Planning out my next brew equipment purchases...

So, after brewing with a friend for a while, I've recently begun assembling my own brewery. I'm sticking to extract batches for the forseeable future; AG fun will be relegated to the brewing buddy's place while I continue to pin down my process at mine and do some experimenting with yeasts strains and different hops and such.

Anyway, life has gotten in the way, financially speaking, of my plans to expand equipment. At this point I've got NB's "Deluxe Basic Starter Kit," an "extra" 5 and 6.5 gallon glass carboy, a turkey fryer w/ 28qt aluminum pot, and all the bits and pieces for a 4 tap kegerator (all this was purchased just before the proverbial s_ hit the fan).

So, in the next few month, I'll be making a couple additional purchases. I figure, in no particular order, I need/want the following:

- Wort chiller
- Yeast Starter equipment (flask(s), stir plate, etc)
- fermentation temperature control of some sort (before summer!)

At the moment, I'm in CT. It's cold outside, with snowbanks aplenty for chilling (instead of ice baths). It's cold (low to mid 50's) in my basement. I've already fermented an Oktoberfest kit (now lagering in the kegerator), and I'll be doing the AHS Pecan Porter this weekend (I've got a brew-belt and a cheap timer, and experimentation has shown I can maintain mid 60's right now pretty easily). So for right now, I'm in pretty decent shape, especially if I stick with dry yeasts for my first few batches.

But, assuming in March or April I'll start having some play money to work with again, in what order should I look into my next three purchases? Or is there some other option I should look into that I'm not thinking of?

I'm thinking that the yeast starter stuff would give me the best bang for the buck, and be pretty inexpensive to boot. The wort chiller I can probably get by without until late spring. The fermentation temp control could be the pricey-est of the three, but I'm likely to need it before the summer gets rolling. Is this the order you would be looking at these things?

Putting your wort in a snow bank actually chills the wort at a slower rate than if you used a water bath in your sink. The snow acts as an insulator. I would invest in the wort chiller....It will save you so much time and effort.

I'd invest in the yeast starting kit first. This will actually increase your knowledge, appreciation and skill base. Also it puts you in a position to craft bigger or more complex beers as well as harvest and yeast instead of buying new for every batch. If you have some DIY in your blood then the stir plate can be built very cheaply relative to purchasing a manufactured unit.

While I see a wort chiller as a desirable piece of equipment it will not do anything for you besides provide convenience. I have no trouble getting 5gallons down from 212F to 80F in about 15 minutes using a circulating ice bath. A chiller removes a good deal of the labor and shortens that time frame but doesn't do much else for you (and it is one more thing to clean, store and maintain).

I can't speak for temperature controls because I find I do not need them in my house. If I did need them I would probably place a pretty high priority on making it happen, though.

j1laskey said:

Putting your wort in a snow bank actually chills the wort at a slower rate than if you used a water bath in your sink. The snow acts as an insulator. I would invest in the wort chiller....It will save you so much time and effort.

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You could gather snow to throw into the water bath, that'd work

Is your temp control for ales too or just lagers? I would do AG before I did ale temp control unless your temps are totally out of whack. If you plan to make lagers year-round, then you'll need a temp controller.

How many gallons are you boiling? If you are sticking with extract partial boils, you can probably get away with not using a wort chiller.

Personally, I'd go AG and a wort chiller.

the yeast starter equipment along with going all grain (there's a method somewhere on here for doing it all on the stove top without any extra equipment but a second pot and a thermometer) will end up saving you a lot of money in the long run, on midwestsupplies.com the average extract ingredient kit is 30 dollars, as opposed to 18 for all grain, and that includes yeast which you could potentially avoid buying as well with the starter equipment.

I'm using a 28qt pot, doing full boils (or as close as I can get) at the moment.

In the summer, I tend to keep my cigars in the basement, as it's the coolest spot in the house, and I keep pretty close track of conditions as a result. There are still days when it hits close to 80 down there, so temp control in the summer may well become an issue for ales too.

I appreciate the AG suggestions - really I do - but I'm not ready or willing to make that particular leap just yet.

So it's starting to sound like Yeast Starter, Temp Control, and Chiller whenever I get lucky and a Craigslist find falls in my lap. I think I'm good with that.

I'm in a similar spot. Did my first 5 gal extract batch last week on the stovetop. Going to move boiling outside due to the family not digging the smell. Ah well...

Already have a turkey fryer burner. The pot is no good as it's been used in the past for steamers, lobsters, etc.

Looking at a SS kettle and wort chiller. Have the 6.5 gal fermenting bucket and bottling bucket. Temps here (MA/NH border) keep my cellar too cold (50-55) for ales in the winter, but the rest of the year will be fine.

Find it interesting that everyone is responding so favorably to working on yeast harvesting before a chiller or fermentation temp control. I would think (granted, newbie here) that solidifying the process to be most important before trying to save a few bucks per batch via yeast harvesting.

I'm figuring if the mid summer temps are too high in the basement I would probably just hold off, brewing more in the spring and fall. So I guess if temp control isn't affordable (I know I can't buy a fridge just for fermenting) then I'd want to chill quickly if brewing full boils.

If I were in the same situation I'd go for temp control or the yeast starter stuff. Those two factors will give you the most drastic results. In fact I think temp control might be the biggest improvement because you can get dry yeast fairly cheap and there is no need to make starters with dry yeast. After you have temps controlled I'd get the yeast equipment then down the road when you have harnessed the fermentation portion of brewing you can then slowly piece together a system to do all grain.

This is hindsight advice from me. I went the other way. I went extract, all grain, yeast equipment and now I'm dying to get a temp controller. That is probably going to be my next purchase in a couple weeks. Say hello love controller! Trust me nothing hurts more than making a 10% abv IPA with S04 that got too warm and had a taste of fruity fusel solvent. It was bad enough that I just dumped the batch after three months in the bottle. If I had temp control it wouldn't have happened.

Temp control doesn't have to be a chest freezer with digital temp regulator, you could make a simple swamp cooler that would work just fine for ales. I think the biggest thing you can do to make temp control less of an issue is brew with a yeast that is comfortable with the ambient temps you will be storing at. That makes temp control less of an issue because the swamp cooler can protect against drastic temp swings and all you'll need is a couple of frozen water bottles a day to drop the water bath down a few degrees below ambient.

jimlin said:

Find it interesting that everyone is responding so favorably to working on yeast harvesting before a chiller or fermentation temp control. I would think (granted, newbie here) that solidifying the process to be most important before trying to save a few bucks per batch via yeast harvesting.

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I personally think that yeast harvesting is a cost-saving technique and isn't really in the same ballpark as things that will influence the taste of your beers (temp control and chilling faster). Yeast washing is also really cheap. $4 pickle jar, some mason jars (4pk was a few bucks at Target), a funnel...that's it, right? Now if you want to make starters, you'll want a flask and possibly a stir plate.

The problem is that the 3 things aren't equal in cost. A 25' wort chiller might run $40, yeast washing + starters might run $70 if you buy a stirplate ($40 stirplate, $20 flask, $10 for jars), but temperature control can be much more expensive (controller itself might be $70 to $100, plus the chamber, plus other stuff). I guess the question comes down to how sophisticated the temperature control is. A rubbermaid tub with frozen 2-liter bottles would obviously be a lot less than a dual temp controlled upright freezer with heat source.

For a cooler than ideal basement get a party bucket and put the fermentor in there with water. Then use the temp control with an aquarium heater to raise the temp to whatever you want. In the summer you can do basically the same thing but instead have a cooler with ice and a pond pump. That way when it gets warmer than desired the pump runs circulating cool water through the party bucket through coiled tubing or something and returns through the cooler.

The aquarium heater is what I'll be using in the winter with temp control for lagers in the future after I get the controller.

+1 to the swamp cooler. Throw a 2-3 2liter bottles of water in the freezer. Swap one out about every day, or as necessary and the beer will stay nice and cool. Total cost would be about $20 if you bought a really nice tub.

I use a 1/2 gallon growler for my starters. It works great for me. Haven't had any bad issues with it yet. It just doesn't look all scinece lab like. That would run you about $10-15. I just started yeast harvesting with my last batch and all I needed to buy was a dozen glass jars ($8) and a large jar with a lid ($8). You really don't need alot to harvest yeast and it'll pay for itself after a batch.

I made my own chiller for about $75, which is what I could have bought one for, but the advantage is I have a larger copper coil, 3/8" instead of 1/4", and it really cools the wort FAST.

If you really wanted, you could have all 3 things knocked out for $100. Spend any extra $$ you have on ingredients or set it aside for your keezer build.