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Building
A Brew
Kitchen

It costs a little money to put together enough equipment to make your first batch of beer. Try not to think of the money as one lump sum, but as an investment that you're can amortize over your first few brews. Or, get a bunch of friends interested in brewing to chip in and share the equipment.

Here's what you absolutely, positively need to buy. Prices are from my local brew store:

• A honking big kettle. Preferably 20 quarts; at least 16 quarts. The cheapest kettles you can get are enamel canning kettles. They run about $10 - $15 bucks at your local grocery store. But you'll be a much happier person if you buy a decent stainless steel one with a tight-fitting top. Mine ran $25 at Walmart.

• A long plastic spoon. My catalog says $2.50. I bet you can find one for less.

• A glass carboy. Basically, this is the same thing as the 5-gallon water containers you'll find on every cooler in every office in the US. Except you need a glass one. (Plastic ones scratch, and the scratches can collect bacteria. More about bacteria later.) Look for one at your local brewing supply store. $15.

• Stopper and airlock for the carboy. Don't get the three-piece "bubbler" airlock -- get an S-lock. 89 cents for the airlock, 45 cents for the stopper at a good brewstore.

• Big plastic funnel for filling the carboy. $2.50

• Bottle capper. There are amazing floor model bottle cappers that cost $70. And there's the classic plastic hand corker that runs about $6. You make the call.

• Racking tube and bottle filler. These are a couple of pieces of plexiglass tubing that make it a great deal easier to get beer out of the carboy and into your bottles. $5.50. Throw in 5' of 3/8" clear plastic tubing for $1.

• Fine mesh bags, for your malt and hops. Look for ones with drawstring and very fine mesh. $2 for the grain bag, $1 for the hopsack.

• Iodine. For about $2, you can buy enough iodine to sterilize all your equipment for five batches of brew. This is a $2 investment which will save you a great deal of heartache (heartburn, dysentery, botulism) in the long run.

• Bottlecaps. You'll need 50 for your first batch, which should run you about 65 cents.

• Bottles. You need bottles made for pry-off caps. Screwtops won't cut it. Some brew stores will sell you clean bottles. Or you could just make the commitment to drink 48 bottles of beer. My favorite brewing bottles are Genesee Cream Ale pints -- I like the extra four ounces when I'm drinking homebrew and the brown glass keeps the beer from "skunking." Much more expensive, but very elegant, are the reusable top Grolsch bottles.

  Total cost to put all this together - $54.50 - plus however much beer you have to drink to get the bottles. $39.50 if you've already got a big kettle you can use.

For a few dollars more...
Here's a few things that will make your brewing life a good deal happier for just a few extra bucks. If you're hopelessly cheap or if $55 is a major investment, skip the next few paragraphs and head on to the brewing instructions.

• Hydrometer. There are three good reasons to invest $6 in a hydrometer. One is that it's lots of fun to measure the specific gravity of all sorts of different fluids -- it makes a great party game. The second is that the specific gravity of your brew is the best indication of the time to move it from the fermenter into the bottles. The third is that you need accurate hydrometer readings to calculate the alcohol content of your beer. That, or access to a decent chemistry lab.

• Thermometer. For three bucks, you don't have to rely on guesswork to figure out the appropriate time to add yeast to a brew. I brewed five batches without a thermometer before I realized that I was a penny-pinching idiot and repented.

• Scale. You want a scale that's big enough to weight a couple of pounds of malt, but fine enough to measure down to a quarter of an ounce. $5 from my brewstore.

• Plastic Bucket. If you live on a farm, you know that 5 gallon white plastic buckets are spontaneously generated and appear at random in dark corners of barns. If you live in the city, you may have to buy one. Make sure it's "food grade" plastic and not one previously used to hold drywall compound. A clean plastic bucket is a huge help when you're bottling your beer.

• Brushes. One to clean the carboy, another to clean bottles. Together they should cost about $6.

• Extra carboys and airlocks. If you start brewing seriously, you'll want to brew a few different beers at the same time. The only extra investment you need to make, equipment wise, is an extra carboy and airlock.

• A good set of bar pints. When you're proud of your beer, you'll want a good glass to present it in. I like English bar pints; other folks like German cut-glass mugs or crystal pilsners. $15 will buy four glasses at Crate and Barrel or a similar store.