I decided to start out as simply as I could.  I bought a 1 gallon home brew kit with ingredients from the Brooklyn Brew Shop.  They specialize in small kits that can be made in small apartments in NYC.  Because it’s only a one gallon kit, I had everything that I needed to brew it.   I actually bought two kits, I bought the special Black and Tan kit that they have available.  This past weekend, I brewed the dry stout.

With extract brewing, the malt extract is already made and ready to be used.  Most kits come with some specialty grains that you steep in the brew pot to add some flavor to the wort but that isn’t where most of the fermentable sugars come from.  Most of that comes from the malt extract.  If you don’t already know, the wort is the liquid that is created from the water, malt and hops to which you eventually add yeast to turn it into beer.   When you are brewing with all grains, there is no extract and you are creating all of the sugars that the yeast needs to eat, grow and create alcohol.

The first step is to bring your water up to temperature (160 degrees) and add the grains to your brew pot.  This step is called mashing in.  I have heard this term before and read about what it is but I learn much better by actually doing so a lot of things became clear to me this past weekend.  The mash turns into an oatmeal consistency and stays in the brew pot for an hour.  You have to stay on top of it and make sure it stays in the proper temperature range.  I am assuming this is the step where the enzymes are doing their work but I don’t really know.  After an hour, you raise the temperature to 170 degrees.  This is called mashing out.

Here is a pic of my brew pot after this step

The next step is the sparge.  During this step, you pour water through the grains in an attempt to extract all those wonderful flavors and sugars that you created with your mash.  You do this by using a lauter tun.  In this case, the lauter tun was simply a strainer put over another pot.  I poured the contents of the brew pot into the strainer and was surprised at how little liquid there was.  I hope I didn’t do anything wrong as there was only a trickle of wort that poured through the strainer at this point.

The next step was the actual sparge.  In this step I poured 1 gallon of water through the lauter tun in an effort to extract more of the precious flavors and sugars that I worked so hard to create.   You want to end up with 1.2 gallons of wort when you are done because you need to overcompensate to make up for what you will lose during the boil.  Unfortunately, I don’t think I was at the 1.2 gallon mark.  Not sure what I did wrong but I was barely over 1 gallon.  After the sparge, I ran the wort through the grains one more time.

Here is what it looked like

After this step, it’s back to what I was used to doing and that’s the boil.  You boil the wort for 60 minutes, adding hops along the way at specific times.  The hops add both aroma and flavor to your beer.  After the boil, the wort is cooled down as rapidly as possible and added to the fermentor.  I was way off on quantity of wort, I only had 2/3 of a gallon, I had to add more water to the fermentor to get it up to the gallon mark.  Once I did that, I pitched the yeast which just means I put the yeast in and shook the fermentor to get the yeast going.

So far, I haven’t seen a lot of activity.  I hope I did everything correctly.  I don’t know why I didn’t have more liquid after the sparge and I hope I did the right thing by adding more water to the fermentor.  I am going to take a hydrometer reading this weekend to see where we are at.

I placed my order with them over the weekend and received my kits two days later.  They were running a Black and Tan Special.  You got two full home brew kits and ingredients to make a Dry Stout and an ESB.  The kit was supposed to include a pouring spoon as well but they forgot to include that in my shipment.  I will have to wait a few days for that piece of the kit.

The double kit I purchased includes two 1 gallon fermentors, a racking cane, tubing, sanitizer, rubber stopper, 2 airlocks and the ingredients to make the two beers.  I have never made an all-grain beer.  All of the beer I have made up to this point has been with extract kits.  I am hoping that doing a smaller 1 gallon batch for my first all-grain batch will be easier than jumping in and doing a 5 gallon all-grain batch.  I am going to brew this weekend so we will find out.  I will blog more about it after my brew session this weekend.

I had a good time, it was a bit intimidating being the new guy, there were 30 or so other home brewers there and it was a pretty casual atmosphere.  When I walked in, there was a large table covered with beer in bottles and growlers that the members each made and brought in.  Tasting glasses were available and you could sample and talk about the beer at will.

It was really fun tasting all the beer, and talking about the styles and how they brewed it.  I probably spent more time than I should have standing in the background trying to break into the conversation but that is what happens when you are the new guy and you don’t know anyone there.

They seemed like a really knowledgeable group and they liked the ESB I brought but had some good feedback on how I could improve it.  Most of the negative things they mentioned as far as taste, were things that I knew going into it and appreciated the different ideas on how I might be able to improve upon it next time.

The club meets once a month and has other activities that they do throughout the year.  The real question is not whether I had a great time but whether I will be going to the next meeting.  Sadly, even though it was fun, I won’t be going back.  York is an hour and fifteen minutes away and I no longer have it in me to drink a lot and then drive all that way home on a work day (on any day for that matter).   They drank a lot of beer that night and it was hard to show restraint.  I would love to attend a regular meeting like that but I am just going to have to wait and try to find something closer to home.

Fortunately, I really liked two of the home brew stores I visited, Mr. Steves in York, PA and Keystone Home Brew in Bethlehem, PA.   What’s more, both of them have home brew clubs.  I am half way through my year of beer and have never been to a home brew club meeting.   None of my friends are interested in home brewing, they enjoy the beer I have been making but have no interest in doing it themselves.  My wife is the only one that really puts up with my endless talking about beer and home brew and what I have learned but she has her limits.  I have brew friends that I have met digitally but none that I have met in person.

Hopefully, that will all change tomorrow.  After work tomorrow, I am driving out to York, PA and attending my first home brew club meeting.  I don’t know what to expect but since there will be beer involved, it should be pretty fun.  I am taking 6 bottles of my ESB with me for them to try.  I liked the ESB that I brewed but didn’t love it.  Hopefully I can get some good tips.

I have a friend that works for me that loves to mess around with Photoshop.  He spent some time and put together the label below for the ESB I just bottled.  I think it came out pretty well, now  I just need to get the blank labels and get it printed.

My suggestion, if you are looking to get someone a gift who is interested in home brewing, start them out like everyone else starts out, with enough gear to brew beer with malt extracts.   That is what I will focus on in this article.

Not to confuse you, but, within the umbrella of extract home brewing, there are two basic choices.  There are the basic, self-contained extract kits that have the hops and the malt combined into one extract and there are the ones where only the malt is in the extract and the hops are separate.   The first type of kit is the easiest to do and will produce a decent beer.  The second type of kit is a little more work but offers you a lot more flexibility and is easier to grow with than the simpler kits.

I prefer the second type of kit but that’s for the individual to decide.  I am going to give you a few different options that will cover both methods.  They are the best options that I know of for getting someone started.

:: 3 Home Brew Starter Kit Options ::

Mr Beer Homebrew Gift

Mr. Beer Home Brew Kit

Mr. Beer is probably the most well known all-inclusive home brew starter kit.  It’s one of the kits that I mentioned above that have the hops infused in the extract.  Few home brewers that start with Mr. Beer and continue with the hobby will continue to use the Mr. Beer kit but it is a great way to introduce people to the hobby.  You will hear serious hobbyists talk badly about it since you don’t have the flexibility and control that more advanced home brewing gives you.  However, as a new evangelist of this wonderful hobby, I think the Mr. Beer kit is a great introduction to the basics of the hobby, makes a decent beer and is inexpensive.  It’s not a big investment to see if it’s something the gift recipient would want to continue with.

From now thru Christmas, Mr. Beer is offering free shipping on all Pro and Ultimate Kits.  Go to Mr. Beer for more info.

Coopers Home Brew Kit

Coopers Micro Brew Kit

Coopers is another company that puts out a good home brew starter kit.  Their kits come with the malt extract with the hops already added just like Mr. Beer does however, I think the Coopers kit is more flexible than Mr. Beer.  It’s more expensive but I think the added flexibility to grow with the hobby makes it a better buy.  Coopers also sells malt extract without the hops and you can use the gear to make other types of home brew.  You can even get extract kits from other companies and use your Coopers gear to brew it.

Another good selling point is that Coopers is an actual brewery, they make their own beer.  Their home brew kits are a side venture of their own brewery so they certainly know what they are doing.

To check out all of the different home brew kit options that Coopers offers, go to Coopers Home Brew Beer.

Home Brew Starter Kits

Northern Brewer Starter Kits

Northern Brewer is one of many online home brew stores that sell starter kits.  I am using their kit as an example because they are one of my favorite online home brew stores. These kits are equipment only, they usually don’t include the ingredients to make your first batch of beer but you can buy that separately from the same store and include it with your gift.  When I was getting into the hobby, I reviewed all of the options and this is the kit that I went with.  It gave me the most flexibility and will make it much easier for me to grow as a hobbyist.   This equipment allows you to brew 5 gallon batches over and over again.

To read more about what is included in these kits, go to Northern Brewer’s web site.

Please Note: This article is part of our Holiday series highlighting the top 12 gift ideas for beer enthusiasts and homebrewers. Read the original post to get the full list of beer gift ideas.