newb tips / priority / advice.

[JamesC]

Evening All,

I'm pretty new to brewing... started with a festa brew box, did a small all grain batch (using standard kitchen equipment, ) a noble grape recipe kit, and found a recipe online, so ordered the individual ingredients for an extract brew. That's my ecperience thus far.

I'm reading all I can, and one thing I'd like to see is an advice thread on priority of equipment to buy / make to be successful. I purchased a half decent pot to boil in, and a second carboy so far, but am definitely interested in doing full batch all grain brewing. Where do I start?

[fakr]

Morning Headspring,

Welcome to the forum.  Where to start is a very good question and you'll get a many different answers from different members. 

I'll throw in my suggestions based solely on the lowest cost and complexity...

Lookup BIAB (brew in a bag).  It would be about the least complex and cheapest when getting into all grain.  here's what you need:

1 boil kettle
2 buckets
1 big muslin brewing bag.


So the idea is that you put your grain bag filled with grain in a bucket, filling the bucket with a pre determined temperature and amount of water.  Let the bag of grain steep in the hot water for an hour, then pull the bag out, put it in the second bucket.  During this time you heat up a second amount of water in the boil kettle and pour it into the second bucket with the wet grain bag.  Pour the first bucket into the kettle, and after stirring the second bucket of hot water and grain for 5-10 mins, pour the second bucket of hot wort into the boil kettle.  Boil the wort, add hops, then cool and transfer to a fermenter.

There are small steps that I've missed, but you should get the point.  Very little amount of equipment and $ needed to get started.


One more piece of equipment you'll need is a wort chiller....something to cool your boiled beer down to roughly 20C so you can pitch your yeast.  There is a large variety, but all will cool the wort.  Just find the cheapest one for now and you'll be good.  Look for immersion chillers, plate chillers, or counter flow chillers.  There are lots of great articles on DIY chiller projects.


One last point to make is the size of your boil kettle.  Starting out, you really don't need a big 30GAL kettle.  Something as small as 20L will do, even for a 20L batch of beer.   You just use enough grain to make 20L of 5% beer.  You'll end up boiling 10-12L of very sweet wort in the small kettle, and just add cold water at the end of the boil to top it up to the 20L in the fermenter.

Let me know if any of this is unclear, and I can explain in a little more detail. 

[Evil Jalapeno]

I was coming here this morning to ask pretty much the same questions I'm currently equipped for partial mash (primary, secondary, 20L boil pot, immersion wort chiller, thermometers, etc.), but want to upgrade to all-grain equipment in the near future. What size mash tun / HLT / boil pot do I need for a 20-23L wort? Rectangular or circular mash tun? Do I need a propane burner or is it possible to boil that much liquid on a simple electric stove?

EDIT: fakr replied to headspring while I was typing my message. I'm still interested to know the sizes I would need to give me the widest range of possibilities, like higher OG batches. Thanks 

[brew]

I believe varieties of people on this forum have used their kitchen stoves for regular 5G batches. I already had a 50L aluminum pot and a turkey fryer burner and I still use it for my 5G batches. Propane is nice and I can do it in the garage. This keeps the peace in our house since a 60 minute boil of wort on the stove will fill the kitchen with steam and boiling wort smell and my wife would not appreciate that.

As fakr mentions, BIAB is a nice easy way to start. But if you want to get into AG with a mash tun, you'll need a 30 or 40L pot for 5G batches (depending on how big your beers are, my pot was 50L and it was plenty big, but it was cheap). You can get aluminum ones for pretty cheap, although home hardware has a stainless one for I think $80 or so. Stainless is nicer to use than aluminum, doesn't change color, easier to clean etc...

Walmart has a great cooler for around $60 I believe, the coleman xtreme 70quart (66L) - its priced right and it leaves you with lots of room to go 10G if you ever decide to. It holds heat very well.

For an HLT its handy to have something in the 20L range - Most of my 5G batches are in the 12-16L range for strike water. You can get by with something less than that if you do 2 sparges (which improves efficiency).

You can get away with corner cutting but I find if you start getting into it more, sometimes it pays to get something decent to start with and it can be equipment you may continue to find useful even after you upgrade...

[fakr]

Hi Evil Jalapeno,

Let's start with a mash tun build.   I would personally suggest a round cooler as a mash tun, but they are hard to find and quite expensive, so second suggestion - a 60L+ rectangular cooler with a drain plug on one side.  I had a coleman extreme 7 day cooler that held about 33 or so pounds of grain.  This size cooler would allow you to make some pretty stiff 9%+ beers.  There are plenty of posts on mash tun builds here so look through some and you'll get a good idea of what you need for parts.
Off the top of my head, you'd be looking at $100+ to make a good mash tun.

Hot Liquor Tank - Really only needs to hold enough water to mash in and wash the grain in the mash tun (sparge).  I would suggest a 50L stainless pot from Homehardware.ca.  I believe their regular everyday low price is $59.  It would hold more than enough hot water to mash as well as sparge (with a small top up).   You could probably heat this up on a stove, but it would take quite a while....might want to consider a propane burner.

Aother option for a HLT is to buy the turkey fryer combo from canadiantire or wallmart...they come with a propane burner and a 40L pot I believe...might be smaller.  they usually go for $69.   The smaller pot it comes with would be good for an HLT, and use the 50L SS pot for your boil kettle.

You'll find after reading through posts, and various equipment builds\upgrades, that it can get a bit expensive to build a brew system, then turn around 6-8 months later and replace equipment with new higher end equipment....so you could also go the route of buying once and crying once...there are a lot of fully loaded kettles and mash tuns out there that would suit you for a very long time.  Mind you the equipment is rather pricey, but you only buy it once as opposed to 2-3-4 brewery upgrades.  Look at blichmann kettles for example.

[Evil Jalapeno]

Thanks for the input, Brew and Fakr! My main concern was to buy something that wouldn't be big enough and that I would quickly regret buying. I understand my options now, and I like the "buy once, cry once" tip, which is how I usually think.

Headspring: I didn't want to hijack your thread, but I'm sure you'll find this info as useful as I do!

[JamesC]

Not a hijack at all. I'm glad to see someone else at about the same point with different questions. I'm on board with the buy once theory as well... I picked up a pot good enough to do extract, and that was about 40, so really, spending 60 or 80 for something that would have been sufficient for both just makes more sense. The good thing about the pot being bought though, is that once I upgrade that, the old one will be an excellent stock pot.

Great responses so far, opinions are much appreciated.

[jamie_savoie]

When I started out I bought a 64L pot even though I started out doing 5-6 gal batches.  Now that I do 12 gal batches I'm glad I went with a bigger pot from the beginning.  Even if I want to upgrade to a bigger pot later it'll be a good HLT

I also started out with a hacked corona mill for my grain mill.  I did about 25 batches with it and for the price it served me well but I would highly suggest you invest in a good mill from the start.  My efficiency is better, more predictable, better crush and no stuck sparge.

Also look and ask around for used stuff.  You would be surprise what you can find for cheap or even free.  Over the years I got a co2 tank, kegs, burner, 5 gal mash tun (upgraded to a 10 gal now), a 50L pot and misc stuff all for free.

Another tip is read read and read.  There's plenty of information here, on the internet and books.  It can look intimidating starting out with a bunch of new terms and procedures but it's actually easy.  I learned to brew by myself but a mentor would've helped me but I was alone in my area brewing.

Practice, take notes and repeat! 

[JamesC]

Free stuff is always good lol.I am considering getting a kegging system to get that out of the way. I've been able to brew some half decent stuff so far, and am shooting to have a bar system in place in the long term anyhow... I'll piece together the remainder of the equupment as time goes on I think....