RESOURCES
Homebrew Supply Shops
If there’s one near you, support your local homebrew supplier! A local shop not only supplies fresh brewing ingredients, but it’s also a good resource for troubleshooting and a great place to meet others in the homebrew community. Homebrew supply shops often are connected closely to local homebrew clubs and give club members discounts on supplies. The American Homebrewers Association (AHA) has a store locator under the Directories tab on its website:
If you don’t have a local shop or you’re looking for a specific piece of equipment, try shopping online, where you’ll find dozens of stores. If you’re buying ingredients, especially hops or yeast, make sure you’re ordering from a store with frequent turnover to ensure that everything is fresh. If you’re ordering liquid yeast, find a supplier close to you to minimize the time the yeast might spend in a hot delivery truck. Always spend the extra dollar for an optional ice pack.
The suppliers listed here are well respected in the homebrewing community. They’re also large enough to have a quick turnover of inventory.
AUSTIN HOMEBREW SUPPLY
Located in Austin, Texas, Austin Homebrew Supply made its name on the beer kits it produces. Luckily, their shipping prices are very reasonable. Definitely check them out if you’re in Texas or nearby states.
MORE BEER!
While More Beer! has a somewhat limited selection of malt and other ingredients, they make up for it with a huge selection of equipment, much of it fabricated in-house. They’re one of the few suppliers who still offer free shipping once you spend a certain amount.
One of the largest homebrew suppliers in the country, Northern Brewer has a fine selection of ingredients and supplies. They have retail locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It’s worth ordering something from them just to get on their mailing list. They put together a really nice catalog and often have promotional codes available only to those on their email list. In the past, they haven’t made as much gear as Rebel, More Beer, or Williams, but these days, they’re producing more custom products.
REBEL BREWER
Located in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, Rebel has a huge variety of specialty grains and hard-to-find hops, and they offer bulk discounting on grains. If you live near them, shipping can be pretty affordable, too. Rebel also builds a variety of custom equipment, from temperature controllers to malt mills.
WILLIAMS® BREWING
Williams is based in San Leandro, California. Check them out if you’re in the market for equipment. They have all sorts of distinctive items, from unique wide-brew pots that stretch across two burners for stovetop brewing to nice oxygen diffusion stone wands and 3-gallon kegging kits.
Boutique Yeast Labs
These yeast companies offer dozens of unique strains and blends, and most sell homebrew-size pitches.
EAST COAST YEAST
It can prove hard for homebrewers to get their hands on this lab’s cultures, though a few homebrew shops do carry them. They’re well known for their complex blends of mixed cultures, such as BugFarm and BugCounty.
RVA YEAST LABS
They carry a full lineup of ale and lager strains as well as a handful of native strains. I’ve had good luck with their Piedmont Hops Ale strain, isolated from hop fields in Virginia.
SOUTH YEAST LABS
This lab has some very interesting cultures sourced from local fruit and flowers. I’ve had nice results with their N1 strain that they isolated from a Carolina nectarine.
THE YEAST BAY
They specialize in custom Brett blends and mixed cultures as well as some unique ale and lager strains. I’m a big fan of their Amalgamation Brett blend and their Hessian Pils lager yeast. I also really like their Saison Blend 2.
Brewing Calculators and Other Helpful Websites
BEERSMITH™
The most popular brewing software out there. Most brewers agree that it’s well worth the reasonable cost.
BREWER’S FRIEND
This site has one of the most extensive sets of calculators and recipe-formulating programs on the Internet.
EZ WATER CALCULATOR
If you want to get geeky with your water’s mineral content, check out this site. It’s free and very popular among serious brewers.
HOMEBREWING
This site has a good selection of calculators, as well as a nice brewing references section.
The Hop Page by Glenn Tinseth offers helpful information on growing and using hops. It also features some handy brewing calculators.
THE MAD FERMENTATIONIST
Michael Tonsmeire stands at the forefront of sour-beer experimentation in homebrewing and in commercial brewing, with Modern Times Beer. His blog is an excellent rabbit hole if you’re interested in brewing sours.
MR. MALTY
Mr. Malty is the website of Jamil Zainasheff, one of the top homebrewers on the planet, who has won countless awards for his beers. His site is handy for cross-referencing yeast strains from different yeast suppliers and for getting clues as to which commercial brewery originated those strains. It also has a pitch calculator that will tell you how much yeast is the proper amount for any batch.
TASTY BREW
Along with complete recipe information, Tasty Brew has a variety of free programs to help you calculate efficiency, IBUs, and priming sugar weight.
WYEAST LABORATORIES AND WHITE LABS
wyeastlab.com and whitelabs.com
These are two of the largest yeast companies in America, and they both have websites worth exploring. In addition to detailed strain information, their sites feature Q&A sections, tutorials, and more.
Books and Magazines
The number of books available today is mind boggling compared to 25 years ago, when there was only Charlie Papazian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing. Now you can find entire books devoted to particular styles, huge tomes about beers from different countries (Ron Pattinson’s Scotland! is 758 pages long), and several great magazines.
How to Brew by John Palmer is essential reading for every brewer. It might seem intimidating to beginners, but this book is a go-to reference for the tough questions and chemistry.
With its Brewing Elements Series, Brewers Publications offers a group of reader-friendly books that focus on specific ingredients in beer: Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation; For the Love of Hops: The Practical Guide to Aroma, Bitterness and the Culture of Hops; and Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers. Each book features cutting-edge information about its respective ingredient and is perfect for expanding your brewing knowledge. Brewers Publications also has a multitude of books on individual styles (stout, pale ale, scotch ale, etc.) and genres (wild beer, Belgian beer, etc.). Almost all of them are well worth a read if you’re interested in the topic.
Brewing Classic Styles: 80 Winning Recipes Anyone Can Brew by Jamil Zainasheff and John Palmer is the companion book to Zainasheff’s podcast on the Brewing Network. The authors cover every style in the Beer Judge Certification Program and go in-depth on the ingredients and techniques needed to brew them.
Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles by Ray Daniels has no recipes. Rather, it teaches you how to develop your own. Highly recommended.
If you’re interested in brewing sour beers, definitely check out Wild Brews: Beer Beyond the Influence of Brewer’s Yeast by Jeff Sparrow. He covers all styles of sour beers and offers recipes and techniques for brewing them.
Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation by Stephen Harrod Buhner covers historical beers that use herbs for medicinal purposes. I’m not sure how drinkable many of the recipes are, but I had fun reading this book.
American Sour Beers by Michael Tonsmeire offers a trove of good information on brewing sour and funky beers.
Brew Your Own: The How-To Homebrew Beer Magazine is a good publication for beginner and intermediate homebrewers.
Zymurgy is the journal of the AHA. It’s been around for decades and comes free with a membership to the AHA. Every issue has at least a few articles that are required reading.
Forums
I doubt there’s a question about homebrewing that hasn’t been answered in an online forum. As with any Internet forum, you have to do a lot of scrolling to get to an informative post, but there’s a wealth of information out there.
THE AMERICAN HOMEBREWERS ASSOCIATION FORUM
homebrewersassociation.org/forum/index.php
The organization that’s been there from the beginning also has its own forum. It’s a great resource for homebrewers of any level.
THE BREWING NETWORK FORUM
The Brewing Network puts out podcasts (see right) and hosts a forum. Both are great ways to learn and get advice from advanced homebrewers.
HOMEBREWTALK
Plenty of experienced homebrewers share their knowledge and experience in this huge community.
MILK THE FUNK®
facebook.com/groups/milkthefunk
This Facebook group with more than 10,000 members has a FAQ section that will answer almost any of your sour or funky beer questions.
Podcasts
Listening to podcasts while you’re driving to work or while you’re brewing is a great way to learn.
BASIC BREWING RADIO™
The programs on Basic Brewing Radio are slightly less entertaining than those on the Brewing Network, but they do stay focused on homebrewing. The shows often feature advanced homebrewers talking about techniques and brewing experiments.
THE BREWING NETWORK
The Brewing Network has a variety of programs. Some are rich in information, and others are more focused on entertainment. The Jamil Show is the most informative podcast out there; each episode breaks down a particular beer style and tells you how to brew an award-winning example. Can You Brew It? is another fun podcast. It features expert homebrewers attempting to clone a commercial beer.
BREWING TV
This site features an excellent series of instructional videos produced by Northern Brewer (page 190). In addition to brewing how-tos, the videos often offer peeks inside commercial breweries.
CRAFT BEER RADIO
True, Craft Beer Radio is more about beer tasting than brewing, but it’s a good listen if you’re interested in learning about beer styles and craft brewing in general.