HOW I BREW MY BEER WITH A KIT FROM START TO FINISH. MY FULL BREWING ROUTINE
Ok, here we go! Today I am going to share with you guys my full brewing routine from the first step to the first sip. This will be an overview of all that I do to prepare, brew, bottle, and store my beer.
I’ll also walk you through my clean up, waiting, chilling and enjoying processes. For more detailed information on specific steps, I will provide links to take you to my other blog posts that you can glean from.
**** HEY Y’ALL, I WANTED TO LET YOU GUYS KNOW THAT AS AN AMAZON ASSOCIATE I EARN A SMALL COMMISSION FROM QUALIFYING PURCHASES YOU MAKE FROM MY LINKS.
1. Prepare
Pick a brew kit and sugar
The very first thing I do is go to the website that I buy my supplies from and check out the kind of beers available.
I will sometimes pick a kit depending on price or what brewing sugars are available.
For example, the brewing sugar I use has been sold out for a month or so now, so I have been buying cheaper kits and adding more expensive ingredients to them.
Recently, I decided to buy two of the cheapest kits available. With one I bought spray malt in place of the dextrose my regular brewing sugar and with the other, I bought Belgian candy sugar.
*WITH ANY SPRAY MALTS, LIQUID MALT EXTRACTS, OR BELGIAN CANDY SUGARS PLEASE MAKE SURE TO BUY THE CORRECT COLOR FOR YOUR SPECIFIC BEER THAT YOU ARE BREWING. FOR EXAMPLE A LIGHT SPRAY MALT FOR A LIGHT BEER, OR A DARK BELGIAN CANDY SUGAR FOR A DARK COLORED BEER*
Pick a brew day
After my kit arrives, the next thing I do is to go ahead and pick an actual brew date. Based on this brew date I start getting everything ready for my brewing routine.
Prepare for brew day
This is when I start to get everything ready for my brewing day. Cleaning my equipment and sanitizing it.
Cleaning Equipment
I take my cleaning solution and thoroughly clean and rinse any equipment that is going to come in contact with my beer wort.
Sanitize Equipment
Once I have cleaned out my equipment I sanitize it as well. This is all usually a day or two before I am going to brew so it stays sanitized and has had time to dry.
Read kit instructions
As soon as I get my kit, I usually open it up and read the instructions. Most kit instructions are the same, but sometimes there are slight alterations in amounts of water both for brewing the wort and in total volume.
Whether the beer kit is single or all-inclusive will vary the instructions as well. If I am using a different brewing sugar or a brew sugar replacement, I will read those instructions upon arrival also.
Buy my water and get it cold
I live overseas. The country’s water where I currently live is super hard. It has massive amounts of calcium which is apparent when drinking it. It is not recommended to drink the water here because of this.
Cold water
When I brew with a kit, I use bottled water which isn’t always chilled at the store. This can be a problem for brewing because you need to fill your fermentor up with cold water to drop the temperature after you have poured your boiling water in there with the wort.
You don’t want to wait a super long time either because the faster you can drop the temperature, the better it is for your beer’s final taste.
I always buy my water and leave it outside in the cold months so that it is nice and cold for when I pour it into the fermentor.
This has worked out great for me, but again, I need to account for it. Before the brew date that I have set I will have needed to buy and chill the bottled water.
*I only brew in fall/early spring because of this reason and temperature control.*
Make sure I have everything I need/all is clean
On the day that I set for my brew day, there are several things I will check or double check to see if I overlooked anything.
I’ll check the pots that my wort is going to soak in for leftover food bits or anything else stuck on it. I reread the kit instructions and brewing instructions.
I will also reread what is needed for any replacement sugars, or beer kit enhancers.
Don’t skip this step!
*I have bought beer kit additives to use only to see the day before or the day of that I am missing something that the additive calls for.*
Start taking notes*
I journal everything I do when it comes to brewing with kits. It is such a great way to keep track of what you have done and a litmus test for where you can improve.
If you make a mistake or if you produced a really good beer its great to be able to look back and see why.
I have a whole list that I have been honing throughout my brewing career. 
***If you would like to receive this list of important notes you should be recording for a better homebrew sign up for my newsletter here.***
Sometime during my brew day, I will record all the initial information ahead of time, to be ready to take brewing notes.
2. Brew
Fill up pots with water
I fill up two pots with water. I fill up one with tap water a little more than halfway full and turn on the burner to get it boiling. This will be for my kit to soak in. I fill up the other pot with bottled water to the specific volume the kit calls for.
Let the kit soak
When the tap water has boiled for the kit, I turn off the burner and set the can or pouch in the water. I let it soak to warm up the contents so they pour out faster. I turn on the other burner and wait for the bottled water start to boil.
Pour kit in the fermenter
Five to ten minutes after soaking the can or pouch, I will open up the kit and pour it into the fermentor.
A little trick that I have learned to get as much of the wort out as possible is to scoop some of the now boiling hot bottled water and pour it into the can or pouch that the wort was contained in.
This gets the remaining wort out of the kit so I can pour it all into the fermentor.
Try this
A coffee mug works great for this.
Burnt hands equal spilled water and beer wort, by the way.
Pour in boiled water
Once the can or pouch is clean I chuck it into the trash can. Then I pour the rest of that boiled bottled water into the fermentor.
Add brew sugar/replacement
When this step is finished, then I take whatever agent I am brewing with, sugar, spray malt, or another sweetener, and pour it into the fermentor.
** With a spray malt be aware not to pour it in the fermentor quickly** Spray malt, must be poured in ridiculously slow. If not it will make a huge malt
Stir like crazy
Once everything is in my fermentor, I start to stir the ingredients. I personally like to stir it more than I should because I love seeing a huge fluffy head in my beer before I am done.
Fill up fermenter
Once this fluffy head is achieved and I feel everything is stirred enough to my liking, I go ahead and pour in some of my cold bottled water that I grabbed from outside. I do not fill it all the way up to the required amount yet but only about halfway.
Move to a safe, temperature stable, hopefully, darker place
Then I move my fermentor to its fermenting area. For me, this is up in my office on the second floor of my house. This is the reason I don’t fill it all the way up right away.
Carrying 23 Litres of beer wort up the steps isn’t impossible, but it’s heavy! If I tripped and spilled it somehow, my wife would kill me.
Once I get up to my office I place the fermentors on towels that I have laid in the spot where I want them.
The towels help to keep the beer warm and also have come in handy with minor messes I have made. Once they are safely moved to the fermenting area, I take the rest of the cold bottled water and I fill up the fermenter to the kit’s specified amount.
Take temperature
Once the fermenter is filled, I go ahead and get out my digital thermometer and take the temperature of the wort.
Record temperature
Once I get a couple steady readings on my thermometer I’ll take note of the temperature in my brew journal.
Pitch yeast
The final thing I do before sealing the fermenter is to pitch the yeast. I personally never have activated the yeast (setting it in a bowl of water before I pitch it) or stirred it into the brew. I just spread out the yeast all over that fluffy head and let it sit and activate in the fermenter.
Put on the lid
After the yeast is pitched I take the lid and place it on the fermenter. Then I check and double check to make sure it is properly sealed.
Place and fill the airlock
Once sealed and checked, I take my sanitized airlock and fill it up with bottled water. Then I place the airlock in its place on the lid of the fermenter and let the yeast do its thing.
Wait
Waiting is the hardest and the last thing I have to do with the fermenter. From then on out it’s all a waiting game. The yeast and the sugar are going to do their thing so I just sit back and take notes of any changes in room temperature, or the fermenters temperature.
Clean up
Then I return back to my kitchen where I do the bulk of my brewing and clean up. I place my brew paddle in the tap water I boiled for the kit to sit in. I also use this water which is still hot to clean up any messes.
Record the dates of any major changes in bubbling of the airlock and temperatures in the fermenting area
During the fermenting process, I continue to take notes of anything that I observe. Especially anything out of the ordinary, or anything new I may be experiencing.
3. Bottle
Get Bottles
Save used bottles
I use second-hand bottles. This is my suggestion to anyone who wants to brew with a kit. It’s cheap, but it will take you extra time to have them ready for when you bottle.
When I drink a beer I like to pour it out into a glass. Then I will wash out that bottle right away and let it dry on my dish rack. When it is dry I store it away until preparing for bottling day.
I recommend you start saving beer bottles now and find other ways to gather them.
Buy used bottles
I ended up going to a liquor store and asking them if I could pay the deposit and buy some beer bottles second hand from them. They were glad to help out, but the bottles were really nasty. That is not a problem for me at all. I don’t mind a little extra work if it saves me money.
Ask friends
Another way I get bottles is from my friends. Now that I have been brewing and my friends know about it, they are more than happy to save their bottles for me to come by and collect.
If I do have to clean bottles, then I need to take that time into consideration so I have them ready for the bottling day.
Take a hydrometer reading
Open the fermenter
Once the airlock has stopped bubbling for a few days I’ll sanitize my hydrometer and measuring equipment. I then open up the fermenter to take a hydrometer reading.
Fill up a hydrometer test tube
Once it’s open I grab my test tube and fill it up with beer. I am always super careful here not to put anything that hasn’t been sanitized into the beer.
Take a hydrometer reading
I’ll take a reading with the hydrometer. I always take multiple readings to see if they are consistent.
Record that reading
After a few readings no matter what the result, I always record what it was.
Drink the beer in the test tube
After the test comes one of my favorite parts. I love to drink the beer from the test tube. It is not going to be anywhere near as good as it is going to be after it has been bottled, conditioned, and chilled. However, this does give me a pulse for what the beer is going to be like.
This is one of my favorite parts of my whole routine. L’chaim!
If it’s ready, pick a bottling date
When I feel it is ready, I go ahead and pick my bottling date. Again this is helpful to organize all the things I have to get done by that day. The beer is usually done fermenting when the airlock stops bubbling for 2 or more days.
There is nothing wrong with letting your beer sit there for longer than that, but I usually bottle within the week it stops bubbling.
In all reality, I have up until the night before I bottle to have all my bottles cleaned and ready to sanitize. I really like to break up my bottle cleaning process into several days.
I have found it much easier to break up the time it takes me to clean my bottles by cleaning them in batches while the beer is fermenting instead of trying to do them all at once.
**The bottles must be cleaned and sanitized by your bottling day!**
Clean bottles
During the days it takes for my beer to ferment I will finish cleaning out my beer bottles so that they are ready to be sanitized. This entails first soaking them in a cleaning solution.
Next, I scrub them out with a bottle brush and then rinse them out with water and hang them to dry on my bottle drying tree.
Having my bottles cleaned and ready way before the night that I sanitize them gives me comfort. It is also one less thing I have to do or to forget about doing.
Check out this post for a list of awesome tips and tools for saving time while cleaning a sanitizing.
Sanitize all my bottles
The night before the bottling date that I had picked, I sanitize all of my bottles and hang them up to dry on my bottle tree. The next day they are going to be dry and sitting there on the bottle drying tree ready to be plucked and filled with tasty beers. Along with the bottles that I sanitized for bottling, I go ahead and sanitize a secondary fermenter
Bottling day-transfer beer into a new fermenter
I have several fermenters in my brewing equipment so I usually transfer the brew from the primary (the fermenter that it has been in) into a secondary fermenter (a new clean fermenter)with an auto-siphon. This helps to take out a lot of the yeast and other stuff that is floating in the fermenter.
Move the new fermenter
Once the beer in the secondary fermenter, I move that fermenter unto a stable table and let it sit until bottling time. I do this now in order to let any remaining stuff that made it to that secondary fermenter to settle on the bottom.
Clean the primary fermenter
After this, I go straight away to clean the primary fermenter. If it’s cold, I clean it in my bathroom. If it is nice outside, I’ll go out to the yard.
Doing this right away makes the cleaning process a breeze. I just take a microfiber cloth with me and spray out the fermenter with water using the showerhead or hose. I give it a quick wipe down with the microfiber cloth and its good to go sit and air dry.
Sanitize all the equipment
Sometime during the bottling day, before I start to bottle, I sanitize all the equipment that is going to touch any beer. That way when I’m ready to start, everything is there and ready to be used at my disposal.
Calculate and add priming sugar
There is a small measuring device that came with my beer kit. This has three different size measuring scoops for 3 different sized bottles. 33cl, 50cl, 75cl. You can use this measuring device to prime your beer in two different ways.
Batch Priming
My favorite way is to pour all the priming sugar (this is what bottle conditions your beer) into the fermentor. To do this however you need to calculate how much priming sugar you are going to need for it to prime the whole batch. This calculation will be based upon the amount of beer the kit produced.
For example, if you have 23 liters of beer (6.07 gallons of beer), it will produce 46 50cl bottles or 69.9 33cl bottles.
With the small measuring device, you can then put 46 scoops of sugar with the half liter size scooper or 69.9 scoops with the 33 cl size scooper depending on the size of your bottles.
This way is so much faster and way easier.
Individual bottle priming
I have also poured the priming sugar directly into each bottle. If the priming sugar is being directly put into the bottles, then I’ll put the bottles in a big bowl first, about ten at a time.
Then I scoop out the specific amount of priming sugar needed per bottle with the measuring device and pour it into each bottle. I then fill each bottle with beer using my auto siphon.
Lay down newspaper
Next, I take some newspaper and place it down on the floor so I can eventually place my filled bottles on it.
I learned after my first batch I brewed and bottled that it is totally worth the time to go ahead and do this. It will really help later to clean up by reducing the mess on my floor.
Place bottles in the big bowl
If I dumped the priming sugar into the whole batch of beer then I will now go ahead and fill up my big plastic bowl with empty sterilized bottles that are ready to get filled.
Fill up bottles with my auto siphon
While bottling I have always used my auto siphon (one of my favorite brewing accessories to bottle my beers). This step includes placing my auto siphon in the beer and attaching the bottle filler adapter to it. Once this is done I go ahead and start filling up my bottles with my homebrew!
Wipe off bottles
Once the 10 or so bottles in the big bowl are filled I use my microfiber cloth to wipe them down.
This helps to reduce the stickiness of the bottles.
Place bottles on the newspaper
Next, I place the bottles
Clean out fermenter
This step has been so helpful for me to not have to mess with leftover residue stuck on the inside of my fermenter. I go into my shower or outside right way and spray out the fermenter with water and wipe it down with a microfiber cloth
Cap the bottles
Once all of that is done, I go on over to my bottle capping area. I take a couple handfuls of bottle caps and chuck them into a bowl filled about 1/3 of the way with sanitizing solution.
*The sanitizer that I use is star san which is ok to leave on your bottles or equipment without washing.*
**NOT ALL SANITISERS ARE LIKE THIS**
Read your sanitizer’s instructions carefully to make sure you can do this also. Once the bottle caps are in the bowl I stir them around, grab a cap and a bottle, and go to town capping my beers.
4. Store
Wipe down and place
Every time that I cap a bottle, I wipe the bottle and cap again and will place them in a storage box or container.
Mark the cap
After all of the bottles have been capped, wiped down, and put into some kind of storage container, I will then take a sharpie and write something to identify what beer is in the bottle.
*Make sure to take a note in your brewing journal what the marking on the bottle cap stands for so you don’t forget!*
Place container in a safe, dark place
I will then take the containers, which are usually only big cardboard boxes and cover them with a blanket. This helps keep any light from hitting the bottle and changing the taste of your beer. 
You want to make sure that the space you are storing your beer is somewhat temperature controlled.
You do not want your beer to be exposed to extreme heat or left in an environment where the temperature drastically fluctuates. This will affect your beers taste.
The beer is done and safe in its resting place.
Throw out newspaper
Now I take that wet newspaper and crumple it into a ball and toss it in the trash.
Clean equipment
I gather up all of my brewing equipment and take it to wherever I cleaned out the fermenter. I take the time now to clean out my equipment super well.
Spray it down
I spray each piece of equipment multiple times. If there is any beer residue on it I will wipe down a microfiber cloth.
Clean with a solution
I get my brewing cleaning solution, or I have used dish soap also, and clean out each piece of equipment
Put the equipment on towels to air dry
Once I have rinsed the cleaning solution off of the equipment, I go back to my brewing area and lay everything out on the towels I had my fermenters sitting on.
Wait 2-3 weeks
As I said earlier, waiting is the hardest part. Don’t worry, it’s easier knowing that waiting for my beer to bottle condition is going to produce an awesome final product. This usually takes 2-3 weeks or sometimes more depending on the kit.
Write down notes
I go ahead and write all that has happened on bottling day. I make sure to include the date when the beer will be ready for chilling, what is written on the bottle caps, etc.
******Sign up for my newsletter here for a full list of important notes to take every time you brew with a kit to produce better beer. ******
Chill & Enjoy
Place beer in the fridge for a couple days
Once the time allotted for my beer to properly bottle condition has finished, I’ll grab a hand full of bottles and place them in the fridge to chill.
***The longer they spend in the fridge chilling the better***
To be honest, if my beers make it more then a couple of days I am lucky.
Enjoy my homebrewed beer
Once chilled, I crack open a cold one and enjoy the fruits of all my labor by doing some serious elbow bending.
There you go. That is my complete brew routine from start to finish. I hope it has been helpful and that you learned something that can help you with your own brewing routine. There is really one thing to remember when it comes to home brewing with a kit. That is,
YOU CAN BREW IT!
L’chaim, L’chaim, to life
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