Deja Brew Blog

Homebrewing is a fun, rewarding, and relatively straightforward experience, but the equipment required for even a simple setup may seem a bit daunting to aspiring homebrewers. Fear not! This article breaks it all down for you.  This is the first in a series of articles intended to help the first-time home brewer . In it, I outline the equipment you should expect for a typical 5-gallon, all-extract homebrew setup. That's a key point, there. This article is written for the novice brewer. More advanced setups (like those required for all-grain recipes) are not covered here.  Following are details on the essentials, and I also throw in a few nice-to-have optional extras. I also point out a few important things to look out for when putting your rig together. However, if you would rather skip all the details and get right to a quick-and-dirty list, click the button below. What Should Your Homebrew Setup Include? I suggest all first-timers begin with a good homebrew starter kit. S...

Journal Entry  - 001 / March 2021  Batch Information Notes Details New Name* Psychedelic Straw Hat Style Hefeweizen Batch No 01 Brewed By Keith Wolfe Volume 5 gallons Brew Date/Primary Date February 21, 2021 Secondary Date N/A Racking/Bottling Date March 8, 2021 (tentative) Fermentation Temp 68 F  * This is the name of my own personal batch. For the original recipe information, see Recipe and Ingredients , below. Recipe and Ingredients Notes Details Original Recipe Hank's Hefeweizen Creator Northern Brewer Type Extract Grains Fieldstone Grain Blend Hops 1 oz. Tettnang Hops Pellets LME 6 lb. Wheat Malt...

It all started innocently enough... With a simple homebrewing kit I assume I started out as a homebrewer like most first-timers. I purchased this starter kit from Northern Brewer , but I didn't do it haphazardly. Research led me to this kit. It turned out that a friend of mine received it as a gift last Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed it. I should note that this particular kit is optimized for all-extract brewing , which is typically recommended for first-time brewers. It requires less equipment, less time, and less of a commitment. This is where I decided to start. This kit offers the same sort of thing you find with many kits, intended to get you brewing a 5-gallon, all-extract recipe, which should yield 48 12-oz bottles. Northern Brewer, like many other merchants, offers more advanced kits as well if you're keen to dive in deeper, but I decided to start simple. Dipping my big toe into the beer, so to speak. I felt like I could always upgrade later as I became more familiar...

Do you like quotes? I like quotes. Here's one about a favorite subject of mine. Perhaps you've heard it. "God made beer because he loves us and wants us to be happy." Let's be honest. Pretty much everyone on the planet agrees that beer is good. Okay. I'm generalizing, but it's kind of true. Speaking of kind of true, Benjamin Franklin never actually said that. It's true, Mr. Franklin is often attributed with it, but the actual statement was a bit longer, and it happened to be about wine: "Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards; there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine; a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy." So, why on earth am I misquoting Benjamin Franklin? I do so because Ben's quote was something I believed to be true through much of my adult life. To be sure, I always liked the idea of a founding father of my nation advocating something so wonderful as beer. I even ...