Advice for equipment upgrade

So I have a couple boils under my belt (currently drinking one and another fermenting). I'm really enjoying myself with home brewing and would like some recommendations on what equipment upgrades I should make first. Currently using a turkey fryer as a kettle and have the 2 bucket fermenting kit. I'm willing to spend a couple hundred bucks and would appreciate any advice.

This (or a comparable chiller) should be on your list...

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/standard-chiller-3-8-x25-with-vinyl-tubing.html

I assume you are doing extract. If that is the case I would recommend having 4 or 5 fermenters and lots of bottles so you can get a really good pipeling going. Extract is not that equipment intensive so I would focus on anything that will help you make more beer. If the turkey fryer is big enough to allow you to do full boils then you are good there, but if not definitely get yourself a 10 - 20 gallon kettle with a ball valve so you can do full boils.

If you are going all grain then God help you. You will still need the extra fermentors but definitely a 15 to 20 gallon ss kettle with a ball valve. Get a good 10 gallon plus mash tun. I prefer a cooler. I use a 60 quart Coleman Extreme and I love it. You will want really good calibrated thermometer for the mash tun. You will need a 50 ft copper wort chiller and I can go on and on. Oh by the way if you are going all grain a couple of hundred aint going to do it. But you can build it a little at a time.

Welcome to the obsession!

I'm roughly in the same boat as yourself. My plans are to begin brewing BIAB to get a feel for all grain without up front costs and to work on setting up a fermentation chamber of some sort. I am told that aside from sanitation, ferementation temps rank right up there in producing a great beer.

The biggest changes I noticed in quality and ease of brewing were 1.) a chiller, 2.) kettle for full wort boil with valve, 3.) kegging system. I put them in order of price and how I progressed. Best of luck to you.

I would recommend this chiller (I like it because it is stainless):

http://www.homebrewing.org/SS-Wort-Chiller-50-38-tubing_p_2384.html

I also agree that a larger brew kettle is a good idea (15 gallon so you can do 5 or 10 gallon batches)

If you don't control fermentation temperatures, you are not really optimizing your brew. This is the single biggest impact you can make.

Why is having a valve on your boil kettle important? So you can use a pump to whirlpool/chill faster? I just pour from kettle into fermenter to increase aeration.

purphumpbackedwhale said:

Why is having a valve on your boil kettle important? So you can use a pump to whirlpool/chill faster? I just pour from kettle into fermenter to increase aeration.

Click to expand...

A) Less trub goes into the fermenter
B) Pouring isn't practical once you get to larger boils. "A pint is a pound the world around" so a 10g batch and kettle is about 100 pounds.