Before we start talking about tools and ingredients, let's make sure we have the proper perspective on this whole home brewing concept. Brewing can be fun, but it can also be a tedious, painstaking process at times. While making your own beer is certainly cheaper than buying a case of microbrew at the supermarket, it also takes a much longer time. And there is always the chance that, due to a procedural error or unexpected contaminant, your batch of beer will turn out to be undrinkable. So before you go stampeding towards the brewing supply store thinking to yourself, "I'm going to make some awesome homebrew and get drunk for really cheap!" remember that you'll be waiting a while for that beer to be ready. The satisfaction comes much later, when you get to sip on a cold homebrew with your friends and tell them smugly, "Yeah, I made this. Not bad, huh?"

To begin, let's get a general overview of the brewing process. Beer is a mixture of barley malts or wheat, hops, yeast, and water. (Some beers add fruits or spices, but that is another topic for a later date.) Water is a substance we are all familiar with, and for brewing purposes, the purer the better. The grains give beer its body, color, and flavor. Hops are flowers that contain a substance known as alpha acids; these acids add bitterness to the mix that counters the sweetness of the grains. Hops also act as a natural preservative. Yeast is the organism that makes the whole process work. The yeast digests the sugars from the grains and give off carbon dioxide and alcohol as by products, thus carbonating the solution and adding the alcohol kick we all know and love.

The water, grains and hops are mixed in varying quantities and cooked at a boil for 45 minutes to an hour, sometimes longer. The resulting mixture is known as wort. Once the wort cools, the yeast can be pitched into the solution and the mix is then allowed to ferment for a week to ten days. This is when the yeast does its dirty work, converting the complex sugars of the wort into alcohol and CO2 and turning the concoction into beer. A bubble vent of some type is used on the fermenter in order to allow the gas to escape and not build up so much pressure inside the vat that the lid is blown off.

After this initial fermentation, the beer is ready for bottling. (Some more complex beers call for a second fermentation in another vat, but most homebrew recipes are simpler than that.) A slight amount of "priming sugar" (either pure corn sugar or more barley malt may be used) is added to the beer to prepare it for the bottles. This sugar will again be digested by the yeast, but since the bottles are tightly capped, the CO2 will stay in the solution to produce the carbonation. Allow the beers to sit anywhere from 2-6 weeks in the bottles, and presto! You've got homebrew.

This process doesn't sound too tough, does it? It shouldn't. There are only three major guidelines to making good homebrew: (1) use good starting ingredients; (2) sterilize, sterilize, sterilize! (3) be very careful when adding or transferring ingredients. A small screw-up along these lines could have a devastating effect on the quality of your beer.

The equipment required to get yourself started on the road to homebrewing is not overly expensive, and it can be purchased as an all-in-one kit. The kits come in low-tech models, in which the fermenting vat is little more than a five-gallon plastic bucket with a specialized lid, or in higher-end styles which used glass fermenters. Either kind is fine for the basics, so it's up to you and your budget as to which kind you get. The other accessories-siphon tubing, strainer, bottling tap-should be included in the kit.

You will need to acquire the bottles separately. Most beer supply stores sell unlabeled longnecks, but I prefer the method of saving the empties from previous six-packs I have purchases. Be sure the bottles are NOT twist-off; the grooves on the bottle mouth prevent airtight capping unless you have the specialized equipment. Just use non-twist offs instead.

One batch of homebrew (i.e., one vat's worth) is usually five gallons. This translates into just over two cases of 12-ounce bottles. The ingredients for the beer tend to cost $25-30 per batch, depending on what part of the country you live in. Thus, you're getting 50 high-quality (or so you hope) beers for around $30, which translates to 60 cents a beer. Try finding a case of any self-respecting microbrew for that price.

Hopefully the information put forth here is enough to get you interested in homebrewing. If so, then check around to find where your nearest brewing supply store is located and pick up a fermenting kit. I'll be back with more brewing technique tips and even some recipes at a later date.

If you just can't wait to get started, then I suggest you pick up a copy of Charlie Papazian's book, The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing. It's known as the "homebrewer's bible," and any supply store worth its hops will have a copy or two sitting around. I recommend getting a copy anyway, because it's a good reference to have on hand. It's also a good idea to take the book's motto to heart: "Relax. Don't worry. Have a homebrew."

-Brewmaster Orf

Coming next column: technique tips to ensure your homebrew doesn't come out skunked.

Brewmaster Orf has a Certificate of Mixology from International Bartending Institute and a Master's degree in chemistry from Oregon State University. He has been home brewing for over four years, and he has been drinking beer for many more years than that.