Back into Brewing

First-time poster here. I'm selling my reef aquarium and getting back into brewing after about 8 years. As I sell off my aquarium system, I'll have $ to spend on upgrades to my brewing system and would like some advice on initial purchases.

Here's my driveway setup:
Homemade tower system with three burners
12 gal. Sabco sparge tank with thermometer and sight glass
15.5 Sanke mash tun with thermometer and bazooka t screen
15.5 Sanke boil kettle with bazooka t screen
Counterflow chiller (type with copper tubing inside clear plastic hose
Single-roller Philmill
Draft system

One idea was to by a keggle or Sabco 15.5 mash tun or kettle with false bottom and convert one of my current 15.5s to a sparge tank. I'll probably need to get a pump to move wort through the chiller and into fermenter. I'll eventually want to get a SS conical fermenter.

Thanks for any suggestions,
Richard

Welcome, Richard. Your system is already fancier than mine!

Do you already have some way of controlling your fermentation temperatures? That has a huge impact on your brewing. There are lots of ways of doing it, inexpensively and quite expensively.

Welcome home!

Welcome back - who needs fish, anyway !

Thanks for the welcome. What are the devices to control fermentation temp? I've got a controller for my garage frig, but used that with the draft system, not with fermenting.

Riclat said:

Thanks for the welcome. What are the devices to control fermentation temp? I've got a controller for my garage frig, but used that with the draft system, not with fermenting.

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You can rig up a fridge. You can build a fermentation chamber. You can build something like "son of fermentation chiller". You can rig up a "swamp cooler". You can use a cooler or tub with water and ice packs. Or time your brewing to when the temps in your area are appropriate.

In any case, fermentation temperature has a huge huge impact on your beers.

I agree. And with that in mind, I'm thinking I'll make a son of fermentation chiller or a two-carboy version instead of going the conical route. One of the enjoyable things about homebrewing I remember is making a lot of the equipment I used.