Mike has been brewing beer at home for 20 years now. To celebrate, he picked up an extract beer kit that was similar to the first one he ever brewed. We captured every part of the brew day on camera from the unboxing of the kit to the pour of the concentrated wort into the fermentation vessel with cold water already added to it. Watch this trip down memory lane for experienced brewers and helpful run-through for new brewers.

Equipment You Need

If you want to start homebrewing like Mike did, you need a few things.

3 gallon pot

A brew spoon

Homebrewing-specific cleaning and sanitizing products. We like PBW and Star San from Five Star Chemicals.

Fermentation Bucket with a lid and an airlock

What’s In The Box?

The kit has all the ingredients that you need to brew.

Malt Extract. We had liquid malt extract which is hard to work with but it’s an easy way to make wort quickly.

Specialty grains – Grains you will crack using a rolling pin and steep in the wort.

Hops. Prepackaged in pellet form. This kit had specific weights for each addition.

Yeast – some kits come with dry yeast. Get liquid yeasts when you can.

Our Experienced Tips

#1 I always used spring water when I first brewed extract kits. You can use distilled water too since the malt extract is made for that type of water.

#2 If you have two cans of extract, add one before the start of the boil and then add the last can 5 to 10 minutes before the end of the boil so you will get better hop utilization

#3 Chill the water in the fridge. I always bought 5 gallons of water at the store before brewing. When I brewed with extract on the stove top, I used a gallon and a half of water. The rest of it would be sitting in the fridge until I needed it at the end of the boil. I found that adding the boiling hot concentrated wort to the 3.5 gallons of fridge temp water brought my full wort volume right to my fermentation temp. I found that I could add yeast right away following this method.

Thanks for reading and brew on!