Questions About Brewing Wine and Beer

I just wanted to know I want to brew not only beer but wine as well. What all can I use for both and what will I have to buy Seperates of and keep seperate????

As long as you clean and sanitize thoroughly I couldn't see any equipment (used for wine and beer making) you would need to segregate.

I used all my siphons airlocks etc for my wine making as I do my beer making. Haven't see any problems yet.

I use all of my equipment interchangeably.

the only thing I had to get to add to my equipment list for making wine was a 6.5 gallon carboy. Before that, all of mine had been 5gal. Most kit wines that I've done so far all make six gallon batches, so your primary bucket is fine, but for a secondary, you'll need either another 6.5gal bucket or a bigger carboy. Another thing to consider is there are some different chemicals involved in making wine (campden tablets, chitosan, sulfites, oak, ect.) if you're doing kits you should have no problem, as they usually come with everything you need. Good luck! A really easy wine to get started with is edwort's Aphelwien

Thanks for all your responses I am just starting out and I am super excited about the whole process. So I am sure I will be posting on here alot more getting tips adn Helps

I make a lot of both (started with wine, developed an interest in beer, and now mostly do beer but still a dozen or so batches of wine a year) and use a lot of equipment interchangeably.

I would say the main difference between the two is the importance of cleanliness for beer is much greater than for wine--don't get me wrong, it's important for both but long-term winemakers I know wouldn't last long at beermaking with their sloppy cleaning/sanitizing techniques. The higher alcohol content of wine makes it more forgiving in that regard. If you can get into good habits at the start, you will be just fine with both.

I use separate auto-siphons for beer vs. wine. No real reason except my "older" one was getting kind of grungy from a lot of use. Now I only use it for wine, and use my newer, super-clean one for beer.

As someone above noted, a lot of wine kits are 23 litres (6 gallons) so you will need bigger carboys than for 19 litre (5 gallon) beer batches. Having said that, unless you are making beer kits you can make 23 litre beer batches if you like. Only problem is then you have too much for a 19 litre keg! But those 23 litre carboys are also great for fermenting 19 litre batches if you rig up a blowoff tube, which is really easy.

The biggest thing I like about making beer vs. wine is that the average Joe or Jill who takes the time to learn as much as possible about beer and works on his/her technique can become truly great at their craft. You can make beer that is as good as the best in the world, and better than all your friends drink--and you can have it within a few months. You can get the best malt, hops, and yeast. With wine...you can't get the best grapes. You just can't. And the very best wine the average Joe or Jill makes is decent, acceptable, drinkable...but not even remotely as good as the best commercial offerings. And you will be looking at 2 or 3 years, at least, for your wine to shine. Don't get me wrong, I still make wine, enjoy drinking it and entering it into competition but if I never made another batch of wine I would be fine with that, but stopping making beer at this point would rip my heart out.