Starting Equipment With Room to Grow

Hello everyone! I'm Andy and I've been lurking here for some time while I research how to home-brew.

Having spent about a year doing batches of beer at the local U-brew I'm finally ready to bring the operation home. I've decided to go with a 15 gallon kettle with built in thermometer and ball spigot which should easily accommodate the 5 gallon ready-made recipe kits, and then once I'm confident enough, graduate towards all-grain with potentially larger batches (I suppose up to 10 gallons, but more likely in the neighborhood of 7-8 gallons). However, assembling the equipment hasn't been the cheapest undertaking, nor is researching what is most suitable to my desires always clear-cut and obvious. So, if I may tap into the expertise of others, I'd appreciate some advice.

1) I'm thinking that the 6.5 gallon buckets (both fermenter and bottling) that seem to be standard with the 'starter kits', although ideal for 5 gallon batches, don't provide the room to grow. So should I instead go for a plastic fermenter and bottling bucket that are in the neighborhood of 8-10 gallon capacity? The 'starter kits' to seem to be fairly cost effective so I'd rather not have to buy everything individually unless I'm destined to replace most of the components 6 months or a year down the road. On the other hand, an idea that struck me is that I could buy a starter kit and use the 6.5 gallon buckets while learning the basics, and then convert them into a mash-tun when I'm ready to get into all grain bewing - at which time I could then buy 8-10 gallon fermentor bucket and a bottling bucket. What do others find to be the sensible thing to do?

2) Propane burners. I've thus far looked at a small range of burners. Thus far they seem to range 55k btu, 65k btu and 105k btu. I'm guessing that 105 seems a bit overkill while 55k seems a little underpowered? Would I be satisfied with 65k btu if I were to eventually do a 10 gallon batch? I'm also concerned about the stability of these units. Are they really designed to hold up a giant kettle with that much liquid in them or are they very precarious, requiring the purchase or construction of some kind of stand? I have a 5 year old daughter that I obviously don't want to scold in some freak event (nor myself or others) due to poor product design or me not doing things properly. That said, I have no desire at present to weld my own stand together. Given that I'm having to shop for these online and can't really assess their sturdiness, how concerned should I be that this might be a problem if I don't shop carefully enough?

3) Last, and probably most trivial question... bottle cappers - hand or bench? Big difference in efficacy, efficiency, comfort of use, etc?

Thanks everyone!

1) Stick with the 6.5 gallon buckets. It's important that the CO2 produced in a fermentation fill the empty space of the fermenter with CO2 and displace all of the oxygen out of the fermenter. If you tried to ferment a 5 gallon batch in a 20 gallon fermenter, that fermentation may struggle to displace all of the O2. Most people who do 10 gallon batches will actually ferment it in two separate fermenters. Not many people have 10/15/20 gallon fermenters unless they exclusively do larger batches. Most everyone with a 10+ gallon capasity still does MOSTLY 5 gallon batches. I have the capacity to do 15 gallon batches, but still do about 85% 5 gallon batches.

2) My Blichmann burner is 72K BTUs, and wayyyy outperforms my old 105K BTU SQ10. Efficiency is much more important than the BTU output, and most of the more inexpensive burners are wildly inefficient, so don't just trust the BTU number. Both units I own will easily heat 10+ gallon batches to strike temp in under an hour.

Get a Blichmann burner or one of the Bayou Classic burners with the Banjo burner oriface (same oriface as the Blichmann). That 72K BTU burner will heat 5-10 gallons to strike temps in less than 20 minutes, and they use 1/2 the propane of the cheap burners to do it. There are Bayou Classic burners with the Banjo Burner oriface starting at about $70. You recoup the difference in price in the propane savings in about 15 batches.

3) If you are talking about "room to grow," you should have a kegging setup as a long term goal. With that goal in mind, just get the normal cheap hand capper. They do the same job for about 1/4 of the price of a bench capper. By the time you move to kegging, either capper will be sitting collecting dust, so don't invest there.

4) If you want to start with equipment with room to grow, I'd highly recommend starting off with a 10-15 gallon stainless steel boil kettle. That's about the best long term investment you will make. Buy a good, bigger pot now, and you'll still be using it in your setup 10-20 years from now.

Good luck!

This is what I recommend for almost everyone.

Complete Beer Making Kit

Now, there are other kits, this is just the kit I received and short of AGstuff like a mash tun and lauter tun, and the burner and kettle this has it all. And nothing you can't use down the line. Want to make fruit beer or dryhopped IPAs, you have the carboy. It comes with an auto-siphon which I recommend 10 times out of 10 over a racking cane. Includes a hyrometer which is pretty worthless for extract brewing outisde of practice.

If you get that kit, a good burner and a good kettle you'll be set for some time and as you expand you will use almost all of the equipment that you have.Spend money on the pot and the burner, get a relatively cheap kit. You can upgrade to bigger and better fermenters down the road.

Yup, that's another choice. Only thing it's missing the other kit has is a mash paddle which is kinda silly, but I've used it and been happy. I would just recommend one with the autosiphon that's a must for me, and having a carboy so you can learn how to secondary a beer if necessary. I recommend the kit I recommended cause I got it for myself :rockin:

Who needs DVDs when you have How to Brew and the Complete Joy of Homebrewing books? :rockin:

No the Midwest Kit is nice, for me it's not even close to a debate as to which one I'd buy cause I live like 10 minutes from love2brew and as a member of NJCB I get 5% off any purchase. So aside from saving money because I'm not dealing with Shipping, I'm also saving money with my craft beer discount thing. So for me it's a no brainer, LHBS>Ordering online.

unionrdr said:

Well,in your case then,it's a no brainer. But for him,we should give a few options to choose from. I thought that to be best.

Click to expand...

True that, nothing better for the homebrewer than choice

I have the following non-recurring set-up that I feel “just gets the job done” if you have 2-3 batches going, not including brew pots and burner. Trust me you will be doing this sooner rather than later once the addiction sets in.
• (1) 6.5 gallon glass carboy My preferred fermenter
• (3) 6.5 gallon bucket assemblies Sanitizing, racking, secondary, bottling buckets, etc
• (1) auto siphon
• Carboy brush
• Bottle brush
• Bottle wand
• (2) each 2 and 3 foot 5/16 in tubes
• Long and large stainless spoon
• Rubber stopper for the carboy
• Bunch of 3 piece airlocks (they break easily)
• Extra spigots (they break easy)
• Cheap bottle capper
• 12” high thermometer
• Digital thermometer A must in my opinion
• (4) Femomters
• (1) each large and small funnel
• Grain bag for extract brewing
• Refractometer
• 10 gallon Mash Tun Easy to make yourself

I know i missed something

Wow. I didn't expect so much good advice. Thought I'd be lucky to get one response, tbh. I really appreciate

A lot of it's reassuring. I see the sense of the fermenters and the bottle cappers (to kegs!). The hard decision is mulling over the bichmann burner. I really admire that they put thought into their customers using something and liking it. It looks like a beautifull constructed burner compared to others that look flimsy. The cost is so high though, and from what their own chart says, their propane use isn't as efficient as a turkey roaster. If it's simply a time factor, then I can imagine sitting out there for a good part of the day boiling rather than charging through the process as fast as possible, especially if the costs are that much lower upfront and continuously. Or am I totally thinking wrong here? Are the turkey one's sturdy enough to do the job safely for some time to come, and are they more propane efficient than the bichmann as bichmann's chart suggests?

Thanks again, I really appreciate it!

Other positive to the Blichmann is the natural gas hookup. My brother has an extra natural gas hookup so on days when it's freezing, we cna brew big batches inside.

Just to add to this if anyone is interested in hearing - I thought I'd save some cost and make my own wort-chiller after seeing a few youtube videos and looking at pictures of the ones they sell. I can do that, I think. So I went to home depot (I'm in Canada) looking for 25-30 feet of 3/8 copper tubing, expecting to pay in the neighborhood of 30 bucks for it. It didn't quite work that way.

My choice was between a 20 feet length of 3/8th ($35 +tax) or a 50 foot length of 1/2 ($56 +tax). I hmmmed and hawd a lot. I walked out with the 50 foot 1/2 inch, tubing, fitting, clamps and a cheap pipe bender for $100 all in. I wondered like hell if I bought too much.

When I got home I called around to see if there was a better fit/deal around and everything else was astronomically more expensive. I'm looking forward to assembling it.

Here's the keg (if pictures work on this...)

The Blichmann chart is comparing the Blichmann burner to a 27 BTU Turkey Fryer. The Blichmann is MUCH more efficient than the typical propane burners used for home brewing. Nothing will get you to strike temps or boil faster or more efficiently.

You missed my point that the same orifice used in the Blichmann Burner is used in much cheaper burners. You don't have to spend $150.00 unless you want the bling, you can get the same performance from a $70.00 burner. Check out the Bayou Classic KAB4. Same burner, cheaper housing. You get all of the benefits of the same burner orifice (output, efficiency), but you don't have to pay for the stainless steel bling of the Blichmann housing:

http://www.jdoqocy.com/click-453425...?srccode=CJGARDEN&intid=CJGARDEN&cjsku=G29729