Easy and Fast or Long but High-Quality?

 Precedent Article : How to make beer – part 1 (Ingredients)

 Next article : How to make beer – part 3 (The easy way)   

In the last article I showed you what a beer is made out of: Water, Malt and Yeast. In this article, I’ll show you the different ways these ingredients can be mixed to give us that magnificent yellow-colored drink.

Here are the 3 most used methods to produce your own beer at home.

 1 – The easy way (Beer Home-brewer’s KIT) this will cost 100$ more or less

 Highly recommended for beginners !

In these Kit’s you’ll find all the stuff you nee d to brew:

Image via Wikipedia

 - A fermenter (5 gallons keg)

 - Malt extract (in the photo)

 - Yeast (the silver bag in the photo)

 - Other supplies like long spoons, thermometer, funnel…etc

The only things you’ll need to add personally to this will be:

 - Sugar (normally 35 oz = 1 Kg)

 - Water (really a lot of water…4 gallons or more)

 - A Kettle

 - Beer bottles

 2 – Medium difficulty (E + G method)

 This method is a little more advanced of the one before, you continue to use malt extract, but the one without hops in it, so you have to put it in. In this method, you’ll also begin to put in special ingredients, as special grains or spices.

Apart from the normal equipment  (kettle, fermenter, thermometer, yeast, etc as in the KIT Method) using this method you’ll need:

 - Hops with Hop-bags (sort of filters)

 - Special Grains (Black Malt, Chocolate Malt, Cara-Pils, etc) with small filter bags.

 - A grain crusher (to crush the special grains)

 3 – The Hard way (All Grain method)

This way is the most long and difficult of the 3. To brew this way you should begin in the morning at 8 o’clock, and you’ll probably finish in the late afternoon.

Using this way you’ll need (apart from what you needed in the other methods):

 - Grains (Pale Malt, Pils Malt, Munich Malt, and also the special ones)

 - Big grain filters, like the lauter tun.

 - Really big grain crusher

 - Really big Kettle (5 gallons)

 - A cooling system (optional)

Conclusions :

Now , choose your own way, and let us see in the next article, in which I’ll explain the different phases of making beer, beginning from the KIT method

 For those who have chosen the other methods, don’t just jump to you section, you’ll need also things I say in the next article to brew your beer the advanced way.

Here is the next article : How to make beer – part 3 (The easy way)