Beer Kits

The easiest and best way to get started brewing beer is to use a beer kit, a prepackaged and premeasured set of ingredients for brewing a particular beer. For instance, you can buy kits for brewing India pale ale, kits for stout, kits for porter, and so on. You can find beer kits at brewing websites and traditional brewing specialty shops. Good-quality beer kits usually cost about $25–30.

There are a variety of beer kits on the market today, ranging from canned kits that require no boiling to kits that provide you with ingredients but offer no shortcuts through the beer-making process. Buy kits that don’t offer shortcuts—they produce the best-tasting beer and will help you learn the brewing process from start to finish.

The beer kit you buy should contain the following:

Many kits include grain bags for holding hops and specialty grain during the brewing process. If your kit doesn’t, you’ll have to buy the bags, which cost about a dollar. When buying your kit, make sure that the malt extract and yeast are fresh—old extract or yeast will produce less tasty beer.