How hard is it to brew beer at home

Brewing has a reputation for being technical, and I reckon most of that reputation comes from the people who've gone properly deep on it rather than from the job itself, because the version nearly everybody does at home is a lot closer to following a recipe than it is to running a laboratory.

What brewing a kit beer actually is

You tip a tin of hopped malt extract into a clean fermenter, add the fermentable sugar that goes with it, make the whole lot up to volume with water, sprinkle the yeast on top and shut the lid. Then you leave it somewhere steady for a week or two while the yeast works through the sugar, and after that you put it into bottles with a little more sugar in each one so it carbonates itself.

That's the whole thing, and everything else you'll ever read about brewing is a refinement of those two steps rather than a requirement for getting drinkable beer out the other end.

What you actually need to buy

A fermenter with a lid and an airlock, a kit, the sugar or brew enhancer that goes with it, something to sanitise with, and something to put the beer into. A hydrometer is the one extra I'd argue for, because it's the only thing that tells you whether fermentation has genuinely finished, and working that out from the calendar instead is how people end up with bottles that are still fermenting on the shelf.

You'll also see gear that makes it easier rather than possible, and it's worth knowing which is which before you spend anything. A fermenting fridge and a temperature controller sit in that second category, and we don't sell either of them, so if you get to the point of wanting one that's a job for somewhere else.

Yeast doesn't care what you know

Yeast wants sugar and a steady temperature and that's the extent of what it asks for, so your job is mostly to hand it those two things and then stay out of the way. Keep the fermenter clean, keep it out of the heat, leave the lid shut and let the hydrometer tell you when it's done, and the yeast will handle the part that looks complicated from the outside.

Where it goes wrong, and it's nearly always the same two things

Cleanliness is one. A fermenter has to be properly clean before it's sanitised, in that order, because sanitiser won't do anything useful sitting on top of a film of old yeast, and an infected batch tastes sour no matter how good the kit was.

Heat is the other. The warmer a fermenter sits the more fruity ester the yeast throws, and on a clean beer that reads as wrong rather than as interesting. So the coolest steady corner of the house beats a warm cupboard every time, and that is honestly most of the difference between a good first batch and a disappointing one.

Every batch tells you something

Change one thing per batch and you'll learn faster than you would from any amount of reading, because you'll be able to tell what caused what. And if somebody in the shop tells you they do a step differently to the way you do it, that's worth more to you than agreement is, because I'd far rather find out I've been doing something the slow way than be right about it.

Ask us when you're in

You can read about this for an hour and still not know what to put in the trolley, or you can bring the question in and be brewing by the weekend. There's nothing formal about it, just somebody behind the counter who'll go through the list with you and tell you what the tin doesn't come with.

Shop related products

• Coopers Original Lager 1.7kg. A forgiving first kit.
• Thomas Coopers Family Secret Amber Ale 1.7kg. More malt weight, yeast included.
• Coopers Brew Enhancer 2 1kg. The sugar most people put with a kit.
• Coopers Dextrose 1kg. The cheaper option, for a drier finish.
• US-05 Safale Ale Yeast 11.5g. A dependable ale yeast if you'd rather not use the sachet.

Did you know none of the brewing equipment ever made it onto the website, so the 30 litre and 60 litre fermenter systems, the no rinse sanitiser, the hydrometer with its test jar, the bottle brushes, the crown seals, the cappers, the carbonation drops and the PET bottles all live in the shop only. Give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what's on the shelf.

The kits and ingredients sit in homebrew and beer supplies, and Brewhilder will walk you through choosing a first kit if you'd rather work it out before you come in.

More on this

• Homebrewing on a budget, what you actually need to start
• How to brew your first beer at home
• Coopers Original Lager, is it a good first brew kit

I do like a hobby where the main skill is leaving something alone, and this one asks for it twice.

Cheers,
Candeece