New Equipment ... Now what?

I found an awesome deal for tons of brewing equipment on craigslist. Corny Kegs, converted keg (no false bottom), carboys, 15# CO2 tank, propane burner, and tons of other stuff for a couple hundred. Of course I want to use it all this weekend. Can I go all-grain? I was thinking for now I could use my bottling bucket wrapped up in some blankets as a mash-turn ... have to use some sort of grain bag to filter i imagine. Am I thinking logically, or should I just wait and invest in a decent mash-turn before I get started with all-grain? I have all the normal equipment for extract brewing, just looking to go to the next step. Thanks!!

You can build a decent mash tun for around 30-50 bucks, why not just do that instead of taking a chance ruining a whole batch if ingredients.

Just go buy a cheap cooler and a ss braid - all done!!

rdwj said:

You can build a decent mash tun for around 30-50 bucks, why not just do that instead of taking a chance ruining a whole batch if ingredients.

Just go buy a cheap cooler and a ss braid - all done!!

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That's what I was thinking ... just need to talk the wife into buying just one more thing. I'm not sure how many times I have told her that in the last couple of months.

Brew if you want to. A grain bag will work if you don't have the cash to spend right now. I'd be itching to try out the new equipment, too. One thing I've learned about brewing is that it's a lot harder to ruin a batch of beer than you might think.

I think the key to successful brewing is to make managable, incremental upgrades. Don't try changing your whole experience at once. I mean, you have a ton of work to do building a kegerator to use any of the kegging equipment. What else did you pickup on the brewing end of it? Just a keggle? Hope you have a decent chiller too if you go all grain.
A good test for your rediness to go all grain is to do an extract batch as a full volume (6 gallons preboil). If you can handle that, the chilling, the increased hop utilization (careful), then try getting all your wort out of grain.

Bobby_M said:

I think the key to successful brewing is to make managable, incremental upgrades. Don't try changing your whole experience at once. I mean, you have a ton of work to do building a kegerator to use any of the kegging equipment. What else did you pickup on the brewing end of it? Just a keggle? Hope you have a decent chiller too if you go all grain.
A good test for your rediness to go all grain is to do an extract batch as a full volume (6 gallons preboil). If you can handle that, the chilling, the increased hop utilization (careful), then try getting all your wort out of grain.

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Thanks for the advice, I will probably do a extract batch this weekend to play with the new equipment. The kegerator is about finished, hopefully will be fully operational this weekend or next. I did get a good wort chiller with the deal.