Brew your own beer
If you can make soup and follow a recipe, you can brew beer. Here's everything you need, from a one-gallon kitchen kit to a gleaming electric brewery.
Five steps to your first beer
- 1
Clean & sanitize
Sanitation is the number-one skill in homebrewing. Everything that touches cooled wort must be sanitized.
- 2
Brew
Steep or mash grains, boil with hops, then chill the wort fast.
- 3
Ferment
Pitch yeast and wait 1–3 weeks at a steady temperature while the magic happens.
- 4
Package
Bottle with a little priming sugar, or keg and carbonate.
- 5
Enjoy
Condition, chill and share. Then start planning batch number two.
Which kind of homebrewer are you?
1-gallon kit
- Cost
- $
- Time
- 3–4 h brew day
- Best for
- Apartments and the curious
- Kit
- Glass jug, small pot
5-gallon extract
- Cost
- $$
- Time
- 2–3 h brew day
- Best for
- Classic first batch
- Kit
- Bucket fermenter, big pot
Brew-in-a-bag
- Cost
- $$
- Time
- 4–5 h brew day
- Best for
- All-grain on a budget
- Kit
- Big kettle, mesh bag
Electric all-in-one
- Cost
- $$$$
- Time
- 4–6 h brew day
- Best for
- Repeatable all-grain indoors
- Kit
- One countertop unit
Rough guide only: $ under $50 · $$ $50–150 · $$$$ $500+. See the shop for details.
From the brewing school
The Four Ingredients
Water, malt, hops and yeast — meet the tiny cast behind every beer on Earth.
Malt & Malting
How barley becomes malt, why base malts do the heavy lifting, and how specialty malts paint colour and flavour.
Hops: Bitterness, Aroma & Varieties
Alpha acids, essential oils and a tour of the hop varieties behind your favourite pale ales and lagers.
Yeast & Fermentation
Meet the microscopic workhorse that turns sweet wort into beer, and learn why ale and lager yeasts behave so differently.
Water Chemistry
Why Pilsen's soft water, Burton's hard water and Dublin's alkaline water gave rise to some of the world's most famous beers.
The Brew Day, Step by Step
From milling grain to pitching yeast: a walkthrough of the six core stages every all-grain brew day follows.
⚠️ Safety first: sanitize everything, use propane burners outdoors only, respect pressure when bottling or kegging, and never distill at home. Homebrewing laws vary, so check yours.