Lessons Learned From My First Homebrew
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 with the process and dive deeper into this new hobby. The following details my experience.
For the most part, I think Northern Brewer did a good job, but I was disappointed with some of the equipment and ended up replacing some of this kit's equipment and making a few additional purchases to round out my brewing rig. More on that later.
What came with my kit?
This kit comes with the following. The highlighted items are what I ended up either replacing or improving:
- 5 Gallon Stainless-Steel Brew Kettle (for brewing your wort)
- Beer Recipe Kit of Your Choice (all ingredients necessary to brew your own beer)
- 6.5 Gallon Fermenting bucket with Gasketed Lid (where you ferment your wort)
- 6.5 Gallon Bottling Bucket (for mixing your fermented beer and corn sugar before bottling)
- Airlock (this is necessary to allow CO2 gasses to escape your fermenter and prevent ambient air (and any bacteria) from skunking your beer)
- Hydrometer, test jar, and lab thermometer (this is the science part)
- 21-inch Stainless Spoon
- Clear Tubing
- Two Packets of Sanitizer
- Bottle Filler
- Bottle Brush
- Bottle Capper
- 60 Bottle Caps
- Two Spigots for buckets (with Rubber Gaskets)
- Instructions
What didn't come with my kit?
What this kit didn't include (but you will definitely need) were water and bottles. The water is an obvious omission. The exclusion of bottles may not seem as obvious, but it make sense when you think about it.
I ended up purchasing 48 amber, longneck bottles with crown caps (approximately $45). The key words here are amber and crown caps. The amber-tinted glass blocks UV light, which can skunk your beer, and (unless you choose swing-cap bottles) you want to be sure and purchase bottles that accept crown caps.
Do not purchase/use twist-off bottles to ensure longevity of the bottles for reuse and allow for proper sealing. You can save some money here by recycling from previously purchased beer. Just be sure to clean them thoroughly.
What did I customize?
This is where the highlighted items in my earlier list come into the picture. For the most part, these are optional upgrades. However, one glaring issue with this kit needed fixing. Immediately!
What did I replace?
The Kettle:
The only thing about this starter kit that disappointed me was the 5-gallon brew kettle. The one included in my kit was cheap. Simply grasping and lightly bending with my thumbs, I could bend the wall of the kettle easily. The lid did not seat properly, and the kettle also included noticeable blemishes on the inside wall.
Of greater concern was the smell. The kettle that came with my kit gave off an awful, metallic/rust smell, and it was nothing like I've ever experienced in any kitchen equipment purchased before. The kettle was scratched and quite dirty on arrival, leading me to believe it was used. Although the blemishes showed no signs of rust or oxidation, washing thoroughly only made the metallic smell worse. I was quite worried that this kettle would introduce off flavors in my wort during brewing, and I was compelled to replace it.
Luckily, I found the perfect 5-gallon kettle on clearance at Bed Bath and Beyond for about $30. This kettle was far more sturdy and included an encapsulated aluminum base and a tempered glass lid. You know... like a quality piece of kitchen/brewing equipment should be. Most importantly, it didn't smell. I was eager to get started, so I went ahead with the purchase without returning my kit. I doubt I'll get the equivalent portion of my money back at this point, but I'll keep you posted.
The Bottle Filler
To be honest, this item is half replacement and half upgrade. The little bottle-filling wand included in the kit was supposed to be spring-loaded. The idea is, you attach it to the bucket/spigot via rubber tubing. After elevating the bottling bucket on a counter, gravity does the rest, and the spring-loaded wand lets you draw beer into each bottle. Insert the wand. Press down to fill the bottle. Lift up to stop. Done.
The filler/wand that came with my kit was either broken or missing the spring. I had already purchased an extra piece of equipment at the same time I ordered the starter kit called a racking cane. This purchase came with a proper bottling wand. As disappointed as I was in the poor quality of the wand in my kit, I was covered.
To be clear, the Northern Brewer kit is designed so you do not need a racking cane. The spigots let you draw the beer from one vessel to another, presumably without drawing in sediments. This upgrade was my choice.
What did I add?
Sanitizer
One ounce of Star San mixes with 5 gallons of distilled water to make a sanitizing solution. I only needed one gallon of water and 6 ml of Star San to sanitize my equipment on brew day. That's 160 gallons of sanitizer for $25. And once mixed, the solution is reusable!
Strainer
You may have noticed that this isn't on the earlier list of kit components. The steps included with the Northern Brewer kit do not include this. However, I feel like this is a very important addition.
The instructions state that, after letting your wort cool all sediments fall to the bottom of the kettle. You then carefully pour the wort into the fermenting bucket, leaving the sediments at the bottom of the kettle. My wort (I was making a hefeweizen) help a lot of sediment in suspension throughout the wort, even after the wort cooled. The strainer helped me keep a lot of these sediments out of my fermenter.
The Grand Total
That's about it. The only thing left to do now was read the instructions, watch more videos, and schedule my first brew day. All totaled, here was my final list of purchases (monetary amounts are rounded in US dollars):
- Northern Brewer Starter Kit: $120
- Hank's Hefeweizen recipe and ingredients: Included with the starter kit ($32 value)
- 32-ounce Star San: $25 (optional)
- 9-ince mesh sieve: $15 (optional)
- Racking cane and bottle filler: $30 (optional)
- New, better 5-gallon kettle: $30 (optional)
- 48 amber 12-ounce longneck bottles (with caps): $50
Total (basic): $170
Total (with improvements): $270
Recurring expenses
Some expenses recur per recipe/batch and include the recipe ingredients (costs vary) and 5-gallons of reverse-osmosis drinking water (roughly $6-10). You can use tap water if your tap is tasty and clean, but I prefer to buy the cleanest stuff I can and avoid introducing off flavors due to chlorination and the like. I may need more bottles, but not too many, as I plan to recycle them.
So is it worth it?
Well, I didn't start brewing my own beer to save money, but to enjoy the hobby. I expect the savings I'll enjoy will be minimal, as it will take a lot of beer to make up for the initial investment.
The following numbers are rough estimates. Your experience may vary.
- One six-pack of decent beer costs me about $10 US, which comes to about $1.66 a bottle.
- After paying the recurring costs per 5-gallon, all-extract batch of homebrew (recipe and high-quality drinking water), I can make a bottle of brew for about $1 a bottle. That's $0.66 savings per 12-ounce bottle.
- Take my initial investment of $270 / $0.66 and you get about 409. That's the number of bottles I need to brew to make back my investment.
- Divide 409 by 48 (the number of bottles per 5-gallon batch), and you get about 8 and a half.
So, after brewing nine 5-gallon batches (assuming I don't purchase any more bottles), I will recoup my initial investment. If I simply used the kit without improvements, that would come to just over 5 batches.
But none of that is really the point, is it? The idea of this entire endeavor is to learn a hobby, enjoy the process, and bask in the glow of a job well done. And... BONUS! You now have a beer in your hand to help you celebrate.
As far as the Northern Brewer starter kit is concerned, I would exercise caution and prepare for a few issues before purchase. I give their starter kit 3 stars out of 5. If I had it to do over again, I would have found a similar kit without the kettle. I likely would have used the included kettle for my first attempt at brewing, but the metallic/rusty smell was off putting, and I simply didn't trust it.
The recipe that came with the kit is well done, however, and I will likely try more recipe kits from Northern Brewer in the future. The instructions were not difficult to follow, but I think first-time homebrewers might expect more.
So what did I learn?
- Be careful what you buy online. If you can get your hands on the equipment before you buy it, such as at a local homebrew supply store, the better.
- Sanitization is a key component to any homebrewing setup.
- I'm not going to save a lot of money (if any at all) by homebrewing my own beer, but I'm going to enjoy it.
- There are many recipes out there. The one I chose from Northern Brewer was delicious, and I will likely go back to them for more recipe kits. I will likely pass on equipment from them, however.
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