Making beer at home is extraordinarily simple. Beer, whether it is made by the home brewer or by a large brewery, consists of only four ingredients: water, sugar (usually in the form of malt), hops, and yeast. The brewing process is just as simple: boil the first three ingredients then add the yeast and wait. Of course the actual procedure is slightly more involved. Below I will try and outline the equipment necessary to start brewing and then how to brew a batch.

Equipment:

1. BREWPOT: The first thing you need to find is a large pot to boil all of your ingredients in. When you start homebrewing you will need a pot that will hold at least 16 quarts (4 gallons). However, if you think you may continue brewing, the larger the pot the better (all-grain brewing requires at least a 7 gallon pot). One thing you must consider when purchasing your brewpot is that the material must be able to be easily cleaned and impart no off flavors to your soon-to-be beer. The consensus among brewers is that stainless steel is by far the best material for your brewpot. Stainless brewpots, however, are often rather expensive as compared to aluminum or enameled iron pots which also can be used. Although expensive, stainless offers the durability that no other material can provide. Cheap stainless steel 4-5 gallon pots suitable for brewing are available at stores such as Wall-mart and Target for around \\$20-25.

2. FERMENTOR: The container that the brew actually ferments in should be 5-6.5 gallons in size and made of either plastic or glass. Many brewers ferment in a food-grade 5 gallon bucket. You can obtain these from a local restaurant (they usually get lots of foodstuffs packed in these 5 gal. containers) or you can find them in a homebrew shop for only a couple of dollars. I prefer, however, to ferment in a 6.5 gallon glass carboy. There are a couple of advantages to fermenting in glass. First, bacteria have a much harder time finding nucleation sites on a smooth glass surface; and so, the risk of infection (read: bad beer) is much lower than fermenting in a porous plastic container. Second, you don't have to worry about a plastic flavor being imparted to your brew. Third, an extra 1.5 gallon head space lowers the odds that you will have foam (krausen) coming up through the top of the fermentor. And lastly, glass is pretty nifty! Glass carboys usually run around \\$20 in homebrew supply stores. I also recommend picking up a cheap file crate to put your glass carboy in. The crate provides you with a way to carry your carboy easily and also protects the glass from any inadvertent contact. The crates you can find at stores like Wall-Mart or Target for a couple of bucks.

3. SECONDARY FERMENTOR: Although optional, a secondary fermentation helps improve the flavor and clarity of your beer. A secondary fermentation takes place after all noticeable activity (bubbling and churning) has stopped in the primary fermentor. At this stage the beer is transferred (racked) to another container. This time a glass container must be used. Plastic will leach out into an alcoholic solution (your beer) when it is in contact with a plastic container for an extended period of time. This time only a 5 gallon glass carboy is required since most activity has ceased. Again, this carboy will cost around \\$20.

4. AIRLOCK AND STOPPER: To prevent outside bacteria from infecting your beer you must seal your fermentors with an airlock and stopper. The airlock, when filled with a solution (I use cheap vodka) allows the carbon dioxide gas produced during fermentation to escape the fermentor while preventing any outside air from entering. This prevents any wild yeast or bacteria form getting inside the fermentor and ruining your beer. An airlock with its stopper is shown above. It is the strange thing on top of the carboy. The red cap is only to prevent dust from getting in, it does not seal the airlock. These are only a few dollars at your local homebrew supply store. Remember you need one for each of your fermentors (they are not permanent, but one set for each makes it more convenient).

5. RACKING CANE: A racking cane helps to transfer your beer from one container to another. Although I don't have a picture yet, a racking cane is just a long rigid piece of plastic or glass that is bent on one end and connected to a few feet of plastic vinyl tubing. The length of the racking cane allows you to reach to the bottom of your carboys when siphoning to another container. You siphon the beer instead of pouring because the introduction of oxygen once the beer starts to ferment is bad. Off flavors will develop if it becomes oxygenated. An example is two day old beer from a hand pumped keg of beer. Outside oxygen is introduced and quickly ruins the taste. Racking canes and tubing can also be picked up at a homebrew shop for only a few dollars.

6. HYDROMETER: To determine how much alcohol is actually in your beer you need to measure the beer's specific gravity with a hydrometer. The specific gravity of a liquid is a measure of how dense a the liquid is when it is compared to the density of water. Since sugar is more dense than water, a specific gravity reading of your beer will tell you how much of the sugar that was in your wort was changed to alcohol (with a density approximately that of water) by the yeast during fermentation. You will want a hydrometer that has markings for specific gravities between 1.000 and 1.100. For this reason you should probably buy a hydrometer at a brew shop instead of at an aquarium store (the hydrometers they carry often do not include the range needed by homebrewers). Hydrometers cost around \\$10.

7. BOTTLING BUCKET WITH SPIGOT: When your beer is done fermenting you will need to bottle. To do this you must first rack your beer into a bottling bucket. This consists of a five gallon food-grade plastic bucket (plastic is ok this time since the beer is in contact with it for only a few minutes) with a spigot in it. Your local brew shop should have this setup for \\$10 or so.

8. SPRING-LOADED BOTTLE FILLER: Attached to the spigot is a spring loaded bottle filler. Remember, at this stage the introduction of oxygen to your beer is bad. For this reason a special bottle filler is used. When the spigot is opened, beer will flow through the bottle filler but will not leave the bottom tip. When the bottom tip of the bottle filler is inserted into an empty bottle and pressed against the bottle's flat bottom, an internal valve is opened and beer is allowed to flow through the bottle filler. Once the bottle is full, pull the tip of the bottle filler away from the bottle and the internal valve will close thus stopping the flow of beer. These cost around \\$3.

9. CAPPER AND BOTTLE CAPS: A device to crimp bottle caps onto bottles. A wing type capper costs around \\$10-15 but as always fancier models exist. Bottle caps are real cheap, something like a dollar or two for a hundred caps. However, you cannot reuse bottle caps.

10. BOTTLES: Lastly you will need bottles to carbonate your beer in. A five gallon batch of homebrew fills around two cases (48) of twelve ounce bottles. Any pry-off bottle will work. Some people say that they have been able to get twist-off bottles to work but I have not found this to be the case. Also you will want dark bottles, NOT CLEAR bottles and preferably not green. The reason for this is that UV light reacts with the hops in the beer and produces off flavors. This is the reason for "skunked beer."

11. SANITIZER: It is vitally important in homebrewing to ensure that everything that comes into contact with your beer is sterile so that no unwanted bacteria or other life forms get introduced into your beer. Some people use 1 oz. chlorine bleach in 5 gallons of water to sterilize but I prefer Idophor which is essentially a diluted iodine solution. A big bottle of Idophor is about \\$10 at a homebrew supply shop.

12. BOTTLE BRUSHES, LONG SPOONS, STRAINERS: There are various other things that make brewing much easier such as long bottle brushes to clean out your fermentors, long spoons to stir your boiling wort, and large strainers and funnels to pour your boiled wort into your fermentor. Each of these cost a couple of dollars each and can be picked up at a homebrew store and occasionally at a grocery store.

Equipment	Where you can find it	Approximate price
4-5 Gallon Brewpot	Wall-Mart, Target, Homebrew store	\\$25
6.5 Gallon Glass Carboy*	Homebrew store	\\$20
5 Gallon Glass Carboy	Homebrew store	\\$17
2 File Crates	Wall-Mart, Target	\\$5
2 Airlocks and 2 Stoppers*	Homebrew store	\\$4
Racking Cane and Tubing*	Homebrew store	\\$5
Hydrometer*	Homebrew store, Aquarium store	\\$7
Bottling Bucket with Spigot*	Homebrew store	\\$10
Spring-Loaded Bottle Filler*	Homebrew store	\\$3
Capper*	Homebrew store	\\$13
Brushes, Spoon, Strainer, Etc.*	Grocery store, Homebrew store	\\$10
Bottle Caps (package of 200)*	Homebrew store	\\$3
Bottles	Grocery Store, Homebrew store	Free except for the stuff in 'em, Homebrew stores usually sell boxes of twelve 22oz. bottles for \\$10
	Total	\\$132 (142) *Note: Often homebrew supply stores sell kits which include several of the above asterisked items packaged together at a substantial discount. I highly recommend getting one of these starter kits and then purchasing any of the remaining items individually.

Instructions for your first brew:

1. The first thing you will need are the ingredients for the brew. Your first batch should probably be one of the prepackaged kits. The kit should include malt extract syrup, hops, and a package of dry brewers yeast. Make sure that the kit includes all three of these ingredients. If the kit does not include all three of these you may need to purchase some of them separately. Ask someone at your local brew store for help. Ninety nine percent of the time the people working at the brew store are the nicest people in the world. Quite often they will end up being your best resource for information on equipment, recipes, procedures, etc.

2. Now you need to brew. If your kit has directions with it DON'T FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS ON YOUR KIT! They are almost always bad. The first thing you need to do is boil three gallons of water in your brewpot. If your tap water tastes good use that. If it does not taste good use water from a Britta or some other filtration device (or bottled water). If your kit included specialty grains add them to the cold water before you start boiling it. If you do not have grains included don't worry, they are not necessary.

3. If you did use specialty grains remove them just before the water comes to a boil (or if you have a thermometer when the water is at 170 F). Once the water is boiling, slowly add your malt extract syrup while stirring the water with a spoon. This sweet smelling mixture is called the wort (pronounced wert). The addition of several pounds of room temperature malt extract will cause the wort to stop boiling. When the liquid comes back to a rolling boil, add your boiling hops. This is when you should start a timer for 60 minutes.

4. This is also a good time to sanitize your fermentor, stopper, airlock, strainer, and funnel. In other words: anything that will come into contact with the beer once it stops boiling. To sanitize soak in an Idophor solution of 1 oz. to 5 gal. or use a bleach solution of 1 oz. to 5 gal. If you choose to use bleach be sure and rinse everything VERY well.

5. If the kit instructions say to add hops at three different times then add the second package when the timer reads 15 min. If you don't have three packages of hops that's ok (actually normal). Add your last package of hops with two minutes remaining on the timer.

6. When the 60 minutes have expired remove your brewpot from the stove and put the lid on. From this point on, the wort needs to be isolated from the outside air as much as possible, and for no reason should anything come in contact with the wort that was not sterilized. It is now also very important that the wort be cooled down to room temperature as quickly as possible. This is to minimize the amount of contact time with bacteria in the air. To cool the wort you can use a sink filled with ice water; or if possible, a snow bank outside. It must be cooled to room temperature since higher temperatures will kill the yeast that you will add in the next step.

7. Add two gallons of cold fresh water to your fermentor. Pour the cooled wort through the strainer/funnel into the fermentor. You should have just over 5 gallons of liquid in your fermentor. If you don't have five gallons, add more water. Remember, however, the more water you add, the lower the alcohol content will be.

8. When all the liquid is in the fermentor drop in the yeast. This is called pitching the yeast. You then need to seal the fermentor with the airlock/stopper. However, before adding liquid to your airlock you need to oxygenate your diluted wort. You do this by violently shaking the carboy for a couple of minutes. This is necessary as it will provide the yeast with the oxygen they require to metabolize the sugars in the wort and change them into alcohol and CO2. However, this is the last time that air should be allowed to interact with your beer. Following aeration, you should fill the airlock with water (or vodka, my preference) and place the filled and sealed fermentor in a cool dark place.

9. After a few hours (up to a day) from pitching the yeast you should see carbon dioxide bubbles coming up through the airlock. This is a sign that fermentation has begun. You should also see a good deal of foam and crud at the top of your fermentor. This, krausen is perfectly normal. You will also probably see particles rising and falling inside of your fermentor. These are just signs that the yeast are doing their job. If after two days have passed and no bubbles have been observed you need to pitch a new package of yeast; it could be that the first package was too old or the temperature of the liquid was not yet cool enough when you pitched the yeast.

10. After a few days (sometimes after only one or two) you will notice that the bubbling rate has decreased dramatically to less than one bubble per minute. Once this is observed you must wait another day or two for fermentation to complete. Usually a good rule of thumb is a week in the first fermentor. If you have a secondary fermentor it is now time to transfer, or rack, to the secondary fermentor. If you don't have a secondary fermentor it is time to bottle, skip to step 12.

11. Sanitize your secondary fermentor, racking cane, tubing, and second airlock/stopper. Siphon from the primary fermentor into the secondary fermentor. Try to keep splashing to a minimum. To start the siphon first gargle with some strong liquor (vodka, brandy, rum, etc.) and suck on one end of the tubing connected to the racking cane. It is very important that nothing touch the beer that is not sanitized, including your mouth! Stop the siphon when you start to suck up the sediment on the bottom of the fermentor. Seal the secondary with the sanitized airlock and fill it with water (or vodka). It should remain in the secondary fermentor for around two weeks as it is given time to mellow and clarify.

12. You are now ready to bottle. The first thing you need to do is boil 3/4 of a cup of corn sugar in about 2 cups of water for 5 minutes. Any yeast left in the beer will metabolize this sugar into more alcohol and carbon dioxide. But since this CO2 will be produced in a closed bottle the gas will be forced into solution and carbonate the beer! The second thing you need to do is to sanitize your bottle caps by boiling however many you need in some water for 5 minutes to sanitize. Only boil as many as you will need (plus a few extras) as any left-overs are no longer usable. Add the sugar solution to the bottling bucket, making sure the spigot is closed. Then siphon from the fermentor, primary or secondary, into the bottling bucket. Try to keep splashing to a minimum. To start the siphon first gargle with some strong liquor (vodka, brandy, rum, etc.) and suck on one end of the tubing connected to the racking cane. It is very important that nothing touch the beer that is not sanitized, including your mouth! Stop the siphon when you start to suck up the sediment on the bottom of the fermentor.