Moving to All Grain - Equipment List

I have a two-stage fermentation kit with a bottling bucket and some other miscellaneous parts. I'm wanting to make the transition from kit beers to all grain beers, and I'm thinking of picking up the following:

1. Rubbermaid 10 Gallon Cooler for a mash tun ($45)
2. Parts to convert #1 ($10)
3. 12" Phil's Phalse Bottom for #1 ($25)
4. Heavy Duty 15 Gallon Brew Kettle with Ball Valve ($250)
5. Burner ($100)
6. Wort Chiller ($70)

I plan on batch sparging to begin with, and I'm thinking of the ball valve kettle for when I eventually move to a more expensive wort chiller. I can't seem to find a 15 gallon stainless steel kettle that will fit on my stove - if I could, I would ditch the burner and the ball valve kettle and save some money.

Aside from tubing, is there anything I am missing here, or am I going overboard in some way? The plan is to use the cooler as the mash tun, batch sparge it, and use the wort chiller to cool the wort in the kettle. Eventually I would get a pump and use the pump to vorlauf and to suction the wort through a plate wort chiller. I figure those parts are investments on down the road.

You might consider this kettle, cheap and decent for a 15 gallons. I have it and like it.

http://www.homebrewing.org/2-Weld-15-gallon-SS-Brew-Pot_p_2756.html

you can get a burner much cheaper then $100 if you shop around. You can also make a chiller for about $35.

Where are you getting parts to convert the cooler for $10? The SS ball valve is more than that with out shipping.

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I definitely would like to drop the cost on the kettle and burner, so that is helpful. For that kettle above, how much do attachments to plug or utilize the pre-drilled valve holes cost?

insanim8er said:

Where are you getting parts to convert the cooler for $10? The SS ball valve is more than that with out shipping.

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Estimating from here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-10-gallon-rubbermaid-mlt-conversion-23008/

ZenFitness said:

Estimating from here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f51/cheap-easy-10-gallon-rubbermaid-mlt-conversion-23008/

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Ah... Brass... But also a 2007 post. Might be more now.

I would get the parts from bargainfittings and do all stainless.

ZenFitness said:

Thanks everyone for the feedback! I definitely would like to drop the cost on the kettle and burner, so that is helpful. For that kettle above, how much do attachments to plug or utilize the pre-drilled valve holes cost?

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They are standard 1/2" threaded fittings, as others have suggested go to bargainfittings.com to get the parts.

barginfitting rules. Grab a coleman extreeme cooler. I have both and the xtreeme holds heat way better and is marginally cheaper and much larger than the 10gallon rubbermaid.

It more or less uses the same cooler kit for mash tun.

dracus said:

barginfitting rules. Grab a coleman extreeme cooler. I have both and the xtreeme holds heat way better and is marginally cheaper and much larger than the 10gallon rubbermaid.

It more or less uses the same cooler kit for mash tun.

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Hmm... I dont know about the rest, but my Rubbermaid 10 gal does a fantastic job holding temp, and it fits my SS false bottom perfect.

I can understand you wanting to go to all grain as I have done it and I love the possibilities and the challenges but I'm not sure if your question is "can I save some money on these items by buying from somewhere else" or is it "is there a way to go to all grain without spending this much money"? If having a traditional mash tun and being set up to do batch sparging is important to you, then I can't help you much. Shopping has gotten easier with the internet because you can use the search engines and find cheaper prices for the items but you then have to add in the shipping to find out if it is a good deal.

If your goal is the second option I listed, you can be doing all grain batches for much less money by going BIAB. BIAB avoids the mash tun, the false bottom, the parts to convert the cooler to a mash tun, the 15 gallon pot, the expensive burner and still makes the same quality beer and will let you do it in less time. You decide which way you want to go and someone can advise you better on your choices. I can do 5 gallon batches with a turkey fryer rig I bought for about $60 that includes the burner, a pair of paint strainer bags for around $5, and a Corona style grain mill for about $30 delivered to my door. A chiller would be nice but I can still make good beer without it.

I made myself a 50', 1/2" OD copper immersion wort chiller and it cools my 5-6 gallon batches in no time. I can't imagine wanting to upgrade.

Since you already know you like brewing, I recommend getting the things you want/need now without an eye to upgrading later. That said, you might be perfectly satisfied with some pieces that aren't as big or fancy as you think you need (such as a plate wort chiller).

I also have that same kettle and I'm well pleased with it. I used the money I saved on it to buy a blichmann burner - something that's obviously not necessary, but wow am I ever pleased with it.

Thanks all for the replies.

dracus, does the Coleman warp at all from the heat? That's a box cooler (for lack of knowing a better term) vs. a water cooler, correct?

RM-MN, I'm more interested in the flexibility of AG brewing. In the long run, I'm not too worried about cost but don't want to sink $1000 right off the bat, either

ZenFitness said:

Thanks all for the replies.

dracus, does the Coleman warp at all from the heat? That's a box cooler (for lack of knowing a better term) vs. a water cooler, correct?

RM-MN, I'm more interested in the flexibility of AG brewing. In the long run, I'm not too worried about cost but don't want to sink $1000 right off the bat, either

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There are people who brew that find that they like to brew extract kits. My son is one of them and he is the one who got me started. There are people who like to brew but stick with extracts but not kits for various reasons. There are people who want to brew in a more traditional manner and for them the mash tun and the sparge gives them what they want.

I find that I don't want any of the above options. I want the flexibility of choosing what grains go into my brews so extracts are out of the question because the extracts have a mix of grains already in them. I also don't want to go to the mash tun because of the cost of the parts and the storage of them for the 8 months when I won't be using them because it's too warm to get a good ferment temperature without a fermentation chamber (go back to the part about cost and storage) and because what I do takes up all my time for the summer months. For me then, BIAB works well. Once I had the basic hardware for brewing, all I had to add was a couple paint strainer bags and I made my first all grain batch. I have since done some upgrading to be able to make 5 gallon batches and mill my own grain but I tried it with very little cost. Now that I have some experience with that method, I find little reason to go any other route.

andy6026 said:

I made myself a 50', 1/2" OD copper immersion wort chiller and it cools my 5-6 gallon batches in no time. I can't imagine wanting to upgrade.

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Thanks for the inspiration! I have never soldered before and was a bit daunted by the task, but, after some research, I may actually try to build a counterflow chiller and use a pump to recirculate the wort through it to cool it quickly. Is this feasible? I have read about similar giddyups, but I am certainly moving into uncharted waters for me. I always assumed buying a chiller, but the idea of learning to solder and to start building a more sophisticated system by hand is definitely appealing.

http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/homebrewing/wort_chiller/

I know this whole thing could be done simple/cheap, but the process of building this would be very satisfying.

ZenFitness said:

Thanks for the inspiration! I have never soldered before and was a bit daunted by the task, but, after some research, I may actually try to build a counterflow chiller and use a pump to recirculate the wort through it to cool it quickly. Is this feasible? I have read about similar giddyups, but I am certainly moving into uncharted waters for me. I always assumed buying a chiller, but the idea of learning to solder and to start building a more sophisticated system by hand is definitely appealing.

http://www.thegatesofdawn.ca/wordpress/homebrewing/wort_chiller/

I know this whole thing could be done simple/cheap, but the process of building this would be very satisfying.

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I bought a copper refrigerator coil from HD, about $70 for 50 feet of 1/2" tubing and bent it myself.

Much better than the ~$200 therminator plate chiller!

After some reading, it seems that an immersion chiller may be a better option vs. the CFC due to the potential cold break in the CFC ending with trub in the fermenter. Recirculating back into the kettle also takes quite a bit longer to cool. I don't want to devolve this conversation, but I'd welcome some thoughts.

For me the biggest drop in cost on your equipment list, without sacrificing quality, is to go with an aluminum brew pot. 10 gal heavy gauge for 40 bucks. Add weldless fitting for another 25 or so. This will cover you for 5 gallon batches. At least that was one way for me to get into all grain on a small budget. For mash tun I was gifted an old ice chest and used the stainless steel braid method so that ran me about 15 bucks plus another 25 for a bulkhead. Make a 25 foot IC (about 35 bucks i think. And there you have it. Under $150 and you just need to add the burner. For me the any old turkey fryer burner is good enough. So I'd say 50 bucks there.
If you have all the other stuff from extract brewing you should be able to "upgrade" to all grain for under $200. Or at least that is what I did until I added kegging capability.

One of the things I go on about a lot, is a nice 5 or 10 gallon water cooler, and a good stainless or homemade pizza pan false bottom. No need to batch sparge with this setup. It holds heat great, is easy to stir and clean. You certainly would not regret buying this setup.

I got my burner from a turkey fryer kit, hell that's where I got my pot too. If you have the money to buy the stainless kettle though, I say go for it.

You can definitely build a wort chiller cheaper than 70, and it's not hard. My wort chiller is only 30 ft of 1/4 inch copper, and it works fine for me. Our ground water is usually too high to ever get down to pitching temp anyway, so I throw it in the fermentation chamber until I can pitch.

Welcome to all grain brewing, let us know what you come up with!

estricklin said:

One of the things I go on about a lot, is a nice 5 or 10 gallon water cooler, and a good stainless or homemade pizza pan false bottom. No need to batch sparge with this setup. It holds heat great, is easy to stir and clean. You certainly would not regret buying this setup.

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Thanks for the tip! Why would you not need to batch sparge?

Well if you want to batch sparge go for it, but I'm lazy so I don't. String mash then vorlofing and adding water 2 or 3 times, is way too much work for me. When I get ready to sparge, I vorlof, dump all the water in, crack the valve and walk off for 45 minutes. With the hose braid type setups you almost have to batch sparge to make up for the poor false bottom. With a 10 gallon water cooler, it will hold all of your water and grain for a fly sparge, but with a 5 gallon there will be a bit left over usually.

I probably shouldn't have brought this up, but was only trying to point out the benefits of a good false bottom. Batch and fly sparging have been debated many times in countless other threads.

Okay, so I'm putting together a shopping list for a 10 gallon cooler mash tun conversion, and I'm trying to go stainless. I like this one:

http://www.onemansbeer.com/diy-mash-tun-parts/

But it is all brass. I'm trying to match up stainless parts on bargainfittings.com at 1/2" instead of 3/8", but they seem to be shy on some parts. For example, they have a stainless tee but it is not flared. Probably no biggie as I would just need to switch the interior hose barbs to be male instead of female. However, they don't have a 1/2" stainless steel coupler that has some bolt edges (all they have is this which looks like it would be hell to tighten as it is all rounded). I've Googled around for some other sources, but I'm not having much luck (this is new territory for me, so maybe I'm not searching for the right stuff).

Anyone have any advice? Or should I just hell with the SS and go to brass?

Honestly that brass is going to work fine.

You may search for some 1/2 nipples to thread into that tee, then you can use the hose barbs with female threads if you want. Either way the couplings and nipples, can be easily tightened with a pipe wrench, so no need to worry about that.

Amazon has some stainless fittings. I will help you look after while if you haven't found everything by then.

ZenFitness said:

Okay, so I'm putting together a shopping list for a 10 gallon cooler mash tun conversion, and I'm trying to go stainless. I like this one:

http://www.onemansbeer.com/diy-mash-tun-parts/

But it is all brass. I'm trying to match up stainless parts on bargainfittings.com at 1/2" instead of 3/8", but they seem to be shy on some parts. For example, they have a stainless tee but it is not flared. Probably no biggie as I would just need to switch the interior hose barbs to be male instead of female. However, they don't have a 1/2" stainless steel coupler that has some bolt edges (all they have is this which looks like it would be hell to tighten as it is all rounded). I've Googled around for some other sources, but I'm not having much luck (this is new territory for me, so maybe I'm not searching for the right stuff).

Anyone have any advice? Or should I just hell with the SS and go to brass?

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This kit gets you everything you need for converting a cooler. You may have to find the T somewhere else. Or consider changing your design to a false bottom or single hose.

I got the kit to convert a kettle, and it works great. I'm about to order that kit to convert another 10 gallon mash tun. If you do a water cooler (round) you'll need to add the extra washer option.

paulshe said:

For me the biggest drop in cost on your equipment list, without sacrificing quality, is to go with an aluminum brew pot. 10 gal heavy gauge for 40 bucks. Add weldless fitting for another 25 or so. This will cover you for 5 gallon batches...

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I have to disagree. There is an extremely strong correlation between Aluminum and Alzheimers Disease. Scientific peer-reviewed articles or it didn't happen right?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056430/

Good luck and happy brewing!

electrolight said:

I have to disagree. There is an extremely strong correlation between Aluminum and Alzheimers Disease. Scientific peer-reviewed articles or it didn't happen right?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3056430/

Good luck and happy brewing!

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I guess you better think twice about eating or drinking anything. Studies also show only 20% of the aluminum we ingest come from cookware.

I went to Home Depot and bought the brass equipment but will still need to order some online. I'm not sure what the advantage would be to try and do the work to get all the SS parts together, so I will probably stick with brass unless anyone has some specific reasons not to.

Thanks for the help.

ZenFitness said:

I went to Home Depot and bought the brass equipment but will still need to order some online. I'm not sure what the advantage would be to try and do the work to get all the SS parts together, so I will probably stick with brass unless anyone has some specific reasons not to.

Thanks for the help.

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Lead

SS is always used in food industry because it's safe and sanitary.

Make sure it's design food safe, or take the chance. Wash it well soak it in vinegar too.

Research it on google. Here's an article

insanim8er said:

Lead

SS is always used in food industry because it's safe and sanitary.

Make sure it's design food safe, or take the chance. Wash it well soak it in vinegar too.

Research it on google. Here's an article

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I'm pretty sure brass is food safe, as it is used in residential plumbing systems regularly. Brass itself doesn't contain any lead, as it is a mixture of copper and zinc.

insanim8er said:

Lead

SS is always used in food industry because it's safe and sanitary.

Make sure it's design food safe, or take the chance. Wash it well soak it in vinegar too.

Research it on google. Here's an article

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Thanks, not just vinegar but hydrogen peroxide as well - I plan to do this.

From the article:

I believe that the lead level on the surface of brass brewery components is pretty minimal and should not be a major concern. Having said that, I have, however, performed the pickling procedure on every brass piece in my home brewery just to be safe.

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I would use SS but it is damn hard to find all the materials to do something this simple!

I have been using a 10 gallon bayou classic pot for a long time and recently decided to go to 10 gallon batches. I didn't want to steal keg shells so I went around to all of the liquor stores in my area that sold kegs. I ended up getting two of them for completely free at one of the shops. The distributor refused the trade in shells because they were the "old style". I don't know what makes them old style as they appear to be normal sanke kegs to me. Anyhow they couldn't legally sell them to me as they can only sell alcohol, not alcohol containers (Oklahoma laws) so they just gave them to me to avoid having to haul them off to the recycling center. It took me about 2 hours to get the kegs and most of that was just talking about home brewing since they were interested. And I have 2 other shops that said they would call me if they got anything in they couldn't use. It might be worth looking into in your area.

estricklin said:

I'm pretty sure brass is food safe, as it is used in residential plumbing systems regularly. Brass itself doesn't contain any lead, as it is a mixture of copper and zinc.

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Depends on the brass. The yellow brass that you can buy at home depot/lowes contains 5% lead. The vinegar/hydrogen peroxide treatment will dissolve the surface lead but ONLY if you do it for the proper amount of time. Too long and you will dissolve brass too exposing more lead. Keep in mind that 5% lead is for the entire weight of the piece of brass. The surface area is a small portion of the weight. Lead also gets expelled from the body fairly quickly.

Still, it's lead, and stainless isn't that expensive and sooooo pretty!

Take a look on Bobby's site and see if you can get what you want there. Bobby is great to deal with and has awesome service. He is a HBT member.

http://brewhardware.com/fittings

ZenFitness said:

I went to Home Depot and bought the brass equipment but will still need to order some online. I'm not sure what the advantage would be to try and do the work to get all the SS parts together, so I will probably stick with brass unless anyone has some specific reasons not to.

Thanks for the help.

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Just don't attach anything brass to aluminum. The two metals will create a galvanic junction and you'll have a corrosion problem. However, if you attach it to stainless, you shouldn't have any problems.

MaxStout said:

Just don't attach anything brass to aluminum. The two metals will create a galvanic junction and you'll have a corrosion problem. However, if you attach it to stainless, you shouldn't have any problems.

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Good point, very true. Leave them long enough and they will become one piece.

Setesh said:

Depends on the brass.

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You beat me to it.. Good info here.

Setesh said:

Depends on the brass. The yellow brass that you can buy at home depot/lowes contains 5% lead. The vinegar/hydrogen peroxide treatment will dissolve the surface lead but ONLY if you do it for the proper amount of time. Too long and you will dissolve brass too exposing more lead. Keep in mind that 5% lead is for the entire weight of the piece of brass. The surface area is a small portion of the weight. Lead also gets expelled from the body fairly quickly.

Still, it's lead, and stainless isn't that expensive and sooooo pretty!

Take a look on Bobby's site and see if you can get what you want there. Bobby is great to deal with and has awesome service. He is a HBT member.

http://brewhardware.com/fittings

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Good information. Still seems like that the amount of lead would be almost too small to measure.

I do prefer stainless as well though. All my fittings are except for a hose barb, which I always meant to replace but never got around to it. It's so easy to wreck the threads on brass fittings too.