How much work? How much startup cost? How sensitive to contamination is beer making?
What do you need to to get started? What are good reusable containers to put the beer in? What am I not asking?
Buy this book. Read it. Know it. Love it.
The answers to the rest of your questions are all: it depends. 
Beer bottles…
(Agree that the general answer re: the amount of work, cost, etc. is “it depends.”)
That’s the bible, right there.
I would say to get started–maybe $100-$150? You can probably do it for a bit cheaper, but I decided to start with a 6.5-gallon bucket, a bottling bucket (6.5 gallons, I think), and a 5 gallon glass carboy for secondary.
Here’s a decent starting kit, without the glass carboy. It also contains all the ingredients for your first brew. $100. (The ingredients for the first brew are $30 bought on their own. Typically, I find to make 5 gallons from extract costs $30-$40, depending on if I want to splurge on liquid yeast and specialty grains. If you want to get to high gravity beers, maybe closer to $50 or so. I generally get around 45-48 12 oz bottles of beer, with a little loss along the way. Technically, 5 gallons is 53 bottles if there was no loss.) I rack all my beers to a secondary fermenter (glass carboy) to clarify and condition it for about 3-4 weeks after the initial fermentation, so that’ll cost you an extra maybe $30 if you’re interested in that.
You can get your price down if you do all grain, but then you need to put in a bit more money for the equipment. That kit contains a capper and caps for 60 bottles, so you need to find yourself some bottles. I’ve never bought bottles, just saved up empties over time. You just don’t want to use screw-cap bottles. (It is possible to cap them, but it’s really iffy whether you get a proper seal or not. All the brewing books I’ve read say don’t, but I’ve done it in a pinch when I ran out of regular bottles.) Also, Grolsch bottles can be quite nice, as they don’t require capping (they come hinged with a bottle topper and gasket), but the gasket does deteriorate over time.
Papazian’s good and all, but I think Palmer has the better book overall. It’s good for both the beginner as well as the seasoned veteran.
And the 1st edition is free on the web! (3rd edition is on Amazon for 19.95)
I couldn’t say how much a startup kit would run you; I got most of my startup stuff 20 years ago.
It is VERY sensitive to contamination. If you really don’t like soapy water and cleaning things, it’s probably not your hobby.
Container wise, if you already drink beer, the easiest thing to do is to save your pop-top (not screw-on) empties. Flip-top bombers work well too.
Here’s the basic process for a straightforward extract brew with no additional flavorings (and they can be quite tasty. To be honest, I don’t have the time for all grain brews, so almost everything I do is extract.)
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You’re gonna fill up a brew kettle with about 2.5 - 3 gallons of water. If you’re using specialty grains to add flavor and body to the beer, you’re going to steep the crushed grains in a grain bag (like a bit cheesecloth-like bag) at 150-160F for about 30 minutes, take them out, then bring the concoction to a boil. If not using, just bring the water to a boil.
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Add your malt extracts. These may be powdered, liquid, or a combination of the two. Dissolve it well as you go along, and be careful not to let it boil over.
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Add your hops. Typically, you will have one dump of hops at the start of the boil (the bittering hops), one dump at about 30 minutes (the flavoring hops) and then one at around 55 minutes (the finishing hops.) But, it depends on the recipe. You might only have two hop dumps. Once again, be careful of boil overs. This is also assuming a 60-minute boil, which is typical. Some recipes will also save some of the malt for a dump in the last 10 minutes or so.
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Now you want to cool your wort (this is what the pre-beer is called) to about 70F relatively quickly. What I do is fill a laundry sink full of cold water, stick the brew pot in there, and swirl it around with my brewing spoon to get it down to about 130F. Once I get it this far, I throw it into my plastic bucket fermenter, passing it through a strainer to strain out the hops, and fill it to 5 gallons with the coldest water I can. I just use the tap water in my basement, but some people use bottled water. If the water you’re using is room temperature, then you’re going to have to get the wort in your brewing kettle all the way down to 70F.
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Check temp. You don’t have to hit 70F on the nose. Anywhere within about 10 degrees either way is fine.
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Pitch (throw into the wort) your yeast. Follow the instructions on your yeast packet. Most yeasts are fine with direct pitching for a 5 gallon batch of an average-strength beer. This means you don’t have to make a “starter” first to increase the amount of yeast culture. If you get high up in the alcohol/abv range, you might need a starter, but for the vast majority of beers, you do not.
For dry yeast, most packets will tell you to dissolve it in water for 15 minutes before pitching. -
Aerate your wort. I do this by putting the lid on my fermenter and shaking it up good.
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Place an airlock on your lid (your brewing kit will have a bucket with a lid that has a hole in it where the airlock goes.) Put the fermenter somewhere where it’s about, oh 65-70F. You can check your yeast to see what range is recommended, but, generally, I’ve found the cooler end range creates “cleaner” tasting beers. You can probably go down to as low as 55, but I try to keep it in around 65. Try not to go above 70–the flavors do get a bit more yeasty around there.
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Wait about two weeks if doing a one-step fermentation. You should see activity in the airlock within 24 hours, often within 12, but sometimes (like my first brew) it can take 2 days. Just don’t worry (have a homebrew! – sorry, it’s a refrain from the Joy of Homebrewing book.) If you are doing a two-step fermentation, transfer (rack) the beer from the fermenter into a glass carboy and wait another 3-4 weeks for it to settle and condition some more. And don’t forget that airlock.
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Transfer the beer to your bottling bucket. You’ll need to boil up some corn sugar with water and add it to the bottling bucket to provide the yeast with a little more sugar to carbonate in the bottle. I add this to the bottling bucket first, and then siphon the beer into it, so it is well distributed. You can also add it at the end, if you forget, but generally you want to be careful about getting any more oxygen into your beer after it’s done fermenting, so if you mix it up, don’t splash around. Too much oxygen at this point can give your beer a wet cardboard off flavor.
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Bottle. Typically, you’ll have a spigot on the bottom of your bottling bucket and you’ll use that to get the beer into your bottles. Have caps and capper ready. I usually bottle them six at a time. (Fill six, cap six.)
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Wait another 3 weeks to carbonate. Possibly wait more if you have a beer you want to bottle condition.
And you’re going to want to sanitize everything that’s not getting boiled. So, all your fermenters, bottling bucket, bottles, caps, etc. There’s a lot of ways of doing this. I like to use StarSan. There’s also oxygen cleaners, and even bleach, but you have to be very sure to rinse very well if you use bleach. Personally, I’d go with one of the others.
OK, I think I’ve got the gist of it. Somebody help me if I’m forgetting something.
I’ll say that my enjoyment of home brewing really went up when I started doing all grain brewing. The data geek in me really loved the challenge of the mashing process and manipulating the various enzymatic processes via temperature. But then again I’m also the guy that built PID controllers for my smoker and my espresso machine.
Boiling premade malt didn’t do it for me and I almost abandoned the hobby because of that.
I don’t think it’s quite THAT touchy, but you do have to be careful. I’m not super anal about sanitizing (although I always go through a sanitation step) and I haven’t had a beer spoil on me yet. But it is better to be too careful than too lax. If you just follow the basic sanitation directions in any homebrewing book, it’s highly unlikely you will contaminate your beer. You don’t need hospital-level precision for it to go right.
There is something to the “extract brew” taste, and I will give you that. But I find if you add your malt in batches and not boil the whole thing for the full boil, and you use some specialty steeping grains, you can avoid much of that. For me, I don’t have the time and energy to do all grain right now, and a decent extract brew tastes better than everything I can get on the market at the same per-bottle price (to my tastes), so I just go for that. But there is the sense of accomplishment and much finer control you get by doing it completely from scratch. You’re going to need to add probably about $250-$300 of equipment to go to all grain (something like this), plus a full immersion wort chiller, in addition to the standard fermenters and getting a big brew kettle that will handle a 5 gallon boil, and you’ll most likely need to get a propane burner to do it outside to accommodate. You can save money if you look up ways to make those things yourself. For a beginner, I think that may be a bit much.
Do a partial mash. Mash about a third of the grain bill for your recipe, along with whatever specialty grains you are using, and let extract make up the bulk of the fermentables. That way you don’t have the hassles of getting every bit of juice out of your grain bill and hitting all of your time and temperatures on the nose. But it does give you that “mashed” flavor. I won the bulk of my 250+ brewing ribbons with that technique.
Yeah, I actually did do partial mashes way back when, but got lazy. 
In fact, I’ve gotten so lazy I haven’t brewed in about a year. When I get back to it, I’ll have to give the partial mash another go. I still have a bunch of unused malt sitting around that needs to be made into beer. And something like 50 gallons worth of glass carboys that need to be filled. (Before I had kids three years ago, I kinda went crazy one fall and made a shitload of fermented drinks: beer, cider, cyser, malted cider, etc.)
pulykamell did a great intro.
You can try Craig’s list to see if someone has a starter kit or brewing rig sitting in the garage they want to get rid of.
I’ve been thinking about how to start really low budget. The challenge is you pretty much need this equipment upfront: bottle capper, bottle caps, and either fermenter with a spigot (I highly recommend this approach) OR a siphon system. You can use your basic 12 ounce glass non twist off bottles (but these are not made to reuse, and you’ll break more than you want capping your bottle caps).
A first fermenter I recommend is the big mouth bubbler. search around and can probably find it cheaper. I would get the 6.5 gallon as you’ll probably start with 5 gallons but this gives you buffer so a strong ferment won’t overflow your vessel and you could up it to a bigger batch. The advantage is you just brew your beer, toss in the yeast, and come back 2-3 weeks later and use the spigot to fill your bottles.
There are great debates but I subscribe to the school of thought that one should get your stuff in a fermenter, shake vigorously (4 minutes recommended by a Wyeast pro) to aerate the wort for the yeast, and then don’t touch it until you pour it into bottles. Beer doesn’t need oxygen after the initial blast, and mucking around, taking hydrometer readings, etc only increase the risk of infection.
I also subscribe to the fact that your first beers and maybe pretty much all of your beers will taste better with 1/2 to a pound of Crystal Malt per 5 gallons steeped for 30 minutes as pullkamell explained.
If you really want to go low budget and test the water (but I don’t think you’re really saveng money because you’ll have to do a siphon and/or a bottling bucket:
- get a 5 gallon plastic carboy (spring water optional)
- buy the right sized plastic stopper and a plastic airlock
- use a siphon or a bottling bucket
I would definitely steer clear of the old school “starter kits” that have plastic Home Depot style (but with food grade plastic) buckets as your primary fermenter. The lids can get stuck.
a couple of tips and tricks.
- sanitize your beer bottles by running them in the dishwasher on a hot cycle without soap
- When you get tired of breaking off the bottle necks when you bottle a recycled beer bottle, then the 2 liter swing top bottles are really easy.
- really aerate the wort. 4 minutes shaking will make it ferment faster, more aggressively, and help your yeast. You can buy a paint stir attachment for your electric drill that does a great job
- starsan or equivalent is awesome for sanitization. Buy a bottle.
- When the airlock bubbles stop, you’re probably fine to bottle. If you want to be safe, wait until next weekend.
- Do a couple of pretty straight forward beers first before you go for the triple IPA imperial stout with lager yeast at a ale temperature and a bag of kumquats and coffee beans.
- This is a good starter recipe: 15 minute Cascade. This also introduces “efficient brewing” where one uses malt, extra hops for a shorter boil time, and it’s a great recipe to learn what a specific hop tastes like. Spoiler - this website can really suck you in.
man, I meant to do a two minute post. Hope this helps.
SEcond the partial mash. If you’re into a shorter brew time and less hassle, use malt extract (vs all grain).
Dang, I forgot the best tip around: Relax, Don’t Worry, and have homebrew.
Have you had problems breaking bottles while capping on non-twist-off bottles? I’ve never had a single bottle break on me, and I’ve bottled in the thousands.
You also don’t absolutely need an airlock. It gives piece of mind and lets you know when the beer is done, but just a loose lid or even foil over the fermenter will do the trick if for some reason you can’t get an airlock. I’ve done it this way with no problems when I was doing my gazillion batches and was short. I assume this is because fermenting beer creates CO2, so you have a layer of CO2 on top of your beer (since it’s heavier than air) that protects it from becoming oxygenated.
Definitely have the problem of breaking my recycled beer bottles (as in a case of Red Hook or other commercial beers. Maybe it’s because my bottle capper is at least 25 years old and the design has improved??? Shit, should I just upgrade my capper?)
Good point on the airlock. You are correct. Or for fun, you could put use a balloon just to see how much Co2 is expelled, or if you want to see just how big a condom can inflate. :eek:
All the advice given has been good. What they are leaving out is, find your LHBS (local homebrew store), go in, and talk to the proprietor. He (or she) has answered these questions a hundred times, and, if they are still in business, they are giving good advice and service to the homebrewing community.
The bottle capper I use is just a cheapie red plastic thing, looks like this (though I’m not sure if it’s the exact same brand.) Not even one of the more expensive upright stand ones. I honestly cannot remember ever breaking a bottle with it, not even the thinner twist offs. (Like I said, do not use these, they do not seal well, but I’ve had to use them a few times when I was running short. It took a few tries to get it to seal properly, but it seemed to carbonate up just fine.)
Oh, yes. That’s exactly what I did about 15 years ago when I first started homebrewing. I walked into a local homebrewing shop having very little clue what I needed to do, and the proprietor set me up well, offered a lot of advice, even gave me one of his recipes for a Guinness-type clone (though slightly higher in alcohol, maybe 5.5-6% than your regular 4.2%abv Guinness) and it turned out great! The homebrewing community is especially helpful and eager to give advice. Plus, check to see if they offer any classes if you want a little more hands-on help.
All true. For me, the problem wasn’t that extract brewing couldn’t make for quality beer, it was that I didn’t have enough to do. I was all about the micro details of the process. In fact that’s why I quit brewing eventually. I couldn’t drink enough beer relative to how often I wanted to brew.
hmmmm, I’m gonna have to upgrade then. I’ll bring it up on my next LHBS visit. Shoot, I just threw out a couple of cases of bottles because I’m getting tired of the caps breaking off 5-10% of the time. Crimp the cap just a hair too tight and crunch. 
Although, I will say, 1 liter swing top bottles are about as easy as it gets. (I wrote 2 liter earlier, and I meant 1 liter). That said, I like doing 12 1 liter bottles (about 3 gallons) and 24 12 ounce bottles for a 5 gallon batch. It’s about the perfect size for a dishwasher sanitation and I like gifting 6 packs.