I wandered into Dan’s Homebrewing Supplies on 692 East Hastings Street wide-eyed and a little intimidated. Unfinished wood, open buckets full of grain and every sort of tube and container a budding mad scientist could desire—the place looked legit to me. I announced that I wanted to start home brewing and the surly-looking man at the counter mumbled at me and started bustling about collecting all the equipment I would need.

A start–up beer or wine kit should include everything you need except bottles, a 19-litre stock pot and your ingredients, running in at about $70. Dan suggested I use an extract/grain recipe, which uses a malt extract base (looks like molasses) and a little bit of whole grain to liven up the flavour, along with fresh hops.

This is the intermediary between the “kraft dinner” beer kit in a can approach, and all-grain brewing, which requires a few more pieces of equipment. The recipe cost about $30, and I picked up an aluminum stock pot at a kitchen supply store down the road for another $30 (if you get an aluminum pot, make sure to boil some water in it first to give it a protective coating of aluminum oxide).

Now you’re home and it’s time to…sanitize everything. Don’t skip this step, and make sure to sanitize the surfaces of the area you are working in as well. This is to  ensure your yeast is the only thing you’re growing, as most other fungi and bacteria will just make you sick instead of drunk and then sick. Now it’s time to make beer! (See slide show and instructions below).[svgallery name="ubrew"]

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