5 Must-Haves For The Home Brewer On Your Christmas List

I'm not a huge drinker, but I think when the holidays come around, I have a tendency to start enjoying a bit more beer. Which inevitably leads me, perhaps after an extra pint or two, to thinking that I should totally be be brewing my own beer. This year, I'm thinking about it through a bit clearer head, and maybe it's not such a bad idea.

So I started poking around a bit to try and figure out the nuts and bolts I would need to get to started. I chose five things that you'll need, that won't already have immediate access too. Check it out...

4-Gallon Pot. This is pretty much the most obvious place you're going to begin. You need something to get all your ingredients going in, right? A good old aluminum lobster/stock pot will do the trick.

Airlock & Stopper. You'll need these for your fermentation bucket. You need access to your brew, but don't want the outside getting in, so to speak.

Racking Cane. You'll need this device to siphon the beer out of the kettle or fermentor.

Bottle Wand. I never really thought much about how to get the beer into the bottles, until I thought about to trying to pour it in with funnels or something, and thought that sounded ridiculous.

Bottle Capper. This seems pretty self-explanatory, right? Try putting caps on with your fingers.

Obviously, there's other things you'll need, but some of those you find at the local hardware store, or whatnot. You'll need buckets, and hoses, and sanitizers, etc. But these are things you might not find right nearby, or handy. Good luck fellow brew novices! I'll let you know how mine turns out!