In honor of the Brewers Association’s National Beer Week May 11-17, Perlick wants to recognize home brewers. Given the current situation our world is facing due to COVID-19, most people are spending more time at home, and some are dabbling in new hobbies. From sourdough starters to crocheting, painting to brewing beer, the opportunities are endless!

Perlick is proud to work with some of the most skilled workers in the bar and refrigeration equipment business: engineers, machinists, welders and beer experts. Today we ask beer expert Dan Bode for his tips for successful home brewing.

Dan is a skilled Perlick Beverage Systems Sales Engineer (and cookie baker, but that is a topic for a future blog ?). He has some simple tips to get your homebrewing operation up and running.

As a Perlick Beer Expert, you are pretty “tapped into” the beer community. Breweries and bars are looking at new, inventive ways to do business in a post COVID-19 world. We are also seeing more and more beer fanatics exploring homebrewing. Can anyone homebrew?

Yes, no permit is required unless you want to get into distilling spirits. Homebrewing is cheap and easy, and pretty much anyone can get into it. Physical requirements are minimal, and space and temperature requirements can be met in almost any situation with a bit of creativity.

Like we said, these days, a lot of people are exploring new hobbies and one is homebrewing. What are the main items a person needs to home brew?

All you need are the ingredients, a pot/kettle that can boil 5-15 gallons (five gallons for most people), a stove (or outdoor burner), a receptacle for fermentation, and a cool dark place. You can get basic kits with all the equipment through almost any homebrew store.

In this blog we will also show some examples of homebrewers that have set up systems using some Perlick components. Why does Perlick equipment work so well for home brewing?

We have high standards for our tapping equipment.  If you are buying the ingredients, putting in the work, and waiting 1-3 months for your beer, you want to make sure that you are taking the best possible care of your homebrew.

Once a person makes their beer, they probably start with bottles… but maybe eventually they can graduate to a Perlick keg or tapping system, right?

Bottling your beer is the cheapest and easiest place to start. Graduating to kegs is the next level of investment. Typically you make beer five gallons at a time in the homebrew world, which is a lot of beer to keep cold. If you are kegging beer you need a place to store and chill it and a way to serve it which is where we come in.

I take it that sometimes a person’s first try at home brewing is not always the best beer ever! Any words of encouragement for those who are trying, and going through some bumps?

Ha, that is an understatement. There is no such thing as a brewer with a perfect record, we all make mistakes and less than stellar batches. Humanity has been brewing beer for thousands of years and it is still not a perfect process, so if you screw up, you are in good company.

Thanks Dan! We love hearing from our homebrewing followers and customers on both our Residential and Commercial Facebook and Residential and Commercial Instagram pages. Thank you for tagging #Perlick in your home brewing posts.

Here are a few of our recent favorite posts. They mention homebrewing tidbits like receiving a Perlick keg coupler delivery, the importance of quality malts, quarantine-themed homebrews, “keezers,” and connecting taps and making custom handles!

Feel free to COMMENT on this blog with some of your favorite homebrewing stories/bloopers… we would love to hear from you.