Brewing beer at home is worth it.  Brewing beer at home is a good idea.  It is challenging (though not impossible) for the amateur to achieve desirable results with wine and whiskey and other libations.  But beer is another matter.   Beer is the drink of the people.  Beer is, historically, very often made for the people, by the people, in the homes of the people.  It is, as G.K. Chesterton noted, the preferred beverage for the quenching of thirst.  One should be able to take care of quenching one’s thirst oneself.

Fortunately, with a bit of dedication, good beer is eminently achievable for you — whether you are an enthusiast, homesteader, or distracted graduate student.  Time, practice, and trial and error will carry you to great places eventually, so don’t be disappointed if your first go is . . . disappointing.   But a few tips can always help.  Here are seven suggestions as you get started.

1. Take a Shot in the Dark

Even if you lean toward the lighter stuff, consider starting with the darker stuff, unless you absolutely hate it.  The strong profiles of stouts and porters can cover a multitude of sins.  They are, in other words, a little bit harder to mess up in a highly noticeable way.  Hence they’re a good place to begin.  You’ll still make mistakes, but they’re more likely to be drinkable mistakes.

2. Cleanliness is Close to Godliness

Benjamin Franklin is often credited with having said, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”  Our research indicates that he did not actually say this.  Nonetheless, God does love us and does want us to be happy, and beer may in some way be involved with that.  But also remember that cleanliness is close to godliness, and unclean equipment makes bad beer, which makes nobody happy.  Which, it seems, is not what God wants (if we have all our aphorisms straight).

The point is this: clean and sanitize and sterilize as if your beer depended on it.  Remember that things cannot be sanitary unless they are first clean, and they must be sanitary because bacteria are the enemy.  Your fight against this enemy begins on your equipment and surfaces before you ever start brewing.  It does not end until the final bottle is safely capped.  A no-rinse sanitizer is a helpful friend in this battle.   High-heat sanitization cycles are handy.  Watch all your temperatures and times.  Try putting some of your sanitizer in a spray bottle for easy, generous application to basically everything. Remember that the time right after cooling is particularly important because evil microorganisms have more free reign to overcome yeast when there is not yet alcohol present to dissuade them.

3. Beer is Water

We once heard an interesting statement from a delightful elderly gentleman in Italy.  The full prescription was along these lines: “Beer is water.  Don’t drink water; if you want water, drink beer.”  We’ll not specifically endorse that perspective, per se, though it may have been sound advice in certain times and places with less-than-sanitary hydration sources.  But the fact remains that beer is mostly water.  So the water you use matters.  Water problems can ruin beer in a hurry.

Strongly consider reverse osmosis; depending on your situation, this may be the best way to ensure consistently good results.  Various types of bottled water can work, and this is a respectable option, but it gets expensive and involves a lot of unfortunate packaging.   Some people use distilled water, but this can have significant downsides; we don’t recommend it.  If reverse osmosis isn’t viable, and if your tap water generally tastes decent and does not contain chlorine then it can work, and a charcoal filter will likely be part of your path forward.  Wellwater often works well and may impart desirable characteristics, but it depends of course on what it contains.

There’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all solution here; it depends on your location and water sources and finances.  You may have to experiment.  But don’t ever overlook this primary and primordial ingredient as you experiment and assess your successes and failures.

4. Ditch the Plastic

Plastic is for making bubble wrap and toy dinosaurs — not beer.  Home brewing kits often include a plastic fermenting bucket.  Put it in the garage, and store it there until the next time your plumbing springs a leak.  Meanwhile, go to a local brewing store and purchase a good glass or stainless steel fermentor.  These will not scratch nearly as easily as plastic.  This matters because scratches create surfaces that are hard to sanitize, and — per #2, above — unsanitary surfaces are the bane of good beer.  Glass and steel also provide better protection from oxygen.  They also look and feel more legitimate.  Which is important.

5. Drink Your Beer Slowly, but Chill Your Wort at Breakneck Speed

When it is time to cool your wort, don’t mess around.  There will be ample time to lallygag later, but this is a critical moment.  Rapid cooling reduces the chances of bacterial growth, helps deal with proteins and tannins, and improves clarity.

Chilling can be accomplished at home by putting the brew kettle into an ice bath.  This works, but requires a lot of ice and can easily take an hour or more.  If you’re really serious (and why bother with all this if you’re not?) you may want to think about buying a wort chiller instead.  It will not be expensive compared to your overall investment of time and money in brewing, and it will be a game-changer.  A typical coiled immersion wort chiller will happily chill five gallons of wort in twenty or so minutes.  You hook it up to your source of cold water, add it to your kettle toward the end of the boil (long enough to sanitize), and then flip the magic chill switch (i.e. turn the water on) after the boil is complete.  This shaves off about two-thirds of the cool-down time required by your old-fashioned ice bath.  Which is bad news for bacteria.  Which is good news for you.

6. Be (Somewhat) Obsessed About the Fermentation Temperature

After all that focus on rapidly chilling your wort, don’t just forget about it for days or weeks.  It is easy and important to monitor your fermentation temperature. Placing the fermentor in a container of water can help to minimize fluctuations.  There are endless gadgets of various prices and varying usefulness that may or may not help (at some point, you may upgrade to enclosed refrigeration).  Since your fermentor is likely out of sight, find ways to ensure it is not out of mind: remind yourself to check it, via sticky notes, alarms, or a bottle opener on a chain around your neck.

7. Play the Long Game

Brewing takes time.  Getting good at brewing takes time.  But, as we said at the beginning, it is worth it.  If you’re going to do this, really do it.  Buy equipment that will work well and will last.  It is probably better to acquire a small number of high-quality things as you’re able than to buy a bunch of low-quality stuff in a hurry.  See this as an investment that can pay liquid dividends for you and your friends and family for the rest of your life.  Plan on bequeathing it all to somebody afterwards.