Boiling kills most microbes, so we can feel pretty good that our wort is sanitary.  But we need to add yeast (which is a microbe) to make beer!  So after we’ve boiled the wort, we need to cool it down so it doesn’t kill the yeast.  The simplest and “free” way is to move your boil kettle to a sink and run cold water on the outside of the kettle or set it in an ice-bath.  A better and faster method is to use an immersion chiller–a copper or stainless steel coil that sits in the kettle while you run cold water through the coils.  Immersion chillers start at about $65, and they generally last a long time.  Most come with connectors for a garden hose, so you’ll want to make sure you’re choosing one that fits the water source you will be using.  

Let The Feeding of the Yeast Begin!  After the wort is cooled, we need to transfer it to the fermenter.  Most modern breweries use a conical style fermenter, and there are a wide variety available–these are covered in other articles.  For this batch, we’re going to rely on traditional food grade plastic buckets.  You can buy these individually, but you’ll need other stuff too and the home brew suppliers have conveniently packed kits for your buying pleasure.   

A very basic  5 gallon homebrew equipment kit starts at around $75 and they come with more and more equipment the more you spend — including many of the optional add-ons that we mention throughout this post.  The MoreBeer! Home Brew Kit is pretty typical, and it includes: 

• 6 gallon food grade plastic bucket with spigot, stopper and airlock
• 5 gallon food grade bucket with spigot
• Mesh bags for steeping grain and hops
• Thermometer
• Hydrometer (used to measure sugar levels to calculate ABV)
• Tubing
• Bottling wand 
• Bottle capper
• 50 bottle caps
• Bottle cleaning brush
• Sanitizer

We will use the 6 gallon bucket as the fermenter.  First we sanitize the bucket, then we need to transfer the wort from the pot to the sanitized fermenter bucket.  You can pour it in, but the preferred way is to use a sanitized hose to siphon the wort to the fermenter.  You can suck it into a hose the old fashioned (free) way, or use an auto siphon (about $15) or pump (starting around $40).  Next we want to take a specific gravity reading with the hydrometer and add water to get to our original gravity target.  Once we’ve got our original gravity target dialed in, and the temperature in the appropriate range, we add the yeast and let the magic transformation of wort to beer begin!  When adding the yeast, we want to give a few aggressive stirs to aerate the wort–yeast need oxygen at this stage to reproduce.  But after this initial burst of O2, oxygen becomes the enemy and we will take every precaution to minimize any additional oxygen getting into the beer.  After a few stirs, we seal up the bucket with a sanitized lid.  Next we insert the airlock into the hole in the lid, and add some water (or vodka if you prefer) to the airlock to keep out the bad microbes.  You should soon see the cap of the airlock moving, and you’ll want to check it every so often the first couple of days to make sure the airlock doesn’t get dislodged or the lid unseal.