A Lovely Pint - From Real Ale to Stout, Homebrew or Pub, for Tickers, Scoopers and Drinkers

When I started making beer barely six months ago, I wanted to learn the basics while keeping the costs relatively low as well as the margin for error. I scoured the internet for tips on “kit brewing” and then spent some time getting together the basic equipment required.

I found the following websites absolutely invaluable:

Brew It Yourself

Everything you will ever need to make beer, cider and wine can be found at reasonable prices on this site. Furthermore, they have an active forum where you will always find a homebrew veteran happy to answer any questions.

How to Homebrew at 18000 Feet

The definitive online guide to brewing beer. A brilliant website with plenty of photos to guide you through every technique for every type of brewing.

Jim’s Beer Kit

Catering for beginners, intermediates and advanced brewers, Jim’s site is very thorough and is home to another fantastic forum.

So, with all these fantastic websites offering brilliant advice, no doubt based on years and years of experience, why am I writing yet another homebrew guide? Furthermore, why would you want to read my guide when you could just as easily get it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak?

I have spent a lot of time scouring those websites and badgering the knowledgeable forum members for the past six months. Along the way I have made mistakes and ruined £20 beer kits. I started homebrewing mainly because I wanted to learn the craft, but I also wanted to make the credit crunch more bearable by having a huge stock of gorgeous, cheap beer!

The following guide is based on my extensive research and my experiences as a novice homebrewer. I have cherry-picked the information that I found particularly useful and emphasised the catastrophic mistakes I made along the way.

When choosing a real ale kit, I recommend any one of the excellent kits from Woodfordes or Brupaks. These 3 Kg kits require no extra sugar to be added – we will use a small amount just to prime the barrel (the following guide assumes you are using a 3 Kg kit).

Follow this guide to the letter and you will make a great batch of real ale first time! Beard not required…

1. Get the Right Equipment

First up you will need to visit your local homebrew centre. If there isn’t one near you I highly recommend using Brew It Yourself – they offer competitive prices and I have had no problems with them whatsoever.

I always brew in a fermenting bin and then transfer to a keg for conditioning/drinking. I think this is the easiest way to make quality beer at home. My first batch was brewed and conditioned in the same pressurised barrel – I had read that it can be done and I figured there was less to go wrong. The problem with this technique is that the beer is always sitting on an inch or so of dead yeast, which gives the beer an awful flavour.

This is the equipment I use and recommend you do the same:

• 25 litre fermenting bin
• 5 gallon “King Keg” barrel with top tap
• 1 kg brewing sugar
• Steriliser (VWP or Young’s)
• Mixing paddle
• CO2 injector system
• CO2 bulbs
• Hydrometer
• Thermometer
• Siphon
• Pyrex measuring jug and plate
• Teaspoon
• Can opener
• Vaseline
• Campden Tablets or 25 litres of filtered or bottled water
• Real ale kit
• Extra yeast (just in case)

This may seem like quite an initial outlay of cash but don’t forget that most of this stuff only needs to be bought once – every time you get through forty pints of lovely homebrew you are effectively reducing the cost of the equipment!

Also, shop around and see what offers are available. Brew It Yourself currently offer a “Complete Starter Kit” for £59.95. This includes most of the stuff mentioned above, albeit with a cheaper 40-pint barrel. The benefit of the King Keg is that the pressurised “top tap” system means you can start drinking the beer sooner as the beer clears from the top – a float connected to the tap draws the beer from the top of the barrel.

Don’t forget to figure out where you are going to brew your beer. Primary fermentation of real ale needs to take place at between 18 and 26 degrees Celsius. My kitchen always seems to be around 22 degrees, thanks to the Rayburn, making it ideal. Check for your best fermentation site using the thermometer at different times of day. You’ll need to condition your ale somewhere below 18 degrees. During the summer I tend to pop the barrel into the shed to condition, while in winter months I bring it into the conservatory.