Charlie Papazian, author of The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, shares his advice for beginning homebrewers. He suggests which kind of beer to make, beer making equipment and ingredients you’ll need, how much it will cost, and the little mistakes beginners make that can ruin your first batch of beer.

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Do you need more advice about brewing your own beer?
Read his book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing.

There seems to be a lot of people who are very intimidated at the thought of making beer. That by making one tiny, little mistake, they’re going to have disastrous results. Is it really possible to make homebrew beer that tastes as good or even better than commercially produced beer for less money, all with the satisfaction of having brewed it all by yourself?

Well, here in the United States, we have so many different kinds of commercially available beer that there’s a target that you might be aiming for. Your first batches of beer might not be exactly on target. More than likely it’s going to be great beer, and some of the best batches of beer I’ve ever had have been first-timer beers by homebrewers. It’s a process where your confidence level increases dramatically as soon as you make your first batch, and you are on your way to not worrying, and relaxing, and having a homebrew.

Is it legal to make your own beer everywhere in the United States, and is there any limit to the amount you can brew? Can you sell beer that you make at home?

No, you cannot sell beer that you make at home. Is it legal everywhere, with regards to states, there’s federal law that says it is legal, but alcohol is a strange animal in that it’s covered by the 21st Amendment, and then states have the right to regular alcoholic beverages. It is legal in all but two states, and those states right now are Alabama and Mississippi where it’s still criminalized to make homebrew. I know that’s hard to believe, but the American Homebrewers Association and homebrew hobbyists in those states have been working on trying to get it legalized for the last number of years. It continues to run into politics, and hopefully in the next year or two, it will be legal there as well.


What’s a good, relatively foolproof choice for your first batch of beer, and what kinds of ingredients will you need to brew it?

Everybody has their own tastes of what’s good and what their preferences are, so what I’m about to recommend may not suit everybody’s idea of what a good beer is, but I know that in the early days of homebrewing when I was teaching beer making and trying to get people started and trying it, I would always recommend an English-style brown ale. That’s pretty easy to make, it’s ready in about ten days, and it’s likely to please all palates in that it has full flavor, it’s not over-the-top hopped, it has a little bit of color to it, it’s easy drinking, it’s not high in alcohol, and you can actually have a few of these homebrews while you brew your next batch.

Talk about homebrewing kits. Are there any good commercial ones available, or do you recommend that it’s easy enough to buy each component separately and put together your own?

I think homebrew kits are for people who are just starting out. They want to have a little bit more confidence. Putting together your own recipes and formulations, that comes later after your first or second or third or fourth batch, and that becomes part of the fun of homebrewing, it’s getting creative and maybe taking some ideas out of a homebrew kit that you’ve purchased and brewed a reasonably good batch of beer with. There are some excellent kits out there. It’s been many, many years since I personally have used a kit, but kits are really a confidence builder and they really encourage people to try it, give people a comfort level, and as far as the best ones out there, I would certainly recommend going to your local homebrew shop, or just having a conversation with whomever you’re buying your first ingredients from and see what’s popular. I think, for the most part, people who sell these kinds of ingredients want their customers to come back. They are going to steer you in the direction that you want to go. Homebrew shops are one of the keys to access to good ingredients, and access to good information, as well as the homebrew clubs.

Give us an overview of what equipment and supplies you’ll probably need to have for your first batch. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about each component and how it’s used in the beer making process.

You’re cooking something on a stove and then putting it into a container to ferment, so the tools you need for that are a pot to boil ingredients in, something to stir those ingredients, a spoon, scales to weigh things come in handy later on after your first few batches, if you need one. A fermenter, which is a container in which the unfermented beer will ferment. A fermenter needs to have a little bit of a head space. That is usually a plastic container that is specifically designed for beer fermentation or very often homebrewers use glass carboys, which are five or six gallon glass containers that had previously held other liquids that have been cleaned and sanitized. Fermentation locks are inexpensive necessities you put on top, basically, that kind of locks the ambient air out of the fermentation, but yet still allows the gas that’s produced during fermentation to vent off without being bottled up and having something pop, which is not a good thing during fermentation. You have to transfer the beer from one container to another. You’re not going to be pouring beers, you’re going to be using siphons, which is pretty damn simple. A six foot length of clear plastic hose. You’ll also need a large seive, a strainer to strain out hops and such from your boiled ingredients. You’ll need some empty bottles if you’re going to be bottling. A lot of homebrewers graduate to kegs later on, but that’s the second phase. Bottles and bottle caps and a bottle capper. I think that is pretty much the basic equipment that you need.

So by the time you’ve assembled everything you need to make the beer, how much investment will you have and do you think that the price of homebrew beer compares pretty favorably to like a microbrewed craft beer in a supermarket?

You can probably get away with less than $100, might be pushing it, a little bit over that, depending on how sophisticated your bottle capper is and how sophisticated your fermenter is. You have many choices, so you can go on the cheap, kind of stick your toe in the water and have a few successes and say, yes, I’m going to get into this, and invest in some equipment that will last you much longer than plastic or less expensive brew pots. You will save money, but the whole point of homebrewing is it’s an enjoyable hobby and an enjoyable endeavor. Most homebrewers are not making beer to save money, at least in this country, in the United States. Dollar per dollar, you might be spending anywhere from $6-$12 a six-pack, let’s say, for microbrewed craft beer. You’d be spending maybe $2-$3 a six-pack for some rather full-flavored, full-bodied, high-impact homebrew. Generally your batches are about 5 gallons a shot. Most recipes are formulated to that scale, you can always double it or triple it. A five gallon batch is equivalent to about 2½ 12-ounce cases of beer.

Charlie, what if you don’t have a good source for homebrewing equipment and supplies and ingredients in your local area? Are there any online homebrewing suppliers that have especially good reputations in the business?

There are several online Internet homebrew suppliers. What I suggest is joining the American Homebrewers Association, getting a copy of Zymurgy, and take a look at the companies that are advertising in that magazine, because they’re repeat advertisers because they have a good customer base and a good customer base reflects customer satisfaction. I think that’s a good start.

You mentioned Zymurgy, obviously a very popular magazine in this industry. Talk a little bit about what the magazine covers in each edition and who you really try to cater to.

In every issue, there are dozens of homebrew recipes, reviews of beer styles, comparisons of commercial beer to homebrew beer, Dear Zymurgy letters, common questions and problems that people have. There are feature articles of various topics: homebrewing beer styles, beer countries, traveling, a particular technology of homebrewing. Maybe you want to make an all-grain beer, some aspect of mashing the grains or maybe using hops in a unique way. Every two months, for the last 32 years, Zymurgy has been coming out with story after story and our membership, including family membership and individuals, is just about at 20,000 people and still growing. If you’re just a casual homebrewer, it’s a great resource to get you thirsty, that’s for darn sure! If you’re a homebrew geek, there’s something in the magazine for you folks as well.

What are some good places for home brewers to share experiences and find like-minded beer enthusiasts? Maybe you could talk about some of your favorite blogs and forums that discuss beer making.

I have seen some sites that list all the beer blogs and all the homebrew sites, and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of bloggers and beer sites and homebrew sites. I couldn’t really tell you what the favorites are. I would recommend, though, as far as some real active communities, our own American Homebrewers Association, the forum which is open to the public, you don’t have to be a member, but in order to comment, you do have to be a member. There are literally thousands of people that have registered. There are hundreds of threads on homebrewing, and if you’re into beer, you can spend many an evening, sipping your homebrew and reviewing all the subjects, anywhere from using coffee as an ingredient to using rice hulls in your beer, to “where do I find good ingredients?”. Some of the questions you’ve asked have been discussed online, so that’s one of the premier sites for homebrewers.

Charlie, what are some of the common mistakes that homebrewers seem to make that can cause poor results?

I think the most common error that particularly first-time homebrewers make is to worry too much. Get past that stage, you begin to enjoy the process and the hobby and the beer a lot more. As far as technical problems, I think that after usually your first few successes, sometimes you get a little bit too relaxed, and you feel like, what is all this stuff about sanitation and taking care not to contaminate, I mean, I’ve made three or four batches of beer that were really good, and after those first five batches, you might get a little bit too relaxed, and that’s where you go astray and you get back on track again. So that’s one digression I think homebrewers make after having their initial first successes, they can put down their guard a little bit too much as far as keeping things sanitized. I think that the biggest technology thing is to keep things clean. If you can keep things clean with the quality of ingredients—yeast, hops, malt, and other things—you’re going to make a good batch of beer. It’s just a matter of keeping the wild bugs out of your beer during the fermentation process, during the transferring and the bottling process. If you can do that, you will always make great beer. What you’ll learn over many batches of beer is to kind of dial-in exactly the flavors and character of beer that you really, really like. Maybe you’ve tasted a commercial beer or a craft beer or an import beer that you really like, and said, wow, I’d really like to make that. So you do a little research, you make a few batches, put a little bit too much of this the first time but not enough of that, the second time, and by your third or fourth batch, you’re getting darn close. I’ve been brewing beer now since 1970, and I have to admit that my first batches of beer were good enough to keep at it, but you come a long way with every batch of beer, you learn something and I’m still learning about different ingredients and different ways to do things, though I try to keep my brewing system and brewing process pretty simple because I don’t like to clean a lot of equipment, I don’t like to store a lot of big equipment, and I like to keep thinking small. I still make, 15-17 batches of 5-gallon homebrew every year.

Charlie Papazian has been making homebrew beer for over 40 years and is the author of several books, including The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. He is the president of the Brewers Association and the founder of the American Homebrewers Association and the Great American Beer Festival.