What are your essential (non-brewing)…brewing gadgets?

You know…the things you grab from your workshop or garage to help you every time you brew. Things that if you didn’t have….brewing would be more of a pain. The things you didn’t buy from your LHBS.

What are they…and what to you use them for?

For me:

• Paint Strainers (5 & 10 Gallon) – Used to help filter out trub and crap when siphoning. Used as hop bag during boils. Dry hop bag.
• Plastic Zip Ties – Used to fasten my paint strainers around my racking cane when siphoning out of the fermenter. Also used to fasten same bags to the dip tube inside the keg for dry hopping.
• Milk Crates – Great support base for burner. Great Carboy drainer. Two of them stacked upside down makes a nice little table. And they hold 25 bottles of beer perfectly.
• Clothes Line Clip – Used on my racking cane to suspend the tip just above the trub at the bottom of the fermenter.

I'm sure there are more...but these are some key items for me.

So what are your “secret weapons”? Do share…

My cordless drill! :rockin:

- Coordless drill

- Mud Mixer (for doughing in)

- Paint strainer bags

- DigiTherms

- Milk Crates (great for storing bottles too)

- Pie tins ( I tend to like them more than my return manifold) or Plastic Steamer tray (same use, came in a box of Steam Fresh Veggies)

- Zip Ties (used to adjust and maintain drill speed when milling grain)

aside from a screwdriver to tighten hose clamps. sometimes a small dvd player or something to watch while im mashing / sparging since I dont have a tv near the area where I brew. for people that use NG/LPG maybe a fire extinguisher just in case. spray bottles for sanitizer. rubber gloves for putting my hands in sanitizer and welding gloves for picking up hot things.

1) Sirius/MP3/Speakers - I brew in the garage so I have a set of fancy computer speakers (with subwoofer) at my brew table. I can hook my Sirius (usually 23 Hair Nation, 97 Reggae, or 29 Punk) or MP3 player into them. At least until I get a TV down there, lol.

2) Spray bottle - filled with no-rinse sanitizer. I pretty much clip it to my belt and spray everything.

3) Vodka - for filling airlocks (and a shot here or there if things go badly)

4) Utility knife - for just about everything

5) Tupperware - for sealing up unused grain.

6) Red PVC-coated work gloves... Water and (limited) heat proof

I use my kitchen collander as a strainer when I pour the wort from the kettle into the bucket fermenter.

I float one of my kid's plastic plates on top of the mash and pour vorlaufed wort on top of it. This prevents the recirculated wort from tunneling into the grain bed.

For taking hydrometer readings, I pour the hot sample into a 9" metal pie tin and swirl it around. It cools the wort down very quickly.

Of course, I use my drill to power the Barley Crusher.

-Desktop PC
-Braun Hand mixer
-Digital Thermometer

BierMuncher said:

• Milk Crates – Great support base for burner. Great Carboy drainer. Two of them stacked upside down makes a nice little table. And they hold 25 bottles of beer perfectly.

Click to expand...

I use Milk Crates for lots of stuff but I never thought about putting bottles in them. Seems like a great stackable idea.

-Sanitized Leatherman Charge XTi

-Plastic Spring clamp for holding the racking cane. I rotate the pads so I get a "V", which holds it perfectly


-Spray bottle with iodophor
-Spray bottle with water, to defend against boilover
-Stainless Steel 2pc Canning Funnel

-Dish Towels. I always use clean dish towels to put my sanitized equipment down on.
-Turkey baster & 6" of 3/8 hose. For wort samples.

Glibbidy said:

-Braun Hand mixer

Click to expand...

hmm... do you use it to areate?

Kitchen items:
Ziploc bags to keep/sort out small brewing itmes like stoppers

I forgot about my hose-end charcoal filter.

No more chlorine in my beers.

I love my spray bottle of star san, and I put sanitized items on aluminim foil- sanitized also, of course. Zip ties rock. My 6$ digital thermometer from ebay. I wish I knew paint strainers were the same thing as grain bags, but 1/4 the price a long time ago........

My 12" double mesh strainer for aeration and hop/trub removal.

stainless steel mesh splatter screens one fits perfectly inside the kettle for skimming off protiens the other fits over a bucket top to filter the wort

We use two pieces of lattice overlapping and offset to hold washed and sanitized bottles upside down.

Do those little stick on aquarium thermometers count?

Cause if so....

Those little stick on aquarium thermometers...

bottle opener...