Last week we introduced you to the basic home brew kit. Nearly everyone who gets into home brewing starts with one of these, if you picked up one of these new you will have along with your fermenter tub and various other doo dads, your beer in a can mix.
The beer in a can mix is the simplest way to start brewing, they are also often called a no boil kit because you don’t have to boil anything to start off your wort. Wort is the name given to the liquid and sugar mix that you will mix up in your fermenter that you add yeast into, to turn it into lovely beer, these beer in a can mix are often referred to as hopped wort.
So with a beer in a can mix or no boil kit a lot of the hard work has been done for you, traditionally you would have to boil in grain or hops to get your desired flavor but with these kits you get more time to drink your beer. Simply add the mix to your sugars and water with some yeast and your done. A slightly more advanced style involves replacing the sugars with a tin of malt extract.
Once many people have mastered the basics of home brewing they often have a desire to move onto the next step that involves mixing in grains and hops. Fortunately there are advanced kits to make the process simple that along with can of beer mix you get a big teabag full of grain that you boil together and then cool before fermenting.
Examples of a simple brew kit
Example of a advanced brew requiring boiling
