Minimum Equipement For All Grain Brewing ?

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Mutilated1

Mutilated1

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Right now I have three of those beginner kits that you can buy online or at the home brew store for $75-80 bucks, you know plastic bucket fermenter and 5 gallon glass carboy. Other than a big kettle I have and some utensils that accounts for all my brewing equipment. I've located a spare refridgerator I intended to use to keep my fermentation temperatures truely in the lager style range.

I was wondering what the minimum additional equipment I would need to obtain to try an All Grain batch would be ?

I'm anticipating either buying or constructing a Mash Tun from a water cooler, and buying or making an immersion wort chiller. Will that be enough to get me by, or am I overlooking anything ?
 
Nope, that's about it. Big pot, chiller, a way to hold the mash at temp, and a way to separate the wort from the grains. The best bang for the buck is a cooler with a stainless braid. See the wiki.
 
where can you find a good thermometer without have to go to a HBS..?? I need one this weekend and figured I'd jsut check out walmart or target... thanks...

Jester
 
Beerrific said:
A good thermometer if you don't already have one.
Click to expand...

I have a metal meat thermometer I could use. Apparently some people use one because I've seen the pictures posted. Only thing about that, I'm not wild about holding that thing with my hand and trying to keep it from sinking in the wort.

Our local homebrew store has some glass thermometers that float for sale, but I'm hesitant to put glass and mercury in the beer for fear it will break and ruin the batch.

What do you recommend for a thermometer ?

What I think would be ideal is if somehow you could rig up a thermometer to the throttle on the propane burner so you could dial in a temperature somehow... Anyone know if such a thing exists ?

I usually cook indoors on a gas stove, but when I start doing All Grain I'm going to get a propane tank and cook with the turkey cooker.
 
Mutilated1 said:
I have a metal meat thermometer I could use. Apparently some people use one because I've seen the pictures posted. Only thing about that, I'm not wild about holding that thing with my hand and trying to keep it from sinking in the wort.

Our local homebrew store has some glass thermometers that float for sale, but I'm hesitant to put glass and mercury in the beer for fear it will break and ruin the batch.

What do you recommend for a thermometer ?

What I think would be ideal is if somehow you could rig up a thermometer to the throttle on the propane burner so you could dial in a temperature somehow... Anyone know if such a thing exists ?

I usually cook indoors on a gas stove, but when I start doing All Grain I'm going to get a propane tank and cook with the turkey cooker.
Click to expand...

You can build a temperature controlled system, but it takes extra equipment and know-how. Some of the B3 systems do, I think Monster Mash's system is, and of course Brutus 10's (http://www.alenuts.com/brutus.htm).

Here's what I use for monitoring my temps. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=28815
 
Mutilated1 said:
Our local homebrew store has some glass thermometers that float for sale, but I'm hesitant to put glass and mercury in the beer for fear it will break and ruin the batch.

What do you recommend for a thermometer ?
Click to expand...

I just use a glass lab thermometer, it works fine for me. Most thermometers these days don't use mercury, but breaking glass is a valid concern... And there is really no need to leave the thermometer in the wort while you are boiling it, you really just need it while you are heating water and you'll need it to make sure you hit your mash temperatures. I have a metal meat thermometer, but it is not super accurate and reads really high if I leave it in the MLT (which is a converted cooler).
 
I used to use one of the glass dairy thermometers until it broke in my boiling wort. I use a metal cooking one I picked up at LHBS but I'm going to be moving to a digitial probe one soon.
 
You can purchase a food thermometer from home depot used for turkey fryers and what not. Works great.
 

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