As a beginner homebrewer, you shouldn’t complicate more than is necessary when brewing your first beer. Choosing difficult beer types means less room for mistakes and more knowledge, equipment, time, and steps.
You want your first beer to succeed because if it fails, you will lose time, energy, and some money. A decent first beer will keep you going to experiment with advanced recipes and processes in the future.
Guess what, your first beer can and will end up great, you’ll be surprised by what you created just like anyone around you!
Therefore, I want to share tips to simplify the process of beer brewing for absolute beginners who are preparing to brew their very first batch in life!
There are several factors that I took into consideration which are the equipment requirement, the number of steps, the difficulty of steps, and room for errors.
The easiest beers for beginner homebrewers are ales, and it’s easiest to brew with beer extract for the first time. Brewing with beer extract will simplify the brewing steps to a minimum. Also, brew a lagger only if it’s too cold for ales.
Now, let me explain how you can know what beer to brew first and why.
Brew the beer according to the season
There is nothing as annoying as the missed temperature required for beer fermentation, carbonation, and cooling. Therefore, if you find yourself having trouble with controlling the fermenting temperature you can check my guide on temperature control.
The best fundamental advice that can make or break your beer is to be prepared for the required temperatures the beer recipe demands, so unless you have a temperature control system brew the beer according to the conditions you have at home.
Lagers are great for the winter season, while pretty much the rest of the beer types enjoy warmer seasons.
Why temperature matters
Ales can ferment between 53.6°F (12°C) to (24°C), but usually, recipes demand a warmer around 68°F (20°C) temperature range. Lagers on the other hand ferment great below 53.6°F (12°C), but some lagers can sustain a higher range up to 68°F (20°C).
Temperature range affects how the yeast reacts. Ale yeast will go dormant below 53.6°F (12°C), and will produce different notes at 53.6-59°F (12-15°C) than 59-68°F (15-20°C) temperature range. The same applies to any yeast, so lagers fermented at 64.4°F (18°C) will differ from lagers that ferment at 46.4°F (8°C).
It can even be an identical recipe, but the temperature during fermentation will affect the taste and you’ll end up with 2 different beers!
For instance, the Stout I was making for the first time could ferment at 64.4°F (18°C) to 80.6°F (27°C), but my friend’s stout would probably create off-flavors at temperatures over 75.2°F (24°C), so it is important to know what recipe you have and pay special attention to the yeast you are using.
As you can see, it is important to brew the right beer because if the garage or bedroom where you plan to place the beer does not match the temperature of the recipe it means that the beer won’t succeed as planned.
I began my brewing journey in the autumn when the temperature in the room was around 68°F (20°C) and I held the beer there for a couple of weeks. In the meantime, the temperature dropped to 62.6°F (17°C) right when the beer was done.
Only 10 days later, the temperature dropped to 50°F (10°C) which would have been an impossible environment for beer fermentation and undesired for carbonation, but at least I could store the Stout at 50°F (10°C) which is a perfect storing temperature for Stouts, so I didn’t need a fridge.
The very next beer I made during the winter was, take a guess, a lager!
Brew with pre-made kits
Beer kits come with a prepared canned extract that contains malts, hops, and sometimes additional ingredients and a package of yeast.
The great thing about these beer kits is that the recipe is done for you in advance, and the steps you need to take on are a bare minimum.
In my opinion, everyone should start with beer kits because the only other ingredient you will need is sugar and water. In terms of equipment, you’ll need a fermenter bucket with a spigot and airlock. As you see, You will be able to reduce the equipment and steps otherwise required with all-grain brewing.
If you do not want to use kits, you will have to buy hops, malts, and special ingredients on your own and that’s not even the issue.
The real issue is that you will need a big pot capable of boiling huge amounts of water because the process of brewing an all-grain beer can take 3 or more hours before cooling, while extracts from pre-made kits only require to be stirred for a couple of minutes in the hot water along with the sugar and you can do this step directly in the fermenter.
You also won’t need muslin bags for grains and hops and won’t have to sip huge amounts of beer into a fermenter from the pot.
Beer kits are awesome and simplify things, the only downside is that with beer kits you have to choose the premade beer recipe and can not change it too much as you could do by making your own all-grain recipe, but this is not something you need at the beginning anyways.
Stay away from high-alcohol beers
When you make your first batch, you will have a hard time keeping the bottles away from your dry mouth.
This means that you should not prolong the process of beer brewing and instead choose the recipe that will be done as soon as possible.
The beers with lower alcohol usually take less time to ferment and carbonate which will save you time and you will sooner reap the rewards.
This is important, so you can get the wind in your back and get to make a second batch ASAP as well. Moreover, you’ll know did the beer ended up good. There’s nothing as trembling as waiting to see whether your beer will succeed or not.
There are 10%+ABV beers like Imperial Stouts that require over 3 months for fermentation and carbonation process, while Cooper’s stout I made for the very first time only had 4.2% and was perfectly drinkable within a month.
That to say, some beers like stouts will still get better the longer they stay in the bottles but they will be enjoyable after a month or less.
Brew hoppy beers
Hoppy beers are awesome because they may mask some undesired off-flavors to average beer drinkers who don’t know how the beer type should taste.
The simpler the beer, the more detectable mistakes become!
There is a German beer purity law from the 19th century that states that beer should be made only from water, malts, hops, and yeast.
Some breweries still implement this old practice in brewing simple, yet excellent beer.
As you can assume, the fewer ingredients make it difficult for the beer to escape the buds of a cicerone, but adding additional ingredients to it and making it hoppy may help you get away with a mistake sometimes!
However, I wouldn’t pay attention to this because you should face mistakes and learn from them so that next time you can make a better beer. If you have followed the instructions your beer will be great, so worry not and have confidence!
Final take
In conclusion, it is best to start your brewing journey with a beer extract kit and some sugar. You’ll make your wort super fast and all you’ll have to do is to cool it and pitch the yeast. Let it stay outside the sunshine at the right temperature for a week and there you go.
The next phase is bottling, so prepare for that stage in advance.
However, what is the point of doing something you do not enjoy just because someone instructed you that you should?
If you really must you can brew all-grain from the very beginning but my recommendation is to start with the kit!