How do you store your brewing equipment?

I used to use a large African basket to store all my equipment, but SWMBO took back her basket and now I am using a 10yr old paper bag and open shelf chaos for the things that don't fit in the bag.

I was thinking about a tackle box to hold my gear and brew day necessities like gypsum, irish moss, yeast nutrient, iodine to test for starch conversion, hoses and hose clamps, hydrometer, thermometer, etc. But, that wouldn't be long enough for racking canes, bottling wand, autosiphon, wine thief, etc.

How do you keep everything you need orderly?

Now that I've got a garage, I store my brew supplies on gorilla racks:


Longer stuff like the siphon, spoon, immersion chiller, etc sit in either the keggle or the mash tun between brewdays. I do all grain and love to stock up, so I've got buckets stacked up full of grain. You can use home depot buckets, but I prefer free ones from my local supermarket bakery.

Smaller stuff that would look like hell on open shelves goes in an old butcher block, similar to this one:


Back when I was in a little townhouse apartment, I used a plastic drawer unit thing like this:

I use two buckets in my process currently all the little stuff liek tubing and canes and spoons and blah blah goes in the 1st bucket. 1st bucket goes inside 2nd bucket. 2nd bucket goes under brewcart. HLT, MLT, BK and chiller go on top of cart.
All this goes in corner of garage.

When I renovated my kitchen I kept some of the cabinets that were in reasonable shape and reassembled along a wall in the basement. Nowadays you can hardly tell they are there. Brewing kit piled atop, stuff in every drawer/door, grain bins littered abotu with grain mills and kettled. Sheeeesh.

I use the hall closet for grain storage and the smaller bits that I use for brewing all go into one of those storage bins usually used for holiday decorations. the auto syphon and other items that dont fit in the bin go on the closet shelf. as for the actual brewing equipment, my chiller fits in the turkey fryer pot that I use for heating the mash water, the mash paddle goes in the fryer pot as well, the fryer pot fits in the keggle, the keggle sits on the mash tun cooler and goes in the corner of the garage. The fryer burner goes under the grill along with the propane tank. Everything has a place and is mostly out of sight, and THAT keeps my wife happy!

I use a cheap plastic tool box for airlocks, keg lube, corny parts, hydrometer, etc. basically the small stuff. I have shelving and cabinets for fermenters, buckets, and kegs. I store ingrediants in the sealed buckets. The single tier AG has a parking spot in the garage.
+1 azscoob "Everything has a place and is mostly out of sight, and THAT keeps my wife happy!"

Rubbermaid totes for chemicals, tools, and misc. I nfact I have one for testing, fermenting, and cleaning/adjusting.

I keep my buckets inside the chest freezer when it's not in use. And my carboys under a work bench either in their box or otherwise covered. Everything has a place, everything in it's place.

bought a sheet of pegboard and some fir strips
mounted it on my wall ,a couple bags of pegs and most of the equipment hangs up out of the way

I live in an apt and my dining room is a wreck due to all of my brewstuff. Looking at getting some cheap shelving with doors.

I live in a loft and have very little storage. Plus I take my gear out a lot to do brew demos anf group brews. So I needed a way to store all those odd bits that I need in the course of a brew day, PLUS be able to work out of it, and get to everything when I'm brewing in some pretty rudimentry conditions, plus protect stuff from the elements.

I started with an under the bed storage bit, that seals up. I measured my auto siphon and made sure that it is long enough to fit. (Yes it says Revvy's brewing box on it.)



Then I got a bunch of different containers and played with the setup. When I got what I liked I used velcro to connect them to the bin. I can re configure it in any way I want, as long as I make sure the new internal bin has velcro in the center. The little dots work perfectly.



The blue one in the bottom, holding the mash paddle, refractometer, auto siphon, aeration wand and other longish stuff is simply a wall paper tray that had seen better days, so I cut it in half and slid the pieces together until I got the size I wanted and then taped them together.



The box on the left holds my scale, airlocks, a timer, and can hold a bottle of starsan. (There is also a "tasting cup" on a lanyard for group brew days like AHC's teach a friend to brew, where I know there's going to be a TON of beer to sample, and I want to limit my intake, at least while I'm brewing. So I keep my portions small)



The center section is actually two boxes that stack and lock together. In the bottom is a basic "tool" kit...a multi tool, small pliers, flashlight, pair of scissors for openning hop and yeast packets. You know all the little things that you find you wish you had in the field. Even a small first aid kit.

The box above is actually pre-measured test tubes of starsan (I usually don't take a bottle with me in the field, I just pre measure a bunch of tubes, so whether I'm making a gallon or 5 I have enough. There's also the stir bar, and some little metal clips I use to hang one of my glass lab thermometers inside the boil kettle when heating strike water.



The last box is where I stick "ingredients" and stuff in, hops, a baggie of 5-2 buffer, corn sugar, lactose, whatever else I might need.

Also looking back in the main picture, in the space above the blue tray and the box my red oxygen bottle, and hydrometer test jar fits nicely in.

And what you don't see is that on top of everything I keep a pair of silicone gloves to use to lift my boil kettle;



And a couple HBT signs for representing at various events. You can see those in the first two pictures.

When travelling I keep the box closed with a couple of bungy cords.

It's nice because it fits under my bed and in the back seat of my car.

Currently building a rolling brew stand.. just big enough for the keggle/burner, and the mash tun/cooler.. It's basically a box that will be big enough to hold a propane bottle, 4 food grade buckets and lids, and two 6.5G carboys.. (with room for either two more buckets or one more carboy).. all underneath and out of sight..

The keggle and cooler will sit on top (along with a step.storage box)

I'm also building a box, that when the stand is not in use will sit on top, next to the burner and under the mash tun.. It will serve as storage for the spoons, hydrometer, airlocks, tubing, etc... and also as a 'step' so that I can easily look down into the keggle during brewing...

With collection buckets on the deck next to the thing, it will serve as a gravity fed brew stand.. When not in use, it will store away in a corner of the utility porch..

Foot print of 2' x 4' when not in use.. double that during brewing........ Will post pictures when it gets done enough to be usable...

I cleaned up and put a fresh coat of paint on an old tool roll away. I also clean and sanitize everything before brewing. I have neen doing it so long that way it has become a habit.

So I just looked around the home office where I currently store my brewing stuff along side my computer business stuff and decided this place is a disaster. But I want to brew this weekend and now I need to get a new refrigerator so cleaning and reorganizing the office will have to wait...till spring.

Anyone need a piano? Got one of those in the office too. Been trying to get rid of it for years. Was the Ex's. Needs some work, pedals don't work. I'll sell at sacrifice price.
[End of hijack]

Bithead said:

So I just looked around the home office where I currently store my brewing stuff along side my computer business stuff and decided this place is a disaster. But I want to brew this weekend and now I need to get a new refrigerator so cleaning and reorganizing the office will have to wait...till spring.

Anyone need a piano? Got one of those in the office too. Been trying to get rid of it for years. Was the Ex's. Needs some work, pedals don't work. I'll sell at sacrifice price.
[End of hijack]

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If you gut the inside, you could always use THAT to store you brew gear in.

Or make a kegerator out of it. They keys would make a good drip tray and the taps could come right out the board above it.

peg board is my friend. tons of flexibility, everything is nicely laid out exactly where i want it, lots of various types of hooks, pegs, hangers, bins, containers, etc available for pretty much anything.

I am very envious, my friend.

My setup consists of a set of crudely constructed shelves in a room containing a hot water heater. All the odds and ends are kept in a raggedy paper bag ala the OP.

Where we lived before I had a couple of shelves in a closet dedicated to brewing equipment and it worked pretty well. There were a couple of odd items that didn't fit well, but overall everything fit in the space, and it was all in one place.

Now that we have moved there's no closet space, and I need to buy some kind of cabinet to store the stuff in. I have been looking, but so far been unable to find a cabinet with the right external dimensions to fit in the space, and that also has appropriate internal dimensions for storing the equipment.

So, right now it is strewn all over the place. I have piles of stuff in the garage, some piles in the kitchen, a couple of things randomly sitting around in the bedroom....it's pretty bad.

That's why I'm building my little brew stand.. I want to get all this crap out of the house, and have one place to put it all 'outside'.. Eventually, I'll move it into the shop (once I build a couple temp controlled ferment cabinets), and if that's not good enough, and I become totally obsessed (trying to avoid that), I'll build a dedicated brew shed...

But for now, it's an eyesore on the house, and I gotta do something about it before it drives me nuts..

92greenyj, that is some serious organization there! I really need to take a pic of my "matryoshka doll" brew gear, when I built everything I made sure it would nestle inside the next item to reduce the overall footprint. that worked great until I picked up the 12 extra corneys and another keg to use as an HLT, I also have the mill now too, my earlier post it seems is mising some equipment.

I don't trust people who are organized and neat. I have my brewing crap spread throughout the garage, my office, kitchen and wine storage closet. And the downstairs bathroom. Oh and the deck. I can't seem to contain it to one spot, I need an organizer to come and help me out but I can't trust those people. LOL

@ revvy-thanks for taking the time to photo document your organization. That is some dedication to the forum. Nice and portable. Sturdier than my paper bag. Thanks again
@ 92greenyj-that is some serious organization. I am in awe. Once I build my bike shed, then I will have room to put up a pegboard. I like it.

Head to Sears and pick up a Craftsman Rubbermaid tool box with metal drawers. Doesn't take up a lot of space and you can fit all the little things in it. Plus with Christmas coming up I think they're all on sale.

samc said:

I don't trust people who are organized and neat. I have my brewing crap spread throughout the garage, my office, kitchen and wine storage closet. And the downstairs bathroom. Oh and the deck. I can't seem to contain it to one spot, I need an organizer to come and help me out but I can't trust those people. LOL

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No kidding. I finally got around to "cleaning up" the basement where I keep my equipment. Swept up the grain dust, sprayed down the table caked with wort with Simple Green, sprayed the wort rings from blow off with Simple Green. Only the fact that it is winter and I can't hunt, camp, or hike inspired me to do so.

good question. is it ok to store a cooler mashtun in a garage below freezing temps if you aren't going to use it for awhile? no room in the house right now

sportscrazed2 said:

good question. is it ok to store a cooler mashtun in a garage below freezing temps if you aren't going to use it for awhile? no room in the house right now

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I don't see why not.. I keep my bottled beer in a 100qt cooler out on the front porch year round.. And it's below freezing for several months out of the year.. occasionally below zero even...

samc said:

I don't trust people who are organized and neat. I have my brewing crap spread throughout the garage, my office, kitchen and wine storage closet. And the downstairs bathroom. Oh and the deck. I can't seem to contain it to one spot, I need an organizer to come and help me out but I can't trust those people. LOL

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I'm with samc on this one

I keep most of my loose stuff in a rubbermaid that sits on top of the keezer with the MLT. The rest sits below a milling stand I made out of a microwave stand. Stores small and wheels out of the way.

I put everything back in my bottling bucket & put the bucket back in my utility room. Et Violá!

I keep the metal stuff on the right (burner, kegs, kettle) where it is, under the workbench.



I put all the plastic and glass stuff up here in the rafters (when it's not in use, which is rarely). I have finely honed ladder skills at this point, as I'm up there once a week at least.