wanting to make a small expansion

i am in college and hardly afford much, but as a hobby i enjoy brewing very much, was wondering where i could get some info for cheap equipment.

Id be looking for a couple of carboy's and air locks, a SS pot for wort brewing as well as other necessities. If anyone knows where i can get cheap kegging supplies/info that would make me uber happy, as that would be ideal to bottling over and over.

If ANYONE has information or could help me out id much appreciate the info.

Thanx in advance!

do you know about craigslist?

Well, there are a few things right off the top of my head that may help. For one I would keep an eye on your local garage sales. You may find a pot or some other useful stuff at those. Also as mentioned check out Craigslist, ebay, or some other place like that. You never know what you can find.

Or if your on a social network like MySpace just ask around your friends. You never know what a friend may have collecting dust in an attic somewhere.

Good luck!

Also try Freecycle.com in your area as well, never know what's being given away..

You don't NEED your pot to be SS, in fact many of us use aluminium with no issues like turkey fryer, and it's usually far cheaper than the SS ones. But I got a cheap 5 gallon SS pot for under 10 bucks at Dollar General which works great for Stovetop brewing including PM's and 2.5 gallon All Grain batches.

You can ferment in Anything, it doesn't need to be a carboy...the cheepest is any foodgrade plastic bucket that held anything BUT pickles, such as the frosting buckets many people get for a buck at the baking department of any big box store like Meijers of Walmart. You can also use regular ole 3 and 5 gallon water jugs like the one's from absopure, just try to get them with a <1> or <2> on the bottom.

Airlocks usually cost about 2 bucks apiece so that;s not really an issue if you've just saved 15 bucks on a fermenter by using a bucket, but you could skip the airlok altogether and rig up a blow off tube.

You can get a lot of miscelanaeous stuff like strainers and cheap scales and measureing cups, and big spoons in the kitchen section and hardware section of most dollar stores much cheaper than at you lhbs

But honestly if you're brewing on the cheep don't think about words like Stainless Steel, think it terms of "what works and costs me the least amount of money"

It isn't the tools that makes good beer it's the brewer, you don't NEED the fanciest ass stuff to do it. Charlie Papazian is the king of cheap brewing gear. In fact rather than one of those fancy dancy barley crushers, that many on here say you "HAVE TO HAVE." he gets 87% efficiency from the same 20 dollar corona grain mill that he's been using for 30 years. He uses two plastic buckets one with a screen in it as his mash ton.

If you learn to make fantastic beer while poor and in College with "junk" you cobbled together, you'll be able to really appreciate the day when you're out of college and can buy the latest brewing gizmo...of course by then you MAY relaize you still don't really need them.

I'm sure CHarlie Papazian could affors all the toys he likes, yet he makes great beer with the banged up pot, buckets and corona mill , andappears quite happy with them.

Is there a local brew club? There may be members with equipment to lend, or, you may find a brew partner.

well as my sig says ive brewed a few things. i have 2 carboys. and some other stuff for small brewing, do people ask bars for bottles? are they willing to give them out? yes we have a local brew club ive been to 1 meeting in september, and their monthly meetings happen to always be when i have school work so i cannot usually make it to them.

I'm pretty sure some have asked and received bottles from bars. I, however, had no such luck. I spoke to a number of different bars in my area and none were interested (not sure why). But just because I didn't have luck doesn't mean you wont. Give it a try. You're in Champaign after all. Certainly there have to be a lot of bars around town to ask if they wouldn't mind handing over any poptop bottles

Eves said:

I'm pretty sure some have asked and received bottles from bars. I, however, had no such luck.

Click to expand...

I am one who has asked and had some luck but it is questionable luck. The bottles I received were a bunch of different kinds including Corona. Plus they were disgusting! Cigarette butts, and all other manner of detritus including some biology experiments and insects. AND limes in all of the Corona bottles.

I spent like two hours cleaning up one case of bottles and decided that I would rather spend $12 on a case of brand new clean label-less bottles.

dontman said:

I spent like two hours cleaning up one case of bottles and decided that I would rather spend $12 on a case of brand new clean label-less bottles.

Click to expand...

LOL...I never thought of that. Maybe it was a good thing I never got any bottles that route.