By Mike Billy – Mid West Beer Blog
Originally published in The Times Newspaper
Water, barley, hops and yeast.
From stouts to IPAs, those four simple ingredients are the main building blocks of every beer you drink.
They also are readily available either online or at local homebrew shops like How You Brewin’ in Streator.
So you’re a craft beer drinker and all around beer fan. What’s keeping you from mixing up a batch of your own?
Maybe you’ve watched someone brew, either commercially or on a homebrew scale, and noticed a hodgepodge of expensive equipment like large propane burners, 10-gallon stainless steel pots, grain mills, and a cavalcade of high-end lab equipment used to take measurements during the process.
Seeing all that equipment can be daunting for someone who just wants to dip their toes into the hobby and see what it’s all about.
Luckily, making your own beer doesn’t have to be that complicated — or expensive.
If you want to get yourself started in the hobby you can get most of the equipment you need to make a five gallon batch of beer for around $100. That’s assuming you have a large stock pot at home that you can temporarily repurpose for brewing.
All of that equipment can be purchased locally at How You Brewin’ in Streator, 1005 N. Vermillion St.
If you want to get absolutely everything you need, brew pot included, you can spend about $150 on a starter kit, which includes all the ingredients needed to produce your first beer.
At the time of this writing, Northern Brewer has a five gallon kit on sale for $99, including a stainless steel brew pot, ingredients for an amber ale, plastic fermentation and bottling buckets, a bottle capper and other equipment. The only thing you will need is bottles to put the beer in. For that, you can reuse empty bottles from commercial beers as long as they don’t use twist off caps.
That kit also includes a 20 percent off coupon for your next purchase.
A five gallon kit will net you 40 to 50 bottles of homebrewed beer after a couple hours of work and then about a month wait for fermentation and bottling. Additionally, subsequent batches will be cheaper since you’ve already purchased the necessary equipment.
If that’s still too costly for you — or you don’t have the space to brew five-gallon batches — you have another option.
Brooklyn Brew Shop, which ships nationwide, offers one-gallon starter kits for $40. This is probably the least expensive way to get started while still making a quality beer. These kits, however, are missing some essential items like a bottle capper and brew pot (though you’ll likely have something big enough lying around the kitchen for a one-gallon batch).
If you don’t have a bottle capper you will need to borrow one from a friend when bottling time comes around.
If you’re worried about screwing something up, don’t be. Making beer is a lot easier than it seems, especially on a small scale, and there are plenty of online resources including the American Homebrewers Association and the Home Brew Talk forums.
If that’s not enough reassurance you can join a local homebrew club and attend some meetings before diving into your first brew. You’ll likely get volunteers to help with your first batch if you’re still feeling skittish.
We have two clubs in La Salle County, the Marseilles Area Society of Homebrewers and the Ale and Lager Enthusiasts of Streator.
MASH meets on the second Friday of each month in the basement of 172 E. Washington St., Marseilles. Contact the group’s Facebook page for more information.
ALES meets the third Saturday of each month at How You Brewin’. They also can be contacted through Facebook.
As a member of both groups, I can assure you that local homebrewers are a welcoming group.
If you enjoy craft beer, homebrewing is a great way to learn more about what each ingredient can bring to a beer. It can also help you identify flavors in a beer and learn more about the brewing process.
More importantly, the hobby is about learning how to relax and appreciate a well crafted beer.
Even if your first beer isn’t an award-winning brew you’ll appreciate it because you made it. And from there they’ll only get better.
So jump in and give it a shot. Beer is more forgiving than you might think.
As Charlie Papazian first wrote in The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, “Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew.”
Photo: Tim Patterson/flickr. Some rights reserved.
I tried the 5 gallon set up without much success, I was given a Kit from Brooklyn Brew Shop by a friend and that is going to be my next attempt at brewing! Looking forward to it!!
The smaller sized kits are always a good first step. The five gallon kits can be overwhelming if you’ve never done it before or never watched anyone do it.