Gary Glass: Hi! My name is Gary Glass. I'm the Director of the American Homebrewers Association. Today I'm going to teach you how to make beer at home. We'll be following along with 'Zymurgy: An introduction to Homebrewing'. You can download this from homebrewersassociation.

org. So I suggest you do that to follow along with us today. We'll be covering several segments starting with ingredients that are used in homebrewing, the equipment you'll need, as well as how to clean and sanitize that equipment. I will over to the brewing process, how to manage your fermentation and then we'll finish up with bottling your beer. Homebrewing is safe; there are no known pathogens that can survive in beer, so it is safe to drink. Although, it is an alcohol-containing beverage, you want to make sure you're consuming it responsibly. And also the brewing process is much like cooking, so you would take the same kinds of precautions you would with dealing with any kind of hot liquids on the stove, as well as making sure you use your cleaners and sanitizer those properly and then store those cleaners and sanitizers properly. Homebrewing is federally legal. It's also legal in all but three states in the country Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, it's currently illegal in those states, but we're working on changing the laws there. For the latest information on laws in your state, you can go to homebrewersassociation.

org. Homebrewing has long been a part of culture here, dating back to the earliest colonies in the United States, including many of our founding fathers. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both home brewers. Today, there are over 1750,000 people brewing beer at home. Me personally, I have been homebrewing for 17 years and I have been with the American Homebrewers Association for the last 10 years. There are lots of other resources for homebrewing in addition to this video. There are a couple of books that you might want to take a look at. There is 'How to Brew' by John Palmer and 'The Complete Joy of Homebrewing' by Charlie Papazian. There is Zymurgy magazine that comes with a membership, and there's also some online resources, there are podcasts including the Brewing Network and Basic Brewing Radio. Well let's get started.