Free Brewing Calculators · No Sign-Up · No Nonsense
The Brewer's Bench: the four calculations every British homebrewer reaches for — ABV with temperature-corrected readings, priming sugar by style, strike water and dilution — running right here in your browser.
Most hydrometers are calibrated at 20°C. If your sample was warmer or cooler, the Bench corrects the readings before calculating.
Warmer beer at bottling holds less CO2, so it needs a touch more sugar to hit the same fizz.
Thicker mashes (less water per kilo) need hotter strike water — the grain steals more heat.
Overshot your gravity on brew day? Dilution is the honest fix. Boiled and cooled water only.
Most home setups land between 60–75% efficiency. Brew, measure, then set this number from your own results — it is the most personal number in brewing.
Rough style compass: hoppy beers like sulphate ahead of chloride (around 2:1); malty beers the reverse. Balanced is balanced. Your tongue outranks the calculator.
Brew Craft
Forty quid of kit and patience beats four hundred quid of kit and haste.
You don't make beer — yeast does. You make wort, then keep the yeast comfortable: right pitch, steady temperature, time to finish. Most "off" homebrew is just stressed yeast telling tales.
A British ale fermented at a steady 18–20°C tastes clean; the same brew at 26°C tastes of solvent and regret. A cool corner, a wet towel, a brew belt in winter — control beats equipment.
Gravity readings, temperatures, timings, tastings. Your fifth batch only improves on your first if you can read what your first actually did. The Bench gives numbers; your notebook gives wisdom.
Your First Brew
Ninety per cent of ruined homebrew died of one cause: something unclean touched it after the boil. The gospel is short.
We Recommend
A short, honest list — gear we'd actually scrub at midnight. No catalogue dumping.
Honesty first: when these links go live, some will be recommendation links and this site may earn a small commission on purchases — it never changes the price you pay, and we only list kit we'd genuinely use.
Straight Answers
Hydrometer reading before pitching (OG), another when fermentation's done (FG), and the guideline formula ABV = (OG − FG) × 131.25 — the Bench above does it for you, including temperature-correcting your readings if your sample wasn't at the hydrometer's calibration temperature (usually 20°C).
It depends on style, batch size and the beer's temperature at bottling — warmer beer holds less CO2, so it needs slightly more sugar. Use the Priming Sugar tab above for a guideline in grams of plain table sugar, dissolve it in boiled water, mix gently and evenly, and always bottle in proper strong glass.
Yes — brewing beer, cider or wine at home for your own consumption is legal and needs no licence. Distilling spirits at home without a licence is illegal in the UK. This site is about brewing, and about enjoying what you brew responsibly.
Because they'd make worse reading and worse beer decisions. The site may earn small commissions from clearly marked kit recommendations — that's the entire business model, declared in plain sight. No cookies, no tracking, no nonsense.