The Malt Miller Christmas gift buying guide

If the person you’re buying for keeps saying they’d really like to get into brewing – or if after every beer they drink they say “I could make that” – you want one of our First Time Home Brewer sets. With everything you need to brew your first batch, simply match with one of our huge range of extract beer kits! If you’re stuck for which to pick, drop us a line on our socials (Facebook – Instagram – YouTube) and we’ll be happy to help!

For the more experienced home brewer, maybe they’re looking to take the plunge into all-grain brewing? In which case, we have a set for that too! From our Kitchen Brewer sets you can do on your own stovetop (even using your own pan), through our signature BIAB set, all the way to full-featured BrewZilla and Grainfather systems, there’s something for every level of brewer.

Or perhaps you fancy trying to make something other than beer? Have a go at making your own wine with these fab winemaking starter kits. Try a cheeky little pinot grigio or a smooth merlot. Cheers!

Ideal for the brewing-curious as well as both beginner and experienced brewers, The Modern Homebrewer is the ultimate guide to brewing ingredients, processes and practices. Produced for CAMRA by two homebrewing legends – Elusive Brewing’s Andy Parker and the estimable Jamil Zainasheff – this book is brimful with information, advice, and best of all, officially sanctioned recipes straight from your favourite breweries (with a matching range of recipe kits available from ourselves, naturally).

If you want to take your love of brewing to the next level, we have just the books for you. Whether it’s the quintessial reference text, Brewing Classic Styles, a guide to improve your tasting skills, or deep dives into beer styles like farmhouse ales or trappist beers, these books are pure inspiration!

Beer is culture, as they say – well, that’s what our good friend Jonny Garrett from The Craft Beer Channel says. And he says it very eloquently, too, across these two beautiful books. A Year in Beer chronicles how the changing seasons can and should affect our relationship with beer, while his latest, The Meaning Of Beer, explores the impact of brewing throughout history, from ancient Egypt to WW2 and beyond. These aren’t just great books about beer, they’re great books that also have beer in them.

You can’t beat hands-on brewing experience – so why not come down to brew along with us?

Book a Brew Day with us and we’ll help you through every stage of an all-grain brew and send you away with 23L of your own hand-crafted wort, ready to ferment! Choose from one of our planned dates for next year, or give a gift certificate so the lucky brewer can pick their own date.

It’s back – our favourite gift from last year and still one of the best things we’ve played with (ahem). The German Beer Spike transforms the flavours of cold beer and is beautifully made for us by a crafter we met in Germany last year. Heat the spike with a blowtorch or over a gas hob, then plunge it into a beer for a few seconds, then enjoy the amazing caramelised flavours!

You need to know what you’re doing with it – there are loads of videos on YouTube – otherwise things can get messy, and by its very nature this thing gets hot, so observe appropriate safety protocols. But let’s be honest, making a mess while playing with hot equipment is 100% on-brand for homebrewers…

You know what every single person who enjoys beer needs? More beer glasses.  Especially when they look this good! We’ve got these gorgeous limited edition Love & Beer stemless teku glasses and the matching tallboy pint glasses. Or how about your very own The Malt Miller branded glasses – available in both a craft-beer appropriate 2/3rds and as a very snazzy pint (with go-faster stripes to improve hop aroma). Or why not pick up the double pack of both?

And while we’re on the subject of The Malt Miller merchandise, we’ve got bottle openers, we’ve got t-shirts, and we’ve got hats.

More than that, we have The One Gift to Rule Them All: socks. Nothing beats a pair of socks for Christmas!

Well, except maybe a giant metal sign for your home bar…

Chances are, if you’re looking for gift ideas from a home brewing shop, the person you’re buying for likes a beer. Chefs appreciate good food, bands appreciate good music, and brewers appreciate good beer.

Rather than getting them the same old supermarket “craft ales selection pack”, check out our range of excellent festive beers. This saison from Burning Sky would go brilliantly instead of fizz with party food, while this barrel-aged barleywine from Siren would be amazing with your Xmas pud. Or shop our full range to fill up the fridge ahead of the festive season!

Across the many thousands of AI-generated gift buying lists on the internet, approximately 99% of them* will suggest hot sauce. We sell hot sauce too, and we actually use ours on a daily basis, so we can vouch for them being pretty darned good.

But you know what those AI bots won’t recommend? Amazing craft coffee from independent roasters. Just don’t get the coffee and the hot sauce mixed up (don’t ask).

(*: completely made up number)

When you get to a certain age, you get to recognise the shape of certain parcels under the tree: yep, that’s a bottle of whisky… oh, and that one’s a bottle of whisky hidden in a bag.

Well, you’ll never guess this whisky from the parcel – because it’s whiskey you make yourself. Simply add the Still Spirits Reserve Bourbon kit to neutral grain spirit or vodka and age as long as you prefer – from just a few days up to a couple of weeks.

We’ve tried this kit ourselves and we honestly couldn’t believe this wasn’t a real deal, high priced bourbon. It even comes with labels for your creations!

If the person you’re buying for is already a customer of ours, you can avoid all the guesswork by asking them to use their Wishlist. They put the things they want on their list, they share the Wishlist link with you, and you’ll know exactly what to get! All you then need to do is work out how to wrap it…

Or there’s always the trusty gift voucher. The argument against vouchers is that they aren’t exciting. We say otherwise – when you’ve already got your eye on some brewing stuff, a voucher from the Malt Miller is very exciting and very welcome indeed!

Valid for a whole 12 months, available in any amount you want, and redeemable across everything in our store, the Malt Miller gift vouchers are probably the best gift you can get for a homebrewer. Probably.