New to Brewing? Start Here

Making beer or wine at home is mostly waiting. The work itself is an hour on the first day, half an hour on bottling day, and a few minutes in between. This page covers what you need, what happens in what order, and where to read more.

What you need

For a first batch from a beer kit or a wine kit, the equipment list is short:

  • A fermenting bucket with a lid. Beer is brewed in 23 litre (40 pint) or 11 litre (20 pint) sizes; wine kits usually make 4.5 litres (6 bottles).
  • An airlock for the lid. It lets carbon dioxide out during fermentation and keeps air and dust out.
  • A hydrometer. It measures how much sugar is in the liquid, which tells you when fermentation has finished and what strength the drink is.
  • Steriliser. Everything that touches the brew is cleaned and then sterilised. This is the step that decides whether the batch is good or spoiled.
  • A syphon tube to move the finished brew off its sediment, and bottles with caps or corks, or a pressure barrel for beer.
  • The kit itself: a tin of hopped malt extract for beer, or a pouch of grape concentrate for wine, each with a sachet of yeast.

A starter kit puts all of that in one box, with a first batch of ingredients and printed instructions. The equipment is reused for every batch after; only the ingredient kit is bought again.

What happens, in order

  1. Sterilise. Clean the bucket, lid, airlock, spoon and hydrometer, then soak them in steriliser and rinse. About twenty minutes.
  2. Mix. Dissolve the kit contents in hot water in the bucket, top up with cold water to the mark, and check the temperature. Beer yeast likes 18 to 22 °C; most wine yeasts are happy a little warmer.
  3. Take a reading. Float the hydrometer and note the number. This is the starting gravity.
  4. Pitch the yeast. Sprinkle the sachet on top, fit the lid and airlock, and put the bucket somewhere the temperature stays steady. Within a day the airlock will be bubbling.
  5. Wait. A beer kit takes about a week to ferment; a wine kit two to four weeks. Fermentation is finished when the hydrometer gives the same reading two days running.
  6. Bottle or barrel. Syphon the brew off the yeast sediment into bottles. Beer gets a little sugar in each bottle so it carbonates; wine does not.
  7. Condition. Beer needs two weeks warm to carbonate, then as long as you can leave it somewhere cool. Wine improves for months.

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