Getting set up to brew your own tasty beer

There is a lot of information out there, and many different ways to brew. This is an account of how I got set up to brew.

How to Brew by John Palmer is a great online resource to get you started brewing. http://www.howtobrew.com/ Some of the information is a little out of date but generally if you want to learn the basics of home brewing, this online version will get you a great start.

The forum over at http://www.forum.realbeer.co.nz/forum happens to be a good source of local information for brewing here in NZ and I have picked up a lot of knowledge from there. There are many other bigger forums with more people on them, but if you are looking for information on local suppliers and equipment then the NZ forum cannot be beaten.

The first thing I decided was that temperature control of the fermentation is a huge factor in getting beer to taste right. It was $20 for an old fridge of trademe and then about another $20 for a thermostat online (something like one of these). With the thermostat wired into the fridge with a 40W heating element sitting in the bottom I had a temperature controlled fermenting cabinet with both heating and cooling elements. The fridge is big enough that I can fit 2 x 20L cubes in there as fermentors. I cannot fit 2 x 25L round fermentors though.

While getting the fermenting cabinet set up I was looking on Trademe for fermentors etc. I picked up second hand fermentors, air locks, rubber bungs, hydrometer and bottle capper for not much money. As for bottles, I asked around and plenty of mates had old swappa crates sitting in their sheds that they were happy for me to take. I did also manage to get a couple of swappa crates by being cheeky and asking at the local bottle store if I could have a couple of crates of empty bottles for the same price they would usually get from the company who collect them. I have also been collecting 500ml bottles from my craft beer drinking mates, although taking the labels off these is a pain in the arse!

For a fermentor you can use pretty much any suitable sized food grade plastic container. Food processing factories often have suitable sized containers that they dispose of, so if you are feeling strapped for cash ask around for plastic containers.

The home brew shops in Christchurch are not very close to where I live/work and often did not have the complete range of items I was after. I am lucky to have Wigram Brewing around the corner from where I work and they supply base malt for a good price, along with free advice. For other ingredients such as hops and specialty malt I have found Liberty Brewing to be a very good supplier http://www.libertybrewing.co.nz/

Other stuff you will need includes cleaners and sanitisers. Cleaners remove the organic dirt in your equipment. Once your equipment is clean you then need to be able to sanitise it.

Cleaner. There are specific products for sale out there, but the cheap home brand napisan type products do a great job. You are looking for a unscented nappy cleaner with a good percentage of sodium percarbonate. This stuff is great at dissolving organic build up like hot break scum in your pots and dried on yeast from your fermentor. Just leave the solution to soak for a while, give a quick scrub and you should be all good.

Steriliser. You need to sterilise the equipment you are brewing with. If you do not sterilise you are likely to end up with random infections which will add strange flavours to your brew. Along with temperature control, being able to sterilise your equipment will make a huge difference to getting consistently good tasting beer. There are a number of no rinse sterilisers out there. No rinse is a good thing, becasue if you have to rinse you could be adding bacteria back onto your equipment. I have been using Five Star Starsan which is designed specifically for home brew. You can make up a container of the solution and simply rinse your clean fermentors and bottles and reuse the solution. At the moment Starsan is hard to get hold of in NZ due to problems with the importer. Brewers Coop in Auckland are trying to sort out supply. There are other options out there like Iodophor available from brew shops or things like Proxitane or Sanitizer 06 available in 20L containers from rural supply stores like Wrightsons, CRT etc.

The equipment you will need to brew will depend on what and how you want to brew. If just brewing from liquid malt extract kits, then you can get away with a large pot. If you would like to brew using extract, adding specialty grains and hops, then again a big pot on the kitchen stove can be sufficient and you probably want a mesh bag for steeping the grains.

Extract brewing can produce some good beer, but you need to make sure the extract is fresh. Brewing “All Grain” starting with malted barley you can get freshly extracted malt and much more choice of which malts you want to use. If you are serious about getting great beer, you are likely to want to head down the all grain route.

I see the next step on from extract brewing as going to BIAB (brew in a bag). This is a simple and easy method to brew beer from malted barley. A well written explanation of one mans BIAB method is here You can easily get away without the mash out step that he uses, and you can cool your pot down in a water bath if you do not have a chiller for cooling the wort.

BIAB is a great way to get started on all grain and can produce great beer. The limit I see on BIAB is that it is difficult to do very big batches of beer, especially if you are looking at a high alcohol beer using a lot of malt! I have recently built myself a mash tun using a large chilly bin and some stainless steel braid. This gives me the option of doing larger brews.

If going all grain you should get some brewing software so you can design recipes, and record what you have been brewing easily. I use Brewsmith and find it invaluable for working out recipes etc. There are free online recipe calculators if you look around.

If you have any questions on what or how I am brewing, feel free to ask. If the answer is big, I might post a separate post for you.