There is an old thread that I haven’t searched for that I outlined how to really go cheap.
IMHO those plastic buckets with a big lid suck ass for homebrewing. The lids are tough to get off.
Here’s the crux of doing it cheap.
- Get a 5 gallon water bottle/plastic carboy. It’s food grade.
2.Get a cork and airlock that fits the little push in part on the carboy. - hop bag
- hand bottle capper
- enough bottles
- siphon hose (and I recommend the spring loaded end so you can put it in the bottle, push down and the beer comes out, then let up when the bottle is full. I do this outside or in the bathtub)
That’s all the equipment you need.
To do it really simply. Get two of the hopped beer kits like this. That will make you 5-6 gallons (remember beer is pretty forgiving and pound more or less ma. lt will alter the flavor but should still be tasty.)
Or if you want to do more, get a hopped kit. In parallel, also make a wort out of ~2-3 pounds malt and/or honey and use an ounce or so of hops, boil for an hour, then pitch.
Keep the carboy about 2/3 full of water, prepare the concentrated hopped malt according to instructions. Pour into the carboy. When cooled to room temperature (and this may take a few hours), then pitch your yeast that you started the night before.
The night before, start your yeast in a big bottle with an airlock and some malt and/or honey. It should be going well in the morning or whenever you actually brew up. It should be really going so that when you pitch the yeast, it immediately ferments and doesn’t allow wild yeast to get started.
Keep the airlock in, fill it with vodka or other neutral spirits. Let it sit for a couple of weeks until fully fermented. When you’re sure the fermentation is stopped (eg, no bubbles in the airlock for a week), then pour in a solution of priming fermentables, fill and cap your bottles. If you wait this long, then you don’t have to use the specific gravity indicator. Another advantage is that the less you muck around with your beer after pitching the yeast the less likely it will become contaminated. When I first started, I fiddled around a lot. After a while, relax don’t worry have a homebrew and say “I’ll do it next weekend when I’m sure the primary fermentation has stopped.”
This is really the bare bones equipment needed. The plastic carboys that bottle water comes in works fine. I’ve literally done at least a hundred batches this way. I only use once and then get a new plastic carboy.
I’ve also done the Coopers stout kit with 3 pounds of honey and “some” hops at least a dozen times and always thought that was pretty tasty.
Flip top bottles are pretty easy for the most part. I haven’t checked for a decade but I’m sure that brewing shops can sell you those and then you can avoid capping.
Anyhoo, I recommend you try a couple of times and see if you like brewing. The kit + wort gives you experience in brewing, tasty results and is really easy to get the basics figured out. If you like it, then start upgrading your equipment and migrate toward all grain brewing.
You can make award winning beer using extract. Again, as chuck papazian would say: don’t worry, relax, and have a homebrew.
) that is really good. The people running it are very nice and the guy is very knowledgeable about homebrewing. There’s a new one that opened up in another city that is strictly homebrewing and they didn’t seem to know anything. For example, the guy was surprised that my recipe needed 6 pounds of DME and they didn’t even carry the 3 pound bags, only had the 1 pounders. You and I both know that’s a pretty typical amount of DME to use. The other place that sells supplies/ingredients in that city has a bigger variety, but it’s in a convenience store so I don’t know if the staff is very knowledgeable as I’ve never really asked them anything.
And I’m a cheap-skate, so that’s the real reason I use dry. 