Bottles, caps and capper – If you're an avid beer drinker, there's one easy way to save a little money, and that's by saving your bottles. Beer bottles you buy at the grocery store can be easily reused provided you rinse them thoroughly after emptying them and ensure they have pop-top, not twist-off caps. Gather as many bottles as you can, and even though a full batch of beer can yield 55 12-ounce bottles, it's good to have at least 60 bottles ready just in case you somehow wind up with extra beer or you happen to have an accident. If you need to buy more or you want to start fresh, your brew shop will have a variety of bottles available along with the caps and capping device.

Sterilizing agent – Sanitation is the key to a successful brew, and bacteria or other foreign microorganisms can infiltrate and ruin your fermenting beer if the proper precautions are not taken. Some recipes swear by the use of diluted bleach to keep your equipment and brewing environment sterile, but due to environmental concerns about using bleach and the possibility that it can taint the flavor of your beer, I recommend the use of BTF, an odorless and tasteless iodophor sanitizer used to clean dishes and utensils in large-scale eating establishments.

Clear rubber tubing – About six to ten feet of clear rubber tubing with an internal diameter of ½ inch is enough to smoothly siphon your beer from vessel to vessel. This can be found at a hardware store if you can't find it at your brew shop, and because of its direct contact with the beer, it is wise to purchase this new and use it only for making beer.

A racking cane – This is a specialized piece of equipment that can be found at your brew shop. It is a device used to aseptically prime your siphon for transferring your beer between vessels. Bubbling airlock (with stopper) – Also found at your brew shop, this is a gauge used to monitor the activity taking place in the fermentation chamber.

Bottling tube – Available at your brew shop, this simple device is a plastic tube about 8 inches in length with a spring-release nozzle that can stop the flow of beer when released. It will be a key component of the bottling process.

Hydrometers, wort chillers and other specialized equipment – There are of course many other devices that have been devised to fine-tune the beermaking process, and while they are useful, they are by no means necessary. I'm going to ignore their use for the sake of this tutorial and leave them for your future explorations in the realm of brewing.