Advanced Home Brewing Equipment
March 15, 2011 by
Filed under Home Brewing Tips
What Is Advanced Home Brewing Equipment?
Author: lisa lucero
Most home brewers start off small, which is sensible. Beginning with just the minimum basic equipment needed to make homemade beers makes a great deal of sense. Not only does it keep the investment to a minimum, it also makes the whole process simpler, which is a blessing for the beginner. However, once the former beginner gets the experience and confidence that he is capable of making good beer at home, he wants to expand his horizons.
Since the aim of home brewing is to have fun while making beers to suit your tastes, limiting your abilities to produce beers can bring in an element of boredom into something that should be fun. The solution is to go in for advanced home brewing equipment. This will provide the home brewer with the equipment he needs to experiment and create beers of a wide range of flavors, including all grain beer, and continue to explore the immense possibilities that home brewing has to offer.
A word of caution. Beginners are often tempted to take a short cut and invest in advanced home brewing equipment at the outset. As mentioned above this can lead to a range of mistakes and wastage of money that can ruin the experience and put people off home brewing. Beginners should start with home brewing starter equipment and either gradually build up to advanced home brewing equipment or selloff their old starting kits and invest in a ready made advanced home brewing equipment package.
What an Advanced Home Brewing Equipment Package Consists of
There are many opinions on what is essential and what is not in advanced home brewing equipment. What is given below are the items that are generally accepted as being necessary to advanced home brewing. If you are going in for advanced home brewing equipment it is presumed that you have knowledge and experience about home brewing so do not hesitate to add or subtract from this list as you see fit.
Ready made advanced home brewing equipment kits are available and while these make getting all you need easy, they often contain items you already may have and so may end up paying for things you do not need. It is more time consuming but usually more economical to buy only the advanced home brewing equipment you need.
One 6 gallon glass jar for primary fermentation
One 5 gallon glass jar for the secondary fermentation process
Nylon bottle brushes for cleaning the jars
One 6.5 gallon bottling bucket with a tight lid and spigot at the base
One plastic air lock with a drilled rubber stopper for forming a tight seal
One pump of the auto siphon type
A long stemmed alcohol filled thermometer
A triple scale hydrometer
A large nylon mesh grain bag
Three disposable hop socks
At least 10 feet of food grade plastic tubing
One spring loaded bottling filler
One double lever bottle capper (preferably with a magnet).
Bottle and caps
Nylon bottle cleaning brushes
These are the basics of advanced home brewing equipment. You can add on to this list based on your experience and brewing plans.
OK, some background here…I’ve been home brewing for several years, I’ve metaled in several contests and I brew at least i batch a month year round.
The first thing you need is a good kit. I recommend this one because it comes with a carboy for clarification and sanitizer*-
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/brewing-starter-kit.html
You may wish to get a book a book, How To Brew by John Palmer is the homebrewer’s bible. Beauty of it is the old edition is available only for free from John himself here –
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html
Get the book online or at your local book store if you become serious about brewing. I also recommend Randy Mosher’s Rasdical Brewing ( http://www.radicalbrewing.com/ ) and Ray Daniels’ Designing Great Beer ( http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Great-Beers-Ultimate-Brewing/dp/0937381500 ) if you become serious about it.
In the absence of a book you can watch Alton brew a beer and take good notes. This is how I started and I don’t regret it. The ice trick really works until you invest in a wort chiller. –
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlv1wBy7Z5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7jQ6Wwnqk&feature=related
Next you’ll need a recipe, I recommend going partial mash your first time out. All extract tends to be bland and lifeless, all-grain is to expensive and complicated for a beginner. Make sure you know if your recipe kit comes with priming sugar for bottling and if it doesn’t you’ll need some. If your local homebrew shop doesn’t have ready made kits you can get them from Midwest Supplies also –
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/homebrewing-ingredients/recipe-kits.html
Let’s see…you’ll need a large stock pot to boil your wort in. Wort is beer before it is beer. If you don’t have one already, don’t spend a lot right now. Go to Dollar General and get a 3 gallon pot for under $20. You’ll need this for boiling you wort.
You’ll need bottles. This I highly recommend picking up locally. Shipping cost and possibility for damage are both high. If you and your friends are up to it you can save and wash and sanitize* them. You’ll need two cases and a six extra. Chances are you won’t need all six extra, but you want them just in case.
Advice for a beginner –
Start simple. Don’t go big your first time out. I did this and I wasted money and time. I brewed a stout that was undrinkable.
If your tap water is drinkable without chemical treatment it is good enough for brewing…no mater what Alton says. Just fill your bottling bucket and let it sit overnight so the chlorine can evaporate out.
Be patient. Brewing takes time, but it is rewarding.
Do a web search for home brew clubs in your area. Here in Chicago I’m a member of CBS (Chicago Beer Society). The one thing you’ll learn about brewers is we LOVE to share what we know and we love to get other people addicted to the hobby. There is also homebrewtalk.com and Beer Advocate’s forum as a home brew section.
*SANITATION IS THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP AND SHOULD NOT BE OVERLOOKED!!!!!
Imagine that last line underlined, bold, 25 point and bright red…maybe flashing.
What does it take to start home beer brewing?
Several years ago my roommate bought me a “Mr. Beer” home brewing kit. What I didn’t really like about it is that it seemed “dumbed down” – for example, all the yeast, sugar and stuff was pre-measured and it all came in pre-packaged flavors. I want to experiment a bit with different ingredients. What will it take to make a beer from scratch? I’m looking for input on things like equipment, tips, and difficulty level. Another thing I would like to know is if I’m getting in over my head. Thanks in advance.