Expert: Chris Bushman - 8/26/2007

Question
What equipment is used in home brewing and how would i get this or would i have to make it myself? also were could i get the ingredients for it, and what is the process of brewing step by step?

    Thank you for your time

Answer
Well, Zach, luckily there are stores all over the country that specialize in home brewing. You can find one near you by going to...
http://www.beertown.org/
and use their locator tool.

There are lots of great online stores too.  One of the biggest is Beer, Beer, and More Beer.  Their site is at...
http://morebeer.com/
They also have a great tutorial section showing you, step by step, how to brew.

Getting into homebrewing can be inexpensive or not. Many of the things you need could be found in your kitchen. Or, you can get really fancy and automated and spend a lot.

There are two levels of homebrewing, "Extract" and "All Grain". The extract version is simpler, quicker, and easier, but the ingredients are more expensive. All grain is how the pro's and advanced homebrewers do it.

If you were to do a lot of scrounging for equipment you could brew a 5 gallon extract batch (48 bottles) for around $30.

If you're really interested, the best thing to do is to find a local homebrew club and visit one of their meetings. You can use the BeerTown.org site to find local clubs too. At club meetings you get to taste what everyone else has brewed recently and homebrewers are always very enthusiastic about helping new brewers get started.

All grain basic beer brewing is simple. You soak malted barley in hot water, drain off the liquid, boil it with hops, cool it and add brewing yeast, ferment it in a sanitary container, bottle it, wait a while, then drink it. Extract brewing eliminates the first two steps because you start with the extracted liquid.

Cheers Zach, good brewing to ya!

Chris Bushman
North Hollywood, California