First "real" homebrew, overall advice needed!

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ochocki

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So I am going to be brewing my first "real" batch of beer soon, I say "real" because my first batch was through a Mr. Beer, lets just say it wasn't very good. I would like to show you the equipment I will be buying and the first brew I will be making.

I am buying The Advanced Home Brewing System which includes:
* A 6.5 gallon Fermenter with lid.
* A 5 gallon Priming/Bottling bucket with bottling spigot.
* An Airlock.
* A Syphon & Bottling setup.
* A Hydrometer and Tube.
* A Bottle Brush.
* A Twin Lever Bottle Capper.
* A Strip Thermometer.
* An 8 oz. Package of Sanitizer.
* Fermtech Auto Siphon
* A Home Brewing Handbook.
* A 5 gallon Glass Carboy.
* An Additional Airlock and Rubber Stopper.
* A Fermometer strip thermometer.
* A Carboy Brush.
* A A Carboy Handle.


And I will be brewing a Stout (extract kit) Can any of you tell me where I can buy a really great stout ingredient kit online?

Besides a brew pot and bottles/caps, can you guys see anything else I may need to make a great stout?

One last thing, is it ok to use tap water or should I use filtered/distilled/spring water?

Thank you very much!
 
Looks like a nice setup. You should be in good shape. One suggestion, definitely get a large brew kettle. the bigger, the better. I barely get by with a 24 qt (6 gallon) stainless stock pot, but I'm constantly on the lookout for a much larger one. You'll want to boil the entire batch of wort for 1-1.5 hours. The extra space of an 8-10 gallon pot will be worth the money.

I use tap water in my brew, and it usually turns out just fine. Our water is pretty decent. If you have really hard, or really soft water, you might want to go with teh distilled stuff until you get the chance to call your water dept and ask them for an analysis of your city's water. Once you have that info, you can compare your water profile to that of famous breweries around the world and adjust your water to be similar for the style you're brewing.

As for ingredient kits, When I did extract brews, I bought kits from Williams brewing in California. The kits contained liquid malt extract, hops, yeast and priming sugar. They were pretty easy to use, and the beer was great. Midwest brewing also has a great selection of kits. I'd definintely go with that kind of kit as opposed to the "John Bull" style tins of hopped malt extract. I don't have the web addresses of the top of my head, but a google search will steer you in the right direction.

Good luck
and
Don't worry....
 
I was shopping for a brew pot yesterday. It seems like an important item, and a large dollar investment.

Does anyone know of an affordable "entry level" pot? Is this advisable?

As far as the kits, I just ordered 2 from morebeer.com. I was also looking at northernbrewers.com kits. I would have gone to the local shop, but they were twice as expensive there and I'm not rich. Both those sites have a good variety. We'll see about quality...
 
Places like Target.com have pretty large stockpots for under $100. and I've seen Stainless 6 gallon pots at Sams club for around $45. (that's what I have.) Aluminum stock pots are going to run a bit cheaper, but there's an age old debate about the safety of Aluminum for making beer. I'm not going to go into that... It's like touching the third rail on the subway.

like Jesse says, Morebeer.com and northernbrewer are good sources too. I don't have any personal experience with them, but they're pretty large outfits, so I would imagine they have good quality products.
 
Your best bet for a pot, and for something that will grow with you, is to check around at walmart/lowes/home depot/target/ebay/anywhere else for a turkey fryer kit. You can usually find them on sale for < $30 if you have the time to wait. Regular prices vary from $50 - $150 depending on the power and pot. The cheap ones generally have at least a 50,000 BTU burner and a 7.5 gallon aluminum stock pot. Generally people prefer stainless steel pots, but at $30 for an aluminum pot and a burner, well that's what I use :)

The plus side is that the pot is probably going to be big enough for a full wort boil (may be close, but should get it done) and the burner can bring 6 gallons of water to a boil in 10 minutes.

You can always do partial boils to start though, and I imagine turkey fryers will go on sale like crazy after thanksgiving. If you have a stock pot or get a cheap stock pot from target/walmart, you can do your boil with 2 gallons and then add more water when you put it in your fermenter. The plus side of doing it that way is that you can add cold water to make up your 5.5 gallons, thus cooling the wort quickly. If you do a full boil on the turkey fryer, you'll need a wort chiller to have any shot at cooling it down in a reasonable amount of time.

Anyway, the upshot is, to get started either use the biggest stock pot you have or go get the cheapest 3 gallon pot you can find, or go ahead and get the turkey fryer if you can find a deal.
 
Do some reading on-line. There are TONS of valuable information out there. I read for about a month before I did my first brew, and believe me, there was still stuff I didn't know about it. I'd suggest howtobrew.com written by John Palmer, he gets mentioned, or referenced, alot on this site alone. Read, read and read some more. You must take this not as a hobby, but a scientific journey, grasshopper. I'm still there and doing that.
I have heard that the strip thermometers are crap. You will need a good thermometer for determining the water temperature before boiling when you steep grains. Most extract kits will come with steeping grains, especially Brewers Best, which I'm using and would recommend. Good instructions and pretty good ingredients. Another thing is your going to need a wort chiller. The ice in the tub or sink takes wayyyyyy to long. You can build yourself a wort chiller by getting about 20 feet of copper tubing and bend into place. I did it and wish I'd done that at the start. But, these are lessons learned that I telling you about. Your going to also need something that will hold two cups of boiling water to cool down to 82F or so to re-hydrate the yeast. My first batch, I just dumped the yeast in without rehydrating, boy, BIG mistake. I use a pyrex cup and boil the water in the microwave and then cover it with syran wrap and let it cool down while I'm boiling wort. Also, start your one hour boil time at the first sign of boiling, not when you first turn on the heat source.....been there, done that.
 
ha, i started with mr. beer too.. wasnt very good...

for a brew pot.. try a freds or a "discount" store.. i got my 5 gal for 10 bucks and love it.. no problems with it...
 
Ryan_PA said:
If you are doing extract (which it looks like you are) Adventures in Homebrewing has an amazing deal on a 5 gal SS brew pot:

http://www.homebrewing.org/5-Gallon-Stainless-Stock-Pot_p_0-272.html

Great guys to deal with too. I just realized you are just north of me, cool.

Is that deal too good to be true? I'm assuming its one of the cheaper, thin bottomed ones. But even so, its a great price. Thats just was I'm looking for, thanks!
 
I went out and bought a 16qt enamel stockpot at target for under $30 as a brew kettle and it's been fine. I'll have to step up when I move to AG but since I don't have the space for that at the moment I'm not too concerned about that yet.
 
Need:
1. A thermometer you can use in your brew pot and for determining when you've reached pitching temperature.

A good idea:
2. Sanitize a bowl for holding your equipment while you&#8217;re brewing.
3. Keep an extra jar or two of sanitizer for the whole brew-to-bottling process, just in case you need to sanitize something later.
4. Keep an extra jar or two of boiled water or spring water for the brew&#8211;to-bottling bottling process, just in case you need clean water in a hurry.

Makes bottling easier:
5. A bottle tree is handy when sanitizing and drying bottles.
6. A filler is handy for getting the beer into the bottles.
 
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