Most helpful item in your brewery

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The Happy Mug

The Happy Mug

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We've all got that handy little thing that makes life so much easier. But, considering how many of them are so common, like bottle washers, it's easy to overlook the simple stuff. So, this thread is dedicated to those handly little things we all have that many of us may have overlooked.

My contribution is my 3' garden hose. Connects to the same connector that lets me use my bottle washer. It gives me the reach to fill a carboy when it's sitting on the counter. It makes washing things like siphons, funnels and bottle buckets easy, I can squeeze the hose to increase pressure or slip a 6" piece of siphon hose within to up the pressure.

It's as important to me as my bottle washer.

So - what do you use that makes your brewing easier?
 
My Auto-Siphon!

I know some people have problems with them, and others swear by them. For me, it hasnt let me down once, and allows me the luxury of attending to other tasks while siphoning.

If I was to pick anything else, it would be my JSP Maltmill. Makes it easy to buy whole grains in bulk and grind exactly what I want.
 
In the old layout, it was a block & tackle, I used to raise the sparge bucket. In the new one, it has to be the 25 ft coiled hose on the deep sink's faucet.
 
For me, it's a 1 KG electronic scale... lets me buy lots of adjuncts (lactose, maltodextrine, priming sugar) in bulk and then parcel them out exactly when I prime or whatever. Also useful for hops, since the whole flowers at my local store only come in 4-oz bags. And the scale was only like $9 on ebay.
 
PeatReek said:
...And the scale was only like $9 on ebay.
Click to expand...

LOL, same here...I picked up a brand new 2kg scale for 12. Makes things nice and easy.
 
spray nozzle hose on the sink.... just no other way to rinse carboys fast and easy
 
my lighter, it has opened so many beers for me it has large peices of plastic gone from it. im afraid its going to blow up. maybe its time for a new lighter. :(
 
For me it's a toss-up between the auto-siphon and the little hose clamp. That little clamp comes in real handy many a times.
 
subwyking said:
my lighter, it has opened so many beers for me it has large peices of plastic gone from it. im afraid its going to blow up. maybe its time for a new lighter. :(
Click to expand...
LOL- this was me when I smoked (quit in Feb)- Now I use my wedding ring. It is like having an opener surgically attached to your hand, and people think you are just tearing it off barehanded!

My most useful tools are:

my new wort cooler (just made yesterday). Since I only do 2.5 gal boils, I am usually boiling stuff in separate containers. used to take forever to cool to temp, but now it is a breeze.

My Thermometers: I have an OK low range one, and a good high range one that can stay in the pot during boils, etc. I use these a lot, from judging how close to boiling a pot is, to cooling boiled water for proofing, to tracking my wort cooler progress.

and like HB99 said, my coconut. Though just starting out, I can say that good equipment is useless if you don't know what you are doing.

"A map is useless if you don't know where you are."
 
Pyrex measurimg cups. You can measure out liquid, boiling or not. It sanitizes easily and can hold sanitizer for small items like the spring tip for the racking cane or bottle caps. I always use at least one, if not more, on a brew day.
 
brewsmith said:
Pyrex measurimg cups. You can measure out liquid, boiling or not. It sanitizes easily and can hold sanitizer for small items like the spring tip for the racking cane or bottle caps. I always use at least one, if not more, on a brew day.
Click to expand...

My 1qt stainless Steel measuring jug for the reasons above.
 
too many to list. carboy carrier for one. makes it a sinch to load in and out of the chest freezer. or my starter kit. both have made my life and beer better!
 
My computer. I was brewing old school, out of the book, until I got online and have been introduced to so many new techniques and time saving ideas. The communication with other experimenting brewers has made continuious improvements a everyday part of brewing.
 
BeeGee said:
Finally got a chance to use mine...worked like a champ so I picked up another one Sunday for my 'secondary' secondary. I did have to punch out the hole a bit to get my racking cane through it.
Click to expand...

Yeah... sometimes the canes don't want to go through there very easily. Making sure the cane is lubricated with a little water helps a lot.

TIP: remove the cane from the cap as soon as you are done with it. I made the mistake of leaving mine assembled after my last racking. It was hard as hell to get the cane removed from the cap the next day since everything had dried and the cane was lodged in pretty tightly.

-walker

PS: if you want a challenge.... try to stuff a HOSE through that hole. It will work, but you've got to wrestle with the thing and will work up a sweat.
 
I'd say this website is probably the most useful tool I have found. I don't yet have very much cool stuff yet; I haven't been brewing that long. Probably the coolest piece of equitment I do have is also my electronic scale. They're handy.
 
Walker said:
PS: if you want a challenge.... try to stuff a HOSE through that hole. It will work, but you've got to wrestle with the thing and will work up a sweat.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I did that racking my cider the other day. Pain in the butt!
 
Perhaps the best gadget I have, that hasn't been listed here yet, are the homemade carboy carriers that were on 2 - 6.5's that I bought used. They are simple but genius. They are made of a length of nylon rope, a 6 in. or so section of pvc pipe, and a large hose clamp. Slide the pipe over the rope, tie both ends of the rope, set both ends of the rope inside the clamp, place that assembly around the neck of the carboy, and tighten the clamp. How simple is that? Pretty cool. Haven't dropped either of those carboys, empty or full.
The only problem is that one of the ropes was cut a little short, and when an airlock is installed on the carboy and I lift it with the carrier, I knock the airlock off. Something to consider if you make one yourself-leave enough lenght to clear an airlock.
 
George said:
Perhaps the best gadget I have, that hasn't been listed here yet, are the homemade carboy carriers that were on 2 - 6.5's that I bought used. They are simple but genius. They are made of a length of nylon rope, a 6 in. or so section of pvc pipe, and a large hose clamp. Slide the pipe over the rope, tie both ends of the rope, set both ends of the rope inside the clamp, place that assembly around the neck of the carboy, and tighten the clamp. How simple is that? Pretty cool. Haven't dropped either of those carboys, empty or full.
The only problem is that one of the ropes was cut a little short, and when an airlock is installed on the carboy and I lift it with the carrier, I knock the airlock off. Something to consider if you make one yourself-leave enough lenght to clear an airlock.
Click to expand...

my carboy carrier was all molded over in my chest freezer when i got back from the Rita evacuation, and i haven't replaced it yet. i tried to load my 6.5 carboy full of amber ale the other day, and talk about suck! even worse getting it out of the freezer. ordered my new one yesterday! handy little tool.
 
The auto-siphon, for sure. I also wub my kitchen timer, which counts up or down; and my stick-on thermometer strip that goes all the way down to 57 F. The ones I find these days only go down to about 64. I'm keeping my eyes open for more of the longer ones. I discovered the hard way that you can't exactly peel them off and re-stick them. :(
 
Wow, the response to this thread is better than I anticipated when I started it. Cheers to all!

Of course, I'd like to add something else I find handy. Two large plastic tubs - one to fill with cleaner, the other sanitizer. It makes bottling a snap, since I can do 16 of my 22 ouncers at a time, and just let them soak. They're big enough for my party pig to fit inside, and just big enough for a carboy or bottle bucket to fit in (when I want that good soak).

Of course, I used to have a hard time dealing with these without making a huge water mess. Then, I started siphoning them into the sink. Duh.

Edit: The lids for these containers, when sanitized, work really well for covering my bottling bucket during tranfer to bottling. Call it a safety measure.
 
The happy mug said:
Of course, I used to have a hard time dealing with these without making a huge water mess. Then, I started siphoning them into the sink. Duh.

QUOTE]
I hadn't thought of that, that's a good idea!
Click to expand...
 
I can say that I agree with everyone on every little trick. But I have one that I love, I just started all grain brewing. I took a trick from my metal finishing days on filtering sediment out of acid, Polyester Batting Material from Wal-Mart works wonders for filtering anything. I use about a 12" x 12" square wrap it around the mesh filter on the mash tun tie it off with poly twine and you can filter about 99% of the particals out of your mash. It has helped me alot in making more good looking crystal clear beer, alot less sediment in primary.

And look below I hate playing catch-up, the wait kills.
 

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