Buying Supplies for my first Home brewing

Hey all,

I've though about brewing for a long time, and recently been very interested in giving it a shot. Thanks to an unexpected bonus at work, I'm going to dive in head first, as it were.

I'm looking at a full out buy of the following:

Deluxe Starter kit from Northern Brewer NORTHERN BREWER: Beer Starter Kits

Adding a kettle and wort cooler
NORTHERN BREWER: Starter Kit Add-Ons


Plus a shiny new Tap-a-draft system to round out the whole bill and keep me from grenading out masses of bottles. I plan on force-carbing some and letting the rest carb naturally, plus bottling the leftovers for weekly try-outs.

It brings the total to around $400 after shipping, which is most of my budget. The rest will be for ingredients and any miscellaneous stuff

I have an experienced homebrewer that'll probably help me on my first run, to get the hang of it. Plus, he'll probably help me drink most of it when it's ready.

Other than ingredients, am I mising anything? Should I step down the setup in order to get some bang-whiz gadget that will make my life easier? I don't have a LHBS anymore, so I'm going to have to order everything online, and I don't want to be halfway through the process and have to trash it all.

Thanks, in advance, for the help/advice

-Manse

I am a little new to this myself also but I have done a lot of research on this stuff lately. I think you you could find some better deals out there. I think this brew pot is definitely better and the kit is prob. the same quality. Just rough estimate seems like you might save a little this way. Or instead of the tap a draft just find a good used fridge, a little searching can usually find one for about 100 bucks or so and you could use real kegs!



24 Quart Heavy 1.2mm stock pot Stainless Steel 3py - eBay (item 200280031827 end time Dec-01-08 10:43:36 PST)


Homebrew Heaven Shopping Cart

Things I would have done differently.

1. Started with a bigger brew pot. You can always do smaller batches in a bigger brew kettle but not vice versa. Once I decided to go to 10 gallon brews I had to get another pot. I started with the 7.5 gallon brew kettle.

Thast all I can think of at the moment. Don't forget the Star-San!!

Oh yeah, start with a good burner and a stand with legs as long as you can get that will still support a 10 gallon batch.

Sounds like you're off to a heck of a start. Welcome to HBT!

A bigger kettle is a great upgrade. I started with a 7.5gal and have since gone to a converted keg. Makes worring about boilovers a thing of the past, and full boils make the jump to AG all that much easier.





SD

After digging through these forums and more online, I found a cheaper kit that I think will do the job
Deluxe 2 Stage Brewery (2 Glass) with Organic Beer Kit - HBK4D

It's on order as of this morning, should be in next week, complete with ingredients. So, I should have my first batch fermenting away in a week and a half.

awesum! I started with a couple of pieces and added on as I went. I tend to pick up and drop hobbies fairly often, so I wanted to make sure i enjoyed it before going all in. It took about 15 years, but now I' have a Kegerator and am working towards going AG (just have to work it into the schedule.)

If you like making stuff, and drinking beer, then you should like making beer to drink!