transfer) your beer into a secondary container leaving the used yeast and sediment.

To make the transfer to the secondary, you will need to either siphon the beer with a sterilized food grade tube or your secondary can have a drain valve an inch or so up from the bottom to allow draining without sucking up the debris on the bottom.

The secondary container can be a duplicate of your fermentation bucket with the same type of lid. After a couple of weeks, the beer in the secondary should start to become clear and more sediment should settle to the bottom.

Then its time to bottle or keg your beer into serving containers.

Your should also have:
- a hydrometer to check your beer’s starting and ending gravity. This will tell you how much alcohol is in your beer.
- a submersible thermometer to check temperature.
- bottles (48 for a 5 gal batch) or other containers.
- a bottle capper and caps, if bottlling
- sterilizer

While online starter kits can be sparse, many have much more up-to-date equipment, instructions, videos and much more handy equipment at inexpensive prices. If you have a home brewer’s supply store in your area, go there and ask, telling them that you are a beginner.

If there is no homebrew store in your area, there are many online suppliers. One of the best that I have used is http://www.williamsbrewing.com. They have great kits at:

http://www.williamsbrewing.com/BASIC_HOME_BREWERY_C73.cfm

that include all the basic equipment (except for boiling container and the bottles), recipes, DVD, and even the ingredients for around $120.00. They also sell boiling pots and loads of other equipment.I have no affilliation with Williams.

I suggest that you do buy a complete kit. It will save you money in the long run. The kit from Williams also includes a sanitizer designed for beer equipment sterilization.

As to using bleach for sterilization, it works great, except for one thing. Your really need to rinse the equipment, bottles, etc. several times with sterile water to get the bleach off. Bleach tends to adhere to bottles and equipment. Even the slightest amount of bleach remaining on your equipment can ruin your beer. So, you would need a lot of sterile (boiled) water to rinse the equipment, besides the water you boiled for brewing.

Most home brewers that I know use Brewer’s Edge Idophor as a sterilizer, which is an iodine based sanitizer. If used correctly, you don’t need to rinse after use. There are a number of other sanitizers for brewing that work well also. Check online or at Williams Brewing, they describe them in detail.

I hope this gets you started on the right track. Happy Brewing!
Cheers!
Ken Arnstrong