New brewer here, need advice!!

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Gunpowder

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Hi everyone!

My wife got me a $50 brew-at-home kit from a local cranberry festival (It's a Cranberry cream ale) cheap little kit... plastic carboy, basic ingredients, you know how it goes.

Anyway, I just bottled yesterday, will be chilling it tomorrow. While bottling, I took a sip and other than it being flat & warm, it actually wasn't too bad! I was impressed considering the quality of the kit. It's not going to win any medals, but I was impressed nonetheless.

I really enjoyed making it, and I think I may want to step it up to an official hobby. Now, being a woodworker, a welder, and a filmmaker, I know *full well* that you need halfway decent equipment if you want a halfway decent result.

Since I'm just starting out, I don't want to invest thousands, but I'm willing to throw down a couple of hundred to get going. I talked to the wife and she agreed to let me allocate my old workshop (which I relocated to the garage) in the basement and turn it into a little brewery, which is good! For those of you married, you know how it goes... Happy wife, happy life.

Anyway, I started looking for starter kits on various websites, including Amazon, and was instantly overwhelmed. I don't have a clue what to get!! So here I am, doing what I should be doing, asking the experts.

From what I've gleaned so far, I'm definitely going to want a glass carboy, a decent kettle, an electric boiler for the kettle, and a wort chiller. Blowover was a problem for me in my first batch (and it made a hell of a mess on the kitchen counter) so I was thinking about using clear plastic tubing from Home Depot and an airlock system to avoid that problem in the future.

So my questions to you (and I'm sure you get this a lot) are as follows:

1. Are there any GOOD starter kits out there, or would I be better off buying individual components?

2. What additional items are recommended?

3. Should I invest in a brewer's cleaning agent, or is hot water & vinegar good enough to clean everything?

4. Any other recommendations to get up and running??

I appreciate your responses in advance, and I'm glad to meet all of you! Thanks!

~Brian
 
Hello and welcome. I'm no expert having just had my first boil yesterday. But I got my starter kit from my local home brew store. If you have one I'd check them out 1st. Mine came with a glass carboy, bottling bucket, and most the little parts I needed. The only things I bought outside of the kit was a boiling pot and a propane burner. I boiled outside, I had 2 minor boil overs. Nice to have the mess out there. Just hosed it off. Like you said. "Happy Wife, happy life"
 
I'd say the most critical things to start out with are something to boil in, something to chill with, and something to ferment in. When and if you feel like moving to all grain, there is the matter of a mash tun. For cooling, I have an immersion chiller I fashioned myself from refrigerator coil. One of the things I like about this hobby is the DIY aesthetic. Don't worry too much about kits and build your system up as you think you need. Also build a relationship at your local homebrew shop. There is usually lots of experience there, whether it's the owner or the customers you'll bump into.
 
1. Are there any GOOD starter kits out there, or would I be better off buying individual components?

2. What additional items are recommended?

3. Should I invest in a brewer's cleaning agent, or is hot water & vinegar good enough to clean everything?

4. Any other recommendations to get up and running??

I appreciate your responses in advance, and I'm glad to meet all of you! Thanks!

~Brian



1. For equipment, you need this: http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/...arter-kits/essential-brewing-starter-kit.html plus a hydrometer and test jar (order that separately- they are cheap). That kit comes with the ingredients for one batch of beer, so that should be all you need for the time being.

2. That's about it, but you need a boil pot and a stove.

3. No vinegar! Never ever vinegar! You can use oxiclean or something like that for cleaning, and then a no-rinse sanitizer like star-san for sanitizing.

4. I can't really think of anything, except for random stuff like a nice big stainless spoon. But I'd wait and see after the first batch or two to see what kind of things would be useful for you.
 
Gun,

Here's what I would highly recommend. Check out Williams starter brewing kits. The nice thing about them is that they are siphonless. You never need to siphon beer from one container to the other. This makes transferring a breeze. Also, taking beer samples to measure specific gravities is easy. I would not buy anything else. I have been using mine for three with no leaks or problems whatsoever. Check it out.

http://www.williamsbrewing.com/BASIC-HOME-BREWERY-C73.aspx

Good luck,

NRS
 
Thanks everyone!! And especially about the vinegar! I will look into those sanitizers...

NorthRiverS, I heard glass carboys were the only way to go... did I get bad info?
 
As for the DIY comment, yep, I can see myself doing that!! Are there any metals (brass, copper) or plastics (PVC) to avoid?
 
It's probably just me, but the downside of cleaning hassles, added weight, and broken glass dangers that steered me away from glass carboys. I make good beer and am not convinced that glass would improve the results. Just my 2 cents.

NRS
 
Get a decent little starter kit from one of the big homebrew retailers (Midwest, Austin, Northern Brewer, etc.). This will provide you with a couple fermenter buckets, airlocks, siphon, plastic tubes, racking cane, bottling equipment, hydrometer, etc.

After you get the basic starting equipment, I would sit down and think about how you will do your mash. Will you go extract or all-grain? That will define a lot of your other equipment needs and processes. Partial boil or full boil? You can easily do partial boil extract brews on your stove using a sink or bath to cool. But as soon as you go full boil, you're pretty much relegated to outside with an outdoor burner setup and a 8+ gallon pot. And if you go all-grain, you're making your own extract so you need a mashing vessel, which for most starting homebrewers probably consists of a modified cooler.

Anyway, just some things to think about.
 
A spray bottle to keep some cleaning solution is always handy to have around on brew days!

The reason for glass carboys is to avoid oxidation of the beer, that being said I have NO glass. Whatever I figure plastic is working fine, work on the process and perfect it overtime right. A basic starter kit like everyone said will do you fine, the rest you'll figure out and slowly add and/or make yourself from the hardware store
 
I agree with many about a starter equipment kit from one of the big on line suppliers. Also add the book How To Brew by John Palmer, excellent well written information for beginners and experts (I use my copy every brew day).
Also
Welcome to Home Brew Talk and this passion we call home brewing!
 
Just wanted to call out that if you bottled it yesterday, you'll need to wait a few weeks before chilling and drinking. General rule of thumb is to let sit 3 weeks at 70-75 degrees before drinking, some beers will take longer, depending on their gravity and type of yeast.
 
Craig's List...I constantly see great deals on starter kits on CL. Once you've gotten advice here and gotten an idea what you need and retail pricing you'll be ready. I like the starter kits at windriverbrew (dot com) partially because they "throw in" a kit so the value is high and also because when I was starting they were great about giving me direct personalized advice. I am not affiliated!

My other advice is this...I found it useful to choose a "goal" or "philosophy". There are so many ways to go with this hobby and none are more valid than another. But there are huge cost and complexity variations.

For example, I like IPA's and I'm cheap so I decided my goal would be to brew a drinkable IPA cheaply. Most of my friends don't brew and aren't major beer snobs (just minor ones!) and love my IPA! At this point I humbly estimate I brew a very good IPA for $0.50 per bottle (I harvest yeast) and about 15 minutes of my time per bottle (one 8 hour all-grain brew day and one 4 hour bottling session = 50 twelve ounce bottles...in round terms). I did get lucky and started with an extremely great CL buy so I basically don't amortize any equipment costs.

If you do buy a kettle, I recommend an 8 gallon aluminum. Stainless is probably better...but more expensive.

One last comment, if you know anyone that brews, ask them if you can come watch/help. You'll learn a lot that it's hard to learn through just reading.

Good luck!
 
Gunpowder said:
Hi everyone!

My wife got me a $50 brew-at-home kit from a local cranberry festival (It's a Cranberry cream ale) cheap little kit... plastic carboy, basic ingredients, you know how it goes.

Anyway, I just bottled yesterday, will be chilling it tomorrow. While bottling, I took a sip and other than it being flat & warm, it actually wasn't too bad! I was impressed considering the quality of the kit. It's not going to win any medals, but I was impressed nonetheless.

I really enjoyed making it, and I think I may want to step it up to an official hobby. Now, being a woodworker, a welder, and a filmmaker, I know *full well* that you need halfway decent equipment if you want a halfway decent result.

Since I'm just starting out, I don't want to invest thousands, but I'm willing to throw down a couple of hundred to get going. I talked to the wife and she agreed to let me allocate my old workshop (which I relocated to the garage) in the basement and turn it into a little brewery, which is good! For those of you married, you know how it goes... Happy wife, happy life.

Anyway, I started looking for starter kits on various websites, including Amazon, and was instantly overwhelmed. I don't have a clue what to get!! So here I am, doing what I should be doing, asking the experts.

From what I've gleaned so far, I'm definitely going to want a glass carboy, a decent kettle, an electric boiler for the kettle, and a wort chiller. Blowover was a problem for me in my first batch (and it made a hell of a mess on the kitchen counter) so I was thinking about using clear plastic tubing from Home Depot and an airlock system to avoid that problem in the future.

So my questions to you (and I'm sure you get this a lot) are as follows:

1. Are there any GOOD starter kits out there, or would I be better off buying individual components?

2. What additional items are recommended?

3. Should I invest in a brewer's cleaning agent, or is hot water & vinegar good enough to clean everything?

4. Any other recommendations to get up and running??

I appreciate your responses in advance, and I'm glad to meet all of you! Thanks!

~Brian

Welcome to the most addicting hobby in the known universe!! I recommend u start out with extract kits & learn the process. After a couple of brews u will be tweaking recipes or creating your own. I started with a basic kit from Austin homebrew supply & have gradually built up to my single tier all grain brewery
 
I started out with a (extremely cheaply made, yet expensive) starter-kit, which I quickly broke. After 18 or so years, this is my "kit":

1) Go to Wal-Mart and get their 5-gallon jug of water. The bottle has a deposit, which you'll get back when you return it. You don't even have to return it cleaned, and it comes pre-sanitized. All for a total price of about $5.00.
2)For the brew (I almost always do partial mash), I use a 3-gallon stock pot. I have a large stirring spoon. I also have an electronic thermometer which I use in other cooking.
3) I use a large funnel to pour the wort back into the 5-gallon Wal-Mart water jug. I have a neon orange topper that fits perfectly (cheap at any brew store) and a cheap air lock.

To bottle, I have some cheap plastic tubing and a bottling wand. I bought a few cases of Grolsch beer and just keep reusing the flip-top bottles over and over again.

This system makes fantastic beer over and again. In fact, in all of my years, I have never made a bad batch. I've never had skunked beer, an infection, flat beer or bottle bombs. Not bad for a kit that costs less than $10. I don't count the stock pot and the thermometer since it's what I use on a daily basis for other cooking.
 
After just completing my first brewing day, I'll give you my few pieces of advice and things I did. I bought everything online as the closest brewing shop to me is 50miles away or so. I bought everything separately because all the starter kits came with a bottling bucket, capper, etc that I didn't need since I plan to keg.
Burner: Bayou Classic SQ14 burner. Worked great. Easy to set up. Boiled 4 gal very quickly.
Brew Pot: inherited a 7.5gal SS brew pot. If I hasn't gotten this for free, I probably would have gone with a 10gal.
Fermenter: I bought a 7.9gal bucket style fermenter, lid and 3piece airlock. I don't really like the thought of a big, heavy, glass carboy. Seems a pain to clean, too. Buckets are cheap. I may end up fermenting in a keg at some point since I have extras.
Chiller: I bought a kit of components through coppertubingsales dot com. Was the cheapest I found for the copper tube. Wrapped it around a keg, soldered a few fittings and voila, a 50'- 1/2" immersion chiller. worked splendidly. They also have kits that don't require soldering if you don't want to bother with it.
Cleaner: I bought PBW. Seems ok. I don't really have anything bad to say about it. It removed some nasty stuff in the bottom of the pot (Had been there for months likely) quite well.
Sanitizer: I bought star-san. Love it. What a great product! I even mixed up a little spray bottle of it... worked great.
Spoon: I bought a cheap 21" long slotted stainless spoon. nice.
Racking: bought the 1/2" auto siphon. Didn't use it yet for beer, but did you it with cleaning solution just to get the hang of it. seems handy enough.

Things I wished I'd had....
1) Longer thermometer. I used a regular electronic cooking thermometer.
2) Another brewing bucket or two. I'm going to be kegging so I didn't even have a bottling bucket to help out. The extra buckets would be for cleaning solution.
3) Cart, table, stand of some sort next to the burner/brewing area. I had nothing to lay out instructions, ingredients, set down spoons, rest the beer I was drinking, etc. This would have been a GREAT help!
4) Stainless scissors- for cutting open packets of stuff. I was ripping them open and lost some hop pellets on the ground as a result.
5) Wine thief- tried without one being cheap. thought my wife had a free turkey baster and she didn't. will be ordering one with the extra brew buckets.
6) A tray- A few inches deep and large enough to hold the 21" spoon and the auto siphon and its tubing, and any other odds and ends that need sanitizing. Seems easier than trying to do this in a bucket.

I hope that was somewhat helpful. If you have any other specific questions, let me know.
 
a cordial relationship with Yooper. She knows everything; recipes, processes, styles, etc. :)

Get the turkey fryer/banjo burner. You won't be in the kitchen, you can spill, boils lot's of water much faster. Minimum of 2 fermenting buckets. You'll want to have at least 2 beers ready to drink at any time, which means you need 2 more conditioning in buckets! It goes faster than you think.

Start with a basic kit like eveyone's suggesting, and start with "extract with grain" brewing. Easy yet flexible. It's an education and you can use most of the stuff you get in the kit when/if you move to all grain or brew-in-a-bag (my next step towards all grain).

Good luck. Check back and post questions often.
 
I have 2 glass carboys and although I do use them, if I had it all to do over again I would buy the plastic Better Bottles.
 
Better to buy a kettle a little larger than you think you'll need. I make 10 gallon batches and boil in a 20 gallon kettle. Still have the occasional boilover.

I prefer plastic to glass. Easier to handle. No fear of being killed by a shard of glass.

Start planning now for a way to keep your wort cool while fermenting. If your room is 70F your wort can get up to 80F. Most ales are best if fermented in the low 60s.

My favorite sanitizer is star san.
 
I highly recommend a 32" wallpaper tray. On brew or bottle days, fill to about 1" with starsan solution. PERFECT for sanitizing long things and small things (like bungs or airlocks). I keep a piece of shamwow in a mason jar of starsan that I dump in this tray. I can re-use the same batch for several sessions. The shamwow stays sanitary and makes a great wiper.
Just google " 32" wallpaper tray". Also a great place to store long skinny tools and tubing while they dry and between sessions.
But be reasonable...they're made out of flimsy plastic so you have to be careful when you pick them up (especially when full of solution).
 
Small point: Don't re-wet your hands grabbing things in starsan or immersing your hands in starsan without immediately rinsing them off. It dries out your skin pretty bad.
 
One more thing...save a 16 oz. plastic soda bottle and cap. On bottling day (sanitized) fill it leaving the normal head space then squeeze out that air and crank down the cap. Clear plastic is nice because it's fun to watch the color and settling of the yeast...but obviously don't leave in the sun. As the days pass you will see the co2 start to create an air space in the neck. When the bottle is "rock hard" (approx 3 weeks for 'normal' beers) chill it for 48 hours then open it and test your new batch. This saves you from wondering "Is it ready yet?" and wasting beer by opening too soon. After you have done it a few times you'll know what "rock hard" is...I would say just slightly less hard than the original Coke. Also, I usually keep one totally different bottle handy (green works for me) and pour the last dregs from the bottling bucket in it. 9 times out of 10 this is just fine to drink in about a month. Sometimes I even use the beer in the hydrometer beaker (which I sanitize for this reason) if I need a little more...who cares if the priming mix is a little off. One more 'free' beer!

I wonder if anyone ever did an "advice for beginners" thread where we all post our favorite tips????
 
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