[Closed] Beginner brewer

Beer bucket
Milton tabs
Hydrometer is nice but not essential.
Second clean bucket kept just for beer.
Bottle caps and capper.
Kitchen Scales.
Syphon
Old beer bottles
Kit
Sugar

See here:

https://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/beer_kit_equipment.htm

Great site, really useful info and helpful forum

As above. Make sure everything is spotlessly clean!

A pile of spare cash for when you realise the only way to keep improving your brews is to invest in fancy stainless equipment etc.

Or maybe that was just me?!

^What IHN said. That's an excellent and very friendly site. Great advice on the Forum.

Get your eye in with making a few kit brews, then you'll be ready for all grain. Brew in a bag is the simplest method.

As above, the key is cleanliness.

I'm brewing on Saturday actually, attempting a mini-mash saison using LME, a hop boil and some coriander seeds 🙂

Clean clean clean.

This is a very old thread that I bookmarked. There have probably been several since but may be useful.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/brewers-of-stw/

What else do you need? Some money for buying nice beer when you've realised you've made 36 pints of pish. Or maybe that was just me.
I've given up on homebrew in case you haven't guessed, this was after:
1 - IPA - drinkable (just)
2 - Lager - horrible
3 - St Peter's Pale Ale - As above, very disappointed as it for good reviews
All were kits using the big plastic brewing bucket. Instructions followed to the letter. Bottle conditioned. 🤷

I did make homebrew Ginger ale from scratch using a demijohn, that was awesome stuff but came out at 12-13% 😬 , mixed 50:50 with lemonade it tasted just like Crabbies, but was much higher abv. It's smelled delicious when boiling up the ingredients too.

Good luck OP, hope it works better for you.

The Mangrove Jacks kits are good.
Avoid making lagers - they need to ferment around 10c - below room temp, but above fridge temp so hard to sort out.
I would get a hydrometer. It will help you understand what is going on with your fermentation and will assist with understanding brewing in a more general way.

It can be quite an all consuming hobby. I took it a bit far - took a year out of my life to study and MSc in Brewing & Distilling Science and then turned this:

into this:

Via this:

I should really do a build thread

Also looks like I'm off to Brussels for the summer making beer with a brewery over there

Bottle from a tapped bucket with a bottle wand rather than using a syphon tube.
I only make cider but this method has made life a million times easier...

Taps in both buckets makes life really easy;

- Tap in fermenter means you can whack a syphon tube on and decant into bottling bucket, without messing around with an actual syphon. If you put the priming sugar into the bottling bucket first, it gets nicely evenly distributed too as the beer flows in
-As above, tap with bottle wand in bottling bucket makes bottling a doddle (still tedious, but a doddle)

Thanks for all the info folks, it all sounds daunting but I'll give it a go anyway

It's not hard. I use a fermenter with a tap in it. Wash it and use no rinse cleaner. Put kit malt and sugar in. Add 3 kettles of hot water and stir. Top up with cold. Add yeast.
Leave for 2 weeks then chill. Dissolve 50g of sugar in hot water and stir in.
Bottle direct from tap (co2 dissolves better in cold beer so no foaming.

Kit list is fermenter with tap, long spoon, bottles, capper

Homebrew's much like MTB, you start cheap and then when you get better you spend all your money on better stuff but at the end of the day it's still making beer.

I'd add a bottling wand and a thermometer to the list, best list of essentials to go by is what comes in the all-in-one kits. No-one's mentioned a big pan yet though, hops need a boil for bittering.

You'll want somewhere that's a consistent temperature for it to ferment for a couple of weeks, usually around 18 degrees C and definitely in the dark or covered up. Avoid lager's as it's surprisingly hard to make something that doesn't taste of much.

I'm only 4 brews in, the first was a kit and drinkable, went All-Grain after than and my second was a maple stout that's lovely, third was an IPA that was the best yet (didn't last long) and the 4th's a rye ale which is in the fermenter and getting a dry-hop at the weekend. Hoping to brew no.5 this weekend - a blonde stout.

Oh, clean everything and sanitise whatever touches your wort after the boil and get plenty of air in it before you pitch your yeast - I keep forgetting that bit.

40 odd brews done here. Brew in a bag, mostly IPA's. I think the single thing that improved my brewing the most, and what I would make once I'd done a couple of brews to see if I liked brewing, was a fermentation fridge. This allows you to control your fermentation temperature accurately to help get the best out of your hops and yeast.
Free fridge off freecycle and £30 of heater and fishtank heat controller. Will also be the beer fridge when its bottled.

Yup, I bodged up a fridge too, works a treat. Later in the year I'll be doing a proper lager, cos I can use the fridge to, well, lager it at 1-2degC for months like it needs, all ready for next summer 🙂

Bottle over the dishwasher with the door open.
Great for catching drips.

Bottling wands are excellent too and only a few pounds

You’ll want somewhere that’s a consistent temperature for it to ferment for a couple of weeks, usually around 18 degrees C

I put my fermenting bucket in a trug filled with water, and maintain temp with a fish tank heater. Works a treat except in high summer.

Hardest job is sterilising the bottles. I use VWP so requires rinsing as well. And I only make 11 litre batches (yeilds 10 litres, or 20 x 500ml bottles, which is what my crates take). Well worth the effort though. I can get a really nice dry 7.5% cider from concentrate by adding a dissolved jar of honey. I'll use fresh apple juice too if I can get it, but to be honest, even making from concentrate can produce a much better product than a lot of off-the-shelf shop ciders and at ~40p per pint. Worth an hours work...

Oh, and get a set of tundishes and a couple of plastic jugs from Wilkos...

For cleaning and santising, use some "oxi" detergent, without any scent and buy some no rinse sanitiser like Star San. It lasts for ages, you can even re-use it. Just keep a check on the ph with some litmus paper. Way cheaper and quicker than VWP or similar.

If you are using bottles, just given then a quick rinse with a slug of tap water to remove the sediment immediately after pouring. Then they take very little cleaning.

For cleaning and santising, use some “oxi” detergent,

I've stopped using it, I kept getting a fine powdery residue on the inside of the bottles. I now soak them in very dilute bleach, rinse well, then star San just before filling.