How to Select a Home Brew Beer Kit

It's easy enough to go to the store to buy a beer, but making your own can be a lot of fun. It used to be a challenge, because home brewing meant having to build your own equipment, but that's not the case anymore. Now you can get a home brew beer kit to make your own beer. Best of all, you can select from a variety of kits and beer flavors.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Select your budget. Some home brew kits can be very expensive when compared to simpler kits. A deluxe home brew kit will have more components, such as scale and measuring cups, but may not be necessary for your own brewing. Select a less-expensive kit to start.
2. Pick a home brew kit based on your needs. Starter kits often only come with enough ingredients for about 6 bottles of beer, whereas professional kits can come pre-packaged with enough materials for 40 or more bottles of home brew.
3. Choose a kit that is easily compatible with other kits or manufacturer's products. There are many kits that fit industry standards, and are thus compatible with a variety of other products.
4. Supplement your home brew kit with a kit for making your own malts. Malts are one of the main components in beer brewing, but one that can be done independently of a specific brew.
5. Pick a home brew kit that comes with a selection of recipes. This way, you can sample multiple different beers and choose which one you like. You can also set up automatic shipments of recipes and ingredients if you are continually brewing your own beer.

Tips & Warnings

• Choose a home brew beer kit that includes malt extract. Using malt extract cuts out one entire step of the brewing process, the creation of the malt. Many enthusiasts will want to graduate to making their own malts, but there's no harm in getting a little jump start in the process.
• Always sanitize your equipment in between uses. Contaminated equipment, whether simply slew from previous batches or actual bacteria from the environment or your hands can have a dramatic affect on the flavor of your beer. Use a chlorine solution and plenty of boiling water to clean.