I was pleasantly surprised to find out how much like cooking (already a love of mine) it is. You start with a large brew kettle. They vary in size, but 10 gallons is a popular kettle size for a homebrewer, allowing us to easily make 5 gallon batches of beer at a time (fills standard 1/6th bbl keg size or about 50 bottles). Many homebrewers use a propane burner with a stand and have to brew outdoors, but my kitchen stove is just barely powerful enough to get the job done, so I can brew indoors. Bonus!
The beer recipe itself will start with a bunch of water (6.5-7.5 gal in my case for a 5 gal batch) and something called “wort” is created. Wort is basically the pre-alchoholic sugar water that will turn into beer after yeast eats it. New brewers will often use kits which contain everything they need for their recipe. The most basic kits are called extract kits, and most of what you need to make your wort has been powderized into what’s called malt extract. In that case, you can merely stir the extract powder into the water to create the base of your wort. Most experienced brewers prefer “full grain” recipes instead. This gives you a lot more control and variation of your beer than an extract kit. Don’t get me wrong, you can make some GREAT beers from extract kits. My first one was, and it turned out really good. Think of it like a cake mix. You can get a really good cake out of a box, but if you make it from scratch, you have a lot more possibility, and may end up with a better outcome. There are a couple of ways to do full-grain. I use a basic technique called BIAB or “brew in a bag” that uses only my brew kettle. Professional brewers use a system with multiple tanks to accomplish the same. I’ll stick with discussing my BIAB technique here for brevity.
Once you’ve got your brew kettle full of the right amount of (chlorine-free) water, something resembling a giant, nylon teabag is inserted and cinched to the kettle. Temperature is increased to the required mash temperature (often about 152ish). Grains need be crushed to break open the hulls. You can get your grains pre-crushed, but kinda like coffee beans, I prefer to crush right before use for maximum freshness, so I invested in a small grain mill. Once the grains are crushed, they are added to the water at temperature and steeped for about an hour. After that, the spent grain bag is removed the grains are discarded (or saved to make dog treats).
This leaves you in about the same place you’d be if you used an extract kit, with wort that is ready to boil. From here you bring the wort to a full boil. Once it’s boiling you add hops per your recipe’s directions. Hops provide the crisp, bitter flavors in beer. After boiling for 60-90 mins, the wort must be quickly brought down to a temperature where yeast can be added (normally about 65 degrees). It’s important to get that temp down as fast as possible to avoid post-boil contamination. There are a few ways to do this. I use something called a copper wort chiller that is connected to a garden hose or faucet. Cold water is pumped through the copper coils and pumped out the other end to a drain. This cools the wort down to yeast pitching temperature quickly.
Once you’ve got your wort down to temp, it is transferred to a fermenting vessel. For many homebrewers this is a large glass jug called a carboy, although different sizes and materials are also available. Oxygen is added for the yeast either by vigorous shaking, or preferably an oxygen wand. After that, yeast (also part of the recipe ingredients) is added. Yeasts produce alcohol as a byproduct as they eat the sugars in the wort, and all kinds of different beer characteristics that will determine much of the flavor. Once the yeast is added, the fermenter is placed in a cool, dry, dark place for about 2 weeks, while the yeasties do their job. This is the most interesting part, as fermentation is FUNKY business. It’s really fun to watch. The wort churns around as if it’s boiling, a foamy head called krausen forms on top, and throughout this process, a stopper with a blow-off tube is inserted, with the other end of the tube in some water. This keeps oxygen and contaminates out while allowing C02 from fermentation to vent.
After fermenting for a couple of weeks, the beer is transferred to kegs or bottles, carbonated, and served!
The best learning resource for this is a book called “How to Brew” by John Palmer. It is the homebrewer’s bible and will teach you everything you need to know. Good Luck!
https://www.amazon.com/How-Brew-Everything-Great-Every/dp/1938469356