Help me prioritize my equipment

All,

I am trying to prioritize my purchasing of new brewing equipment.

First, I have been home brewing off and on for 20 years. But, in the last 2 years I have started getting serious and having fun. I switched from bottling to kegs and now have 4 beers on tap. I typically brew mini-mashes (part extract part specialty grains).

Equipment wise I have a 20 qt plain jane boiling pot, a 6 gallon plastic primary, a glass carboy, a wort chiller, and a pre-chiller. Lastly I have a beautiful hand built 4 keg keezer.

I have started thinking about getting a conical fermenter. Then I started thinking about getting a better/larger boiling pot. And of course maybe a Igloo mash tun. For the conical it looks like prices range from $90 for a plastic FastFerment, $225 for a SS BrewBucket, or $400 for a SS Chronicle 7 gallon. A 10 gallon boiling pot will run $100-200 with all the tri-clover fittings.

So any suggestions on where I should start?

First off, great job on that keezer, those taps are gorgeous!

Secondly, I don't think fancy expensive fermenters are a good place for you to sink additional money at this point in your brewing. I'd ask the questions, "what will result in better beer," or "what will make my brew day shorter/more enjoyable/less stressful?" In the first category, I'd suggest picking up some equipment to perhaps try your hand at all grain brewing, either brew-in-a-bag or with a simple converted cooler mash tun. In the second category, I'd suggest maybe looking into adding a pump and plate chiller to your setup, it's stunning how much faster those things can chill your wort down.

Of course, all this assumes that you are already able to adequately monitor and control your fermentation temperatures.

Just my $0.02.

Id go with a new pot and a couple igloo coolers and go all grain. after that your brewing cost per batch should go down since you don't need to buy extract any more.

How do you intend to control the temps of something like a FastFerment? How do you control fermentation temps now?

Off the top of my head, if you have fermentation down then I would get a bigger boil kettle and do full boils. How do you chill? Bigger boil kettle and full boils could open a can of worms to which you may have no lid for. In other words, you go full boil you'll want some sort of chiller and now you're walking onto that real dark side (but fun side).

What makes you want a conical? Just curious.

Nice Keezer, looks great.

To be honest, I'd put the fancy conical fermenter at the back of the list. I had a fancy SS conical for a while, and while it was neat, it wasn't something that really added much benefit to the beer. I ended up selling it to invest in other brewing equipment. I don't think you will see much benefit with a conical unless you are brewing large batches, or maybe if you get real big into yeast harvesting. For a typical 5 gallon batch a carboy or bucket will make equally good beer.

Things I would invest in (in this order):
1) Fermentation temperature control - the single biggest improvement to my beers
2) Yeast starter equipment - healthy yeast = good beer
3) A larger brew pot - get a 10 gallon pot, you'll be glad you did
4) All grain setup/cooler mash tun - not saying AG is inherently better, but it does give you more flexibility, and it's just fun

Just my $0.03. Worth 50% more than kombat's $0.02

Priorities for homebrewing (in my opinion)

1) Sanitation
2) Fermentation temp control
3) Pitching the right amount of healthy yeast (starters/stir plate/oxygen options)
4) Chilling your wort fast (immersion chiller/counterflow chiller)
5) Moving from extract to all-grain (more fun/more immersive experience/more variety)
6) Solving the mystery of your water chemistry (pH meter, calibration solutions, chemicals to add to your water, water filtration setup/distilled water/bottled water, blah blah blah)
7) Kegging/building a keezer
8) Saving money by buying and storing grains in bulk / not depending on the LHBS grain mill which might be screwed up and will give you unreliable mash efficiencies (grain mill/containers to hold grain)

After that, it's a question of making improvements to make your homebrewing experience more convenient or easier.

Tired of battling the weather on brew days? Figure out how to make an indoor electric or NG brew rig for your basement.

Tired of hauling hot boiling volumes of liquid? Beer pumps.

Want to modify mash temps easier? HERMS or RIMS.

Want to make more beer with roughly the same amount of work? Bigger pots.

Want to ferment more beer with roughly the same amount of cleaning? Bigger fermentors.

Hello said:

How do you intend to control the temps of something like a FastFerment? How do you control fermentation temps now?

Off the top of my head, if you have fermentation down then I would get a bigger boil kettle and do full boils. How do you chill? Bigger boil kettle and full boils could open a can of worms to which you may have no lid for. In other words, you go full boil you'll want some sort of chiller and now you're walking onto that real dark side (but fun side).

What makes you want a conical? Just curious.

Click to expand...

Currently I am only doing ales and I ferment in my closet which is consistently about 74 +/- 2 degrees. I have a spare fridge I can use for fermenting. Should I target around 68 for fermentation temp. I am stating to lean towards the boiling pot as the first upgrade and doing full boil even if I use mini-mash recipes.

I was liking the idea of the conical to use 1 fermentation vessel and then being able to drain off the trub before racking.

Thanks for the reply.

Ales at 74 is still high. It's 74F ambient but it's hotter inside that FV. I believe FV temps inside during most active fermentation and the time where off flavors develop, the temps can be as high as 5F over ambient. That is too hot for most ales. Great for a sasion though if you ask me.

If you love your beer and you're okay with these temps then move along but I would be making fermentation control priority #1.

I get wanting to drain off the trub, but it doesn't really make better beer as far as I know. Again, I don't see the lure yet and that could be my bias and/or ignorance.

With regards to your boil volumes, I would hit that up #1 if you want to continue with the fermentation temps you have today. I am not sure where you live but where I live room temp is about 78F downstairs, 76F upstairs (because I work upstairs) and my beers downstairs are about 77-78F. These are ones I'm bulk aging. I have a fermentation chamber for active fermentation.

kombat said:

First off, great job on that keezer, those taps are gorgeous!

Secondly, I don't think fancy expensive fermenters are a good place for you to sink additional money at this point in your brewing. I'd ask the questions, "what will result in better beer," or "what will make my brew day shorter/more enjoyable/less stressful?" In the first category, I'd suggest picking up some equipment to perhaps try your hand at all grain brewing, either brew-in-a-bag or with a simple converted cooler mash tun. In the second category, I'd suggest maybe looking into adding a pump and plate chiller to your setup, it's stunning how much faster those things can chill your wort down.

Of course, all this assumes that you are already able to adequately monitor and control your fermentation temperatures.

Just my $0.02.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the compliment. It was a lot of fun to build; especially figuring out how make finger joints for the corners. It sounds like from the all the comments I need to concentrate on fermentation temp and boiling.

That temp seems high even for ales. A fermentation chamber would be my priority then. if ambient air temp is 74 +/- 2 degrees then your beer temp during fermentation is prob close to 80.

The only 2 batches (first 2) i've done that fermented over 70* F i ended up dumping due to off flavors produced by yeast at higher temps.

hunter_la5 said:

Nice Keezer, looks great.

To be honest, I'd put the fancy conical fermenter at the back of the list. I had a fancy SS conical for a while, and while it was neat, it wasn't something that really added much benefit to the beer. I ended up selling it to invest in other brewing equipment. I don't think you will see much benefit with a conical unless you are brewing large batches, or maybe if you get real big into yeast harvesting. For a typical 5 gallon batch a carboy or bucket will make equally good beer.

Things I would invest in (in this order):
1) Fermentation temperature control - the single biggest improvement to my beers
2) Yeast starter equipment - healthy yeast = good beer
3) A larger brew pot - get a 10 gallon pot, you'll be glad you did
4) All grain setup/cooler mash tun - not saying AG is inherently better, but it does give you more flexibility, and it's just fun

Just my $0.03. Worth 50% more than kombat's $0.02

Click to expand...

LandoLincoln said:

Priorities for homebrewing (in my opinion)

1) Sanitation
2) Fermentation temp control
3) Pitching the right amount of healthy yeast (starters/stir plate/oxygen options)
4) Chilling your wort fast (immersion chiller/counterflow chiller)
5) Moving from extract to all-grain (more fun/more immersive experience/more variety)
6) Solving the mystery of your water chemistry (pH meter, calibration solutions, chemicals to add to your water, water filtration setup/distilled water/bottled water, blah blah blah)
7) Kegging/building a keezer
8) Saving money by buying and storing grains in bulk / not depending on the LHBS grain mill which might be screwed up and will give you unreliable mash efficiencies (grain mill/containers to hold grain)

After that, it's a question of making improvements to make your homebrewing experience more convenient or easier.

Tired of battling the weather on brew days? Figure out how to make an indoor electric or NG brew rig for your basement.

Tired of hauling hot boiling volumes of liquid? Beer pumps.

Want to modify mash temps easier? HERMS or RIMS.

Want to make more beer with roughly the same amount of work? Bigger pots.

Want to ferment more beer with roughly the same amount of cleaning? Bigger fermentors.

Click to expand...

Everything these guys said.

From what I've seen so far, looks like temp control should be your number one investment. Use your spare fridge, and either outfit a dual stage aftermarket controller to both the fridge and a FermWrap or, or simply to the Fermwrap, insulate the probe for the controller to the side of the fermenter (or better yet, buy/build one of those carboy bung/bucket thermowells to go into the beer itself), and then set the ferm wrap to the temp you want. Boom. 100% effective temp control. Just setting the controller to the fridge and no Fermwrap is good too, but then you're controlling the air, not the beer, so it's not quite as good.

Beyond that, if you're not already making a habit of yeast starters and/or repitching, an Erlenmeyer flask (grab both a 2L and a 5L if you can) and a stir plate strong enough to handle the 5L would be a great investment. Pitching enough yeast will help your beer dramatically. And then it gets better when you are able to harvest yeast from one batch and pitch into the next. It'll not only save you money, but lots of folks say that the best fermentation cycle is after a couple of pitches. I've often found the third batch is the best (starter plus smack pack into one batch, repitched from that yeast cake into another, and then repitched into a third batch from the second yeast cake). I go up to 4 or 5 batches in sequence from one pitch pretty regularly, but I don't go further than that.

Fermentation temp control is paramount in my opinion, you could make a nectar of the gods beer, have it ferment too warm, to only have a tolerating batch of beer. Since you have IC's already, I'll pass on that subject. I don't see you mention your heat source, so I don't know about that either, but a 15 gallon pot with at least a 50k BTU burner, would work well for a while I would think.

EDIT: I posted my reply w/o seeing the above post
EDIT 2: I am quite pleased with my $20.00 purchase of a turkey fryer setup. A 30 qt pot and a generic SQ10 burner, (55k BTU's) that I just couldn't pass up

hunter_la5 said:

Nice Keezer, looks great.

To be honest, I'd put the fancy conical fermenter at the back of the list. I had a fancy SS conical for a while, and while it was neat, it wasn't something that really added much benefit to the beer. I ended up selling it to invest in other brewing equipment. I don't think you will see much benefit with a conical unless you are brewing large batches, or maybe if you get real big into yeast harvesting. For a typical 5 gallon batch a carboy or bucket will make equally good beer.

Things I would invest in (in this order):
1) Fermentation temperature control - the single biggest improvement to my beers
2) Yeast starter equipment - healthy yeast = good beer
2.1) MORE FERMENTORS
3) A larger brew pot - get a 10 gallon pot, you'll be glad you did
4) All grain setup/cooler mash tun - not saying AG is inherently better, but it does give you more flexibility, and it's just fun

Just my $0.03. Worth 50% more than kombat's $0.02

Click to expand...

I second this list, but would add a small caveat. You need more fermentors. How are you keeping 4 taps flowing with only 2 fermentation vessels? And I agree with others, no need to drop a lot of coin on a fancy conical. You could get a few new buckets or used carboys (your preference) for just a fraction of the cost.

Temp control is a great place to start though. Looking at your setup, that is a major priority.

kombat
LandoLincoln
J1n
Hello
Hunter_la5
dobe12
MinderMan
Qhrumphf


Thank you all for your quick and thoughtful answers.

It really sounds like I should focus on fermentation temperature. It looks like I have probably been fermenting too hot.

So here is my new prioritized purchase list:
1) I currently have a spare fridge for fermentation I need a temperature control.
2) New 10 gallon boiling pot (temperature gauge and ball valve)
3) Igloo mash tun to better regulate mash temperature
3.1) Better burner setup hooked into my NG. Currently I have a cheap propane burner
4) I have a wort chiller and a pre-chiller, but here in Austin, TX this still takes about 20 minutes to chill. I will probably get better wort chiller, Blicmann Therminator.
5) Another plastic bucket and bottle
6) Then a massive stainless steel conical fermenter with lots of shiny valves and levers.

dobe12 said:

I second this list, but would add a small caveat. You need more fermentors. How are you keeping 4 taps flowing with only 2 fermentation vessels? And I agree with others, no need to drop a lot of coin on a fancy conical. You could get a few new buckets or used carboys (your preference) for just a fraction of the cost.

Temp control is a great place to start though. Looking at your setup, that is a major priority.

Click to expand...

Currently I do not lager. So my fermentation is about 2 weeks. Most of my beers last about 3 months or so. I have thought about lagering so fermentation temperature control should be at the top of my list.

Thanks for the reply.

bcallen said:

2) New 10 gallon boiling pot (temperature gauge and ball valve)

Click to expand...

If you're gonna go that route, I highly recommend getting a sight glass/thermometer combo from Bobby_M at brewhardware.com. He makes some really nice sight-glass/thermometer combos. Very, very helpful to see your current boil volumes.

LandoLincoln said:

If you're gonna go that route, I highly recommend getting a sight glass/thermometer combo from Bobby_M at brewhardware.com. He makes some really nice sight-glass/thermometer combos. Very, very helpful to see your current boil volumes.

Click to expand...

I was planning on installing a sight glass on my kettle, but after using a few kettles with them, I found them to be on the unreliable side.

Then I saw this, which has been getting a lot of circulation lately (including a how-to in BYO), and is a hell of a lot cheaper:

http://imgur.com/a/dCvS5

I did it to my kettle and it works like a charm.

j1n said:

Id go with a new pot and a couple igloo coolers and go all grain. after that your brewing cost per batch should go down since you don't need to buy extract any more.

Click to expand...

^+1. Totally agree. A quality boil kettle capable of handling a 10 gallon brew, mega kettles from northern brewer are real nice. The coolers make amazing mash tuns, pumps make life sooooo much easier.


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I agree with going with a bigger pot, BUT I would get a good cheap used chest freezer and an external temp control (be it a Johnson's or a DIY) first.


If costs are an issue with the pot, just get a mesh bag and go BIAB for a while until have the funds for a cooler or two. That said, I would still do a fermentation chamber before the pots or anything for that matter.

bcallen said:

1) I currently have a spare fridge for fermentation I need a temperature control.

Click to expand...

For temp control, be sure to consider a 2-stage controller. You might not need it now in Austin but it will give you some flexibility should you decide to hook up a heat source at some point. There are some advantages to being able to control your temp in both directions. For example, some yeasts such as Wyeast 3724 need to be pushed to 80F+ to help attenuation. Also, adding a heat source helps prevent temp swings if your ambient temps drop a bit during the cooler months.

Yeah fermentation temp control, I forgot about that, the best equipment is useless unless you can ferment beer correctly.


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herc1354 said:

^+1. Totally agree. A quality boil kettle capable of handling a 10 gallon brew, mega kettles from northern brewer are real nice. The coolers make amazing mash tuns, pumps make life sooooo much easier.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Click to expand...

That is exactly what I ordered Friday from Northern Brewer as well as another Johnson temperature control. I will use it on my next brew.

Thanks

Yesfan said:

I agree with going with a bigger pot, BUT I would get a good cheap used chest freezer and an external temp control (be it a Johnson's or a DIY) first.


If costs are an issue with the pot, just get a mesh bag and go BIAB for a while until have the funds for a cooler or two. That said, I would still do a fermentation chamber before the pots or anything for that matter.

Click to expand...

I actually ordered a Johnson Control on Friday. I already have a used small refrigerator which was my old keggerator. So my next brew will include a new 10 gallon pot and temperature control for fermentation.

Thanks

bcallen said:

I actually ordered a Johnson Control on Friday. I already have a used small refrigerator which was my old keggerator. So my next brew will include a new 10 gallon pot and temperature control for fermentation.

Thanks

Click to expand...

No problem. Good luck on the next brew!