Making a Harris Beer Kit – simple step by step guide to making beer from a homebrew kit

This is a simple step by step guide on making a homebrew beer kit from the Harris Craft Series. We are making the Bitter, as this is the most popular kit that we sell in that range but there is also a Lager and mild available with an IPA due soon. This guide can also be used for any of the single can beer kits on the market like Muntons, Geordie, John Bull, Coopers, Harvest, Tom Caxton, Simply, Bulldog etc.

The beer will take approx. 6-7 days to ferment in the bucket then the beer is transferred to either bottles or a keg.

To enhance hop flavour even more, you can add some fresh hop pellets in the fermenter after 4-5 days.

You will need standard brewing equipment to make this kit:
1 x 25 litre (5 gallons) Bucket
Steriliser
Airlock
Mixing paddle
1Kg Sugar

When it comes to bottling or putting the beer in a keg, you will also need:
Hydrometer
Syphon Kit
Bottles or Barrel
Some sugar for priming

We also recommend using Pure Brew to treat the water and ensure your beer has a healthy fermentation and beer finings to help clear the beer afterwards.

We used 1Kg Brewing Sugar (Dextrose Monohydrate) for the fermentation, but this can be substitiuted for different fermenatable sugars:
Standard Sugar: The basic sugar to produce the standard beer.
Brewing Sugar: More refined and produces a cleaner tasting beer.
Beer Kit Enhancer: A mix of dried malt and brewing sugar. Produces more body and flavour in the beer than just using sugar.
Malt Extract: Gives the beer even more body, flavour and roundness.

Remember, sugar only produces alcohol, malt will also give you body and flavour, so if you can, always go for either beer kit enhancer or malt extract over sugar.