All-Grain Equipment Kits

I am an extract brewer using a combination of my buddy's equipment (kettle, bottling bucket) and my own equipment (ale pail, burner). I am thinking of transitioning over to all-grain brewing and want to buy all of my own equipment. Are there any deluxe equipment kits that have all-grain equipment included or do I have to buy the general equipment kits and the all-grain additions separately?

I don't know about a kit, check your LHBS, but...

If you already have everything you need for extract brewing, all you really need is a mash tun (picnic coolers work great), lauter tun (2 stacked buckets, top one drilled with holes, bottom one with a spigot for racking) and a kettle big enough to do full boils and you should be good to go. Oh, and a very good thermometer--you will want fast, accurate reads.

There should be some tutorials on DIY mash and lauter tuns if you search, elsewise Joy of Homebrewing has a good illustration of how to use the supplies I mentioned.

Do a search on brew in a bag. You may not need much more kit.

So, from what it sounds like, when transitioning from extract to all-grain brewing there isn't a lot of extra equipment needed.
I consider myself a handy guy, but there are some items I would rather buy professionally assembled than purchasing the parts and building it myself; for example, buying a kegerator fully assembled instead of purchasing the parts separately. Would you guys recommend just buying assembled tuns or buying the parts and putting it together?

For all grain equipment, you could convert a coleman/rubbermaid cooler into a mash tun. This is what I will be doing. It seems perfect for batch sparge. $30 to make the mash tun, then you just need a 5 gallon kettle, 7.5 gallon kettle, and the rest of your extract/brewing equipment.

http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/
http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/mashtun.htm
http://www.donosborn.com/homebrew/homebrewbasics.html

vitrael said:

I don't know about a kit, check your LHBS, but...

If you already have everything you need for extract brewing, all you really need is a mash tun (picnic coolers work great), lauter tun (2 stacked buckets, top one drilled with holes, bottom one with a spigot for racking) and a kettle big enough to do full boils and you should be good to go. Oh, and a very good thermometer--you will want fast, accurate reads.

There should be some tutorials on DIY mash and lauter tuns if you search, elsewise Joy of Homebrewing has a good illustration of how to use the supplies I mentioned.

Click to expand...

You don't need separate mash and lauter tuns! But, yes, coolers do work great for combination mash/lauter tuns. If you want to go the kit route for that, Morebeer and others sell already converted coolers with false bottoms. But you can make one much cheaper yourself.

You can get away with just one pot for heating water and boiling wort. For 5 gallon batches, I would go with at least an 8 gallon pot.

Although not absolutely necessary, you will probably want something to use as a hot liquor tank (HLT). This will hold your heated sparge water, allowing your boil pot to accept the runnings while you sparge. Again a cooler will work just fine for this, no need to spend money on another pot.

Everthing else you probably already have.

Take a look at some three tier systems to see how this flows without pumps. No need to build anything fancy, you just want to put the vessels so that the HLT can gravity flow to the mash tun, which gravity flows to the boil kettle. The most difficult part of this process is getting the hot water from the Kettle to the HLT.

Good Luck!

Moose

ya, the biggest difference with AG is that your doing full boils whereas extract you do partial boils. My plan for the batch after next is to source another 20 qt pot for sparge water and do partial mash beers for a little while before i make the jump to AG.