The phrase "small batch" - beloved of big brewers and American whiskey distillers - tends not to mean much.

Rather, it's a dash of marketing to slap on a label like "limited release" or "select reserve". But it seems perfectly legit for the beer I have been brewing with a friend, which sits in a small plastic tub on top of a kitchen cupboard.

This weekend I plan to stir in some sugar to reward the yeast cells for all their hard work and provoke a second fermentation to create the fizz. Then, in a fortnight, a month after we started, 12 precious bottles of California Steamin' will be ready. Talk about delayed gratification.

The last (and only) time I tried home brewing it took just as long, but there was a lot more beer at the end of it. Known as "extract brewing", it involved tipping a tin of what looked like molasses into a big tub of water, sprinkling it with yeast and bottling it a week later. It was dead easy - perhaps too easy.

Down in St Albans, Claire Russell thought the same way watching her husband's efforts, and felt would-be brewers needed a more hands-on experience. She pitched the idea to her American friend, Posy Parsons, and together they created HomeBrewtique, whose California Steamin' is hopefully fermenting as I write.

"I've always loved beer, and growing up in Boston 20 years ago there were loads of microbreweries around," Parsons explains. She says they both enjoy cooking and saw plenty of parallels with beer. "There are so many inputs where you can influence the flavour, and the beauty of small batch is it only takes a few hours and you can do it the kitchen."

Compared to traditional all-grain brewing which involves a shed-full of equipment and a day's work, her kit is certainly more compact. Maybe too small scale, I suggest. "Well, these are flavourful, sipping beers," Parsons replies. "You're not going to guzzle them." Little does she know.

Still, making a proper brew with real ingredients is fun - you tip the grain into a fine mesh bag suspended in a big pot then cook it in the oven for an hour, followed by a long, slow boil, then you add the hops and finally the yeast. It feels closer to the real thing than my last homebrew experience.