Opinions for Beginner

Hey everyone,
I am new to brewing and this site. I was curious about a few things to get started. I would like to begin brewing, but I am being a little bit rambunctious and want to be brewing at least 4 five gallon batches at a time. So I would like some opinions on the equipment I need to get that can handle that much, and some good types of beer that i can learn on and are forgiving enough to still taste good.
thanks

Sloooow down pardner. I know your anxious but why don't you start with one or two to figure out what's going on? You don't want to screw up 4 batches in a row right out of the box and get discouraged.

Welcome. I'm assuming you mean 4 different 5 gal. brews, not one 20 gal.

Definitely get a Bayou burner or some type of high output burner. You'll need a haircut waiting for 4 batches boiled on the stove.
I got a quality stainless steel kettle real early and a wort chiller.
Have extra carboys around if you think you might want to rack any brews to a secondary fermentation.

Most start with red ales, browns, etc. to begin as there is a bit of margin room. Big Scottish ales take a while and really low OG ales show every mistake. HTH

Good luck!

The straight forward answer is that you will need four 6 gallon primaries and four 5 gallon carboys.

I am assuming you will do extract brews to srart off with. That will require less equipment.

You will need 8 ft of siphoning tube, a brew pot, ingredients, H2O, a stove.

You should look on *********** and click on the link for beginning brewer instructions.

From there you may decide to stagger batches so that you just need 1 primary.

Then you need to consider kegging or bottling and the equipment required.

I admire your enthusiasm, do a little research and then dive in.

rohanski said:

Sloooow down pardner. I know your anxious but why don't you start with one or two to figure out what's going on? You don't want to screw up 4 batches in a row right out of the box and get discouraged.

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Good point. +1 to that

So you have 220 bottles at your disposal?

I can appreciate his desire for quantity. I'm managing with 1 primary, 1 conical secondary, and 1 spare ale pail for Apfelwein.

My two biggest limitations are:
- Conical fermenter is always full with beer readying for bottling, therefore I can't rack a brand new batch into it - haven't got to use it for a primary yet, and think it'd be cool.
- Bottles, bottles, bottles. I've got a blonde ale in secondary right now, and nowhere to put it *at all* because I just exhausted my entire bottle reserve on the porter that I bottled last Tuesday. This means I've spent $50 on micro-brew beer in the past 4 days -- $20 on Grolsch swing-tops (that I emptied in one night) and $30 on New Belgium 6-packs (many, many of them) so that I have more pry-tops.

That being said, I've also spent about $700 on my fledgling brew setup in the past 2 months - this includes "hardware" like my JSP Maltmill or my conical, and also "software" like grain, commercial beer to drink + reuse the bottles, etc. My finances won't support much more expansion, so I need to get enough fermenters *now* so that I'm not too poor to buy them in a month.

As to the original question of "what do you need", I have a fairly complete list on my website (see link in sig), but it does not include small items such as a bottling wand, tubing, capper, caps, StarSan, hop bags, etc etc etc.

So, good luck to the newbie, hope you can get to brewing soon! It's a great addiction!

chriso said:

...
That being said, I've also spent about $700 on my fledgling brew setup in the past 2 months ...

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Holy cow! I thought I spent alot at about $233 initial cost:

1. $60- Basic brewing setup (ale pails, etc)
2. $23.50- pricey carboy from LHBS
3. $15- cheap carboy from Old Time Pottery
4. $26-24count 22oz bottles
5. $28-beer ingredient kit from LHBS
6. $20- additives and yeast for Apfelwein
7. $12-5 gals appljuice
8. $25-wine thief and other accessories from AHBS
9. $4-floating thermometer
10. $16-enamel canning pot
11. $3.50-bigass SS spoon

ma2brew said:

Holy cow! I thought I spent alot at about $233 initial cost:
..........

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Okay, now you've got me motivated, I've never tallied it "officially" before.

• Turkey Fryer Kit (FYI, Bayou Classic w/ 7.5gal S/S kettle, found on Amazon)- $100 SHIPPED
• 3 Ale Pails - $45
• 6.5gal MiniBrew - $160 SHIPPED
• JSP Maltmill - $145
• Phil's Counter-Flow Chiller - $45
• Misc Hardware (Ball Valves, PVC) - $40
• 2 Igloo coolers for mash tuns - FREE!
• Capper, Caps, Filler, Tubing, StarSan - $35 ish
• Thermom's and Timer - $25
• Misc Receipts from LHBS - mostly grain, i think? - $60
• Strainer from restaurant supply store - $5
• Juice and supplies for Apfelwein - $30
• 2 cases of 24-12oz bottles - $28

Comes out to around $715 - add about $50 for "filled" bottles, soon emptied, from the liquor store... heh... :fro:


For the benefit of the original post, here are a bunch of "little crap" that are a huge help to have around (that you often don't even realize you need!):
(Some of these items only pertain to All-Grain, sorry.)
- Extra rags
- Tube clamps (shutoff clamps)
- Sharpie markers
- Scale capable of measuring less than 1 ounce (for hops) and greater than 1 pound (for grains)
- Spare containers to put stuff in - I use cottage cheese containers or yogurt containers - Great for using w/ scales.
- Extra 1/2" hose clamps, Just In Case one of your hoses is misbehaving and (hopefully not) spraying hot wort all over.
- Spare buckets - for sanitizer, water, rags, hoses, whatever.
- GOOD measuring pitcher - trust me, the Dollar Store is NOT a good place to shop for this one! Doubles for vorlaufing before you sparge at the end of your mash.
- Extra ziploc baggies, for splitting up partial amt's of hops
- Something to keep your grain cool and dry when not being used! (I still haven't found this special "something"!!)
....and of course,
- A few cold homebrews for while YOU brew!


By the way, our LHBS is about $32 for glass carboys in the 6-ish gal range, so by our standards, you got a good deal. I wanted to invest in Better Bottles, but they come out to about $40 a piece here.

----------

OH - I completely neglected your second original question, what STYLES are forgiving for newbies like us to brew!

My first batch was a 10B - Northern Brown Ale. I just got my results back from the competition I brewed it for (21 entrants) and I placed 13th with a score of 34 ("Very Good" rank) - the lowest in the top 10 was a 37, so I was SO CLOSE!

My second batch was a 15B - Brown Porter, and it seems to have come out well too, it's too new to try yet, it needs to condition in the bottle for another 2 or 3 weeks for carb'ing.

Tomorrow I'm brewing Cheesefood's CVCA (Linky!) and can't wait!!!!

I appreciate the tenacity. I've only been brewing for 2 or 3 months and will be making my 7th batch tomorrow morning (with the a few week break between batch #1 and 2 and the remainder being almost back to back). I currently have the following equipment:

1 primary bucket
1 bottling bucket (with spigot)
2 6 gallon carboys
(enough stoppers and airlocks to kill a horse)
An 8 gallon SS brew pot
Thermometor (why can't I spell that), Hydrometer, auto-siphon, spoon, etc...

This allows me to run batches back to back w/o much problem. At first I was running like clockwork with my batches (1 week in primary, 2 week in secondary, then to bottle) But It's been going longer than their respective periods of time. So right now I have something in my primary that I don't plan on taking out until Sunday or Monday. I have something in one of my secondary carboys and an empty carboy (plus an empty wine carboy or two). So I may run tomorrows batch in the spare carboy, or I may just do it in my bottling bucket, not sure...

Either way, you can be enthusiastic (which I think I am), and not have to go too crazy with equipment. I think at first it may be silly to do more than one batch a week (I'm only saying that because I just haven't yet ) Good luck and welcome aboard! (Woo, I'm not the newest noob!)

This can vary greatly depending on your finances. Since others have posted their expenses I will try to recall all of mine.

turkey fryer w/ 11 Gal pot=$150
14 kegs @ $16 average=$224
2 chest freezers=$75 The first one I ruined by drilling through a coolant line.
C02 bottle & hardware=$200 I have two 4-way manifolds and hoses
Cobra head taps cause I can't afford real taps=$60
2-8 gal pales for fermenting=$40
1-6.5 Gal Carboy=$30
2-5 gal carboy=$40
50ft chiller=$60
other misc equip=$200

So I figure I have about 1k invested and I have only been brewing since May 07.

As for a style I brewed a Amber Ale for my first batch.

Good Luck!

ma2brew said:

Holy cow! I thought I spent alot at about $233 initial cost:

1. $60- Basic brewing setup (ale pails, etc)
2. $23.50- pricey carboy from LHBS
3. $15- cheap carboy from Old Time Pottery
4. $26-24count 22oz bottles
5. $28-beer ingredient kit from LHBS
6. $20- additives and yeast for Apfelwein
7. $12-5 gals appljuice
8. $25-wine thief and other accessories from AHBS
9. $4-floating thermometer
10. $16-enamel canning pot
11. $3.50-bigass SS spoon

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Biggest piece of advice I can give you is to throw that floating thermometer in the trash. Just wait for that to break in your 5 gallons of wort you just spent how many hours on. Mmmm glassy beer!

I might have to add up my setup now.... if I can even remember it all.

cheezydemon said:

The straight forward answer is that you will need four 6 gallon primaries and four 5 gallon carboys.

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I agree with everything except you only need 5 Six gallon carboys! (I'm cheep) Put 4 brews into the primaries. When the time comes to secondary, put 1 into the empty carboy, clean the one you just emptied fill it with another brew, repeat 4 time!! your golden and saved $40.