Thinking of starting. How much for Equip? I want craft beer quality

So I think I want to start home brewing, sounds like a fun hobby, but I don't want to make crappy beer and it seems the brewing systems are either like 100 bucks or 2000. Is there a middle ground or can you make quality beer in cheap systems?

You don't need super fancy stuff to make good beer. Great way to start is to talk to your local store. A basic setup and a good kit is a good place to start.

Double posts merged.

You can make great beer with a kit that costs < $150.

Most home brew stores or online brewing supply companies offer starter sets for under a $100. If you start small and don't go too crazy too soon you can get started for ender a couple hundred pretty easily

Some starter kits come with beer kits but if not they tend to cost $20-$50 depending on type. Also, if you don't already, start drinking beer with pop top caps so you can save the bottles. And you will need a stock pot for the wort.

Its not about the gear. Its about a few things IMO:

Patients
Fermentation Temp Control
Great simple recipes
Yeast! (type and pitch rate)
Sanitation

Do those things well and you will have beer that rivals craft.

Honestly the equipment doesn't always determine the quality of the beer. The recipe, your process, and good healthy yeast in the right quantity makes higher quality beer than a $2000 system.

I started out with a $150 extract kit and it made great beer. Talk to your local shop. They will be able to help you find something in your budget that makes great beer.

Check out Morebeer for very good deals on starter kits (and free shipping).

Jump in a buy the basic brewing kit from MoreBeer.com, Northern Brewer or Austin homebrew Supplies - they are all reputable stores and should get you a kit out the door for $150 or less.

They things you will need:

8 gallon pot (go aluminum and save the coin)
Hydrometer, I hated them to begin with, but they enable you to make measurable improvements
Sanitation stuff - don't skimp, cleanliness makes good beer
A big spoon to stir stuff
Thermometer
Bottles (use brown bottles - buy three cases of good beer and consider it an investment)
Bottle capper and bottle caps
Siphon
Two primary buckets (for fermentation)
Odds and ends
Lots of beer kits

When your ready to splash cash, think:
Kegging system
Outdoor burner
Bigger pot (10-15 gallon)
Fermentation chamber


I'm assuming you'll do extract brewing first, an easy way to move into All Grain brewing us to use the BIAB method (look it up on the forum)

Things I believe are waste of cash:
Secondary Carboy
Wort Chiller (I know I'll get grief for this)
Grain mill (great if you brew a lot, otherwise order the grain crushed)


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+1 to buying beer with regular caps. Get a couple cases and save the cases. (Costco sometimes has their ales for about $17). Drink the beer and save the bottles and the cases.

Check out starter kit at More Beer or your local home brew supply. I'd get their cheapest starter kit ($69) and then spring for a good quality 7 - 8 gal. stockpot to use as a boil kettle. Figure on spending about a $100 for a decent one.

Something to think about is how much water you can boil. On my fancy glass top stove its only about 3 gallons so I stick with 2.5 gallon batches and can do full boils. I pieced together my setup for $150 tops and have made some excellent brews! If you can't boil the amount of water desired you may need to spend more on a propane burner and tank, etc.. good ;uck

you can buy thousands of dollars of equipment and still not get good beer if you are not willing to do the process
and you can have a basic starter kit and make great beer if you want to do the process
that is up to you
there is a learning curve where your beers get better and better
But it is all you.

davekippen said:

Its not about the gear. Its about a few things IMO:

Patients
Fermentation Temp Control
Great simple recipes
Yeast! (type and pitch rate)
Sanitation

Do those things well and you will have beer that rivals craft.

Click to expand...

^ This! Davekippen nailed it!

You can find tons of advice in these forums for DIY projects that will allow you to enjoy this hobby on the cheap!

Whatever you buy, make sure it's the right size ! Or it's a waste of cash.
Two FV buckets , a big boil pot 7gals minimum, a good burner, hydrometer.
Then it's down to initiative and your available spend, most things can be achieved from the kitchen. I doubt that I have spent £250 on equipment over 30 years.

If you plan on being in the hobby for any length of time, prepare to spend some bucks. I started with a $100 kit that had the necessities along with a turkey fryer kit that included an 8 gal ss stockpot and an outdoor propane burner for about $150. I still use every piece of that equipment in addition to the other $1000 or so I've spent in improvements and/or add ons. Can't speak for everyone, but there is always some sort of equipment that I want to improve/upgrade almost every single brew I do.

That being said, some of my best beer came from my simplest setups...

You might also try finding a local homebrew club to show you the ropes a bit and let you help brew a batch. You'll get a better idea of what you'll need.

Devilsnight said:

Something to think about is how much water you can boil. On my fancy glass top stove its only about 3 gallons so I stick with 2.5 gallon batches and can do full boils. I pieced together my setup for $150 tops and have made some excellent brews! If you can't boil the amount of water desired you may need to spend more on a propane burner and tank, etc.. good ;uck

Click to expand...

Agreed.

You also need to decide if you want to do all grain or extract.

I started last year this time with a one gallon all grain kit from Brooklyn Brew Shop. Kit comes with everything you need to make one gallon of great beer( glass carboy, thermometer, yeast, grain, etc). Kit is like 40$ on Amazon. They have little youtube videos along with written instructions to walk you through it.

Either way, once you start, you won't stop. But there are consequences to brewing.

1. If you are married, get used to your wife saying, " I thought this was going to save us money".
2. You will slowly begin to want only friends who brew.
3. You will be generous with giving your beer away but will soon resent people who do not compliment you on the complexity and taste of your delicious home brew.
4. You will want to horde your beer like shmegal did the one ring.
5. Your beer store bill will go up because it gets harder to find beer that taste better than yours.

Did I miss anything guys?




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One thing that a lot of people are glossing over is that there is a learning curve to this hobby. If you've never brewed on your own before, you could have the most expensive rig in the world and the beer probably won't be commercial class.
You will have your batches of fair beer, and probably some drain pour batches as well in your journey - we all have.
What it comes to, besides having decent equipment - not necessarily expensive - is learning your rig, your system, and its quirks, being able to work with them and be able to produce numbers within a given margin of error each time. and this WILL take some time, energy, tears and batches. There was a question in last month's Brew Your Own magazine where a reader wrote in asking how many batches it takes to make great beer.
There is no answer, it's not, "after x time trying you're ready to go."
That said, all the best of luck to you. I started with an $80 kit, and a 20qt pot.
I now have a turkey fryer burner I got at Home Depot after Thanksgiving, and a Graniteware 33qt pot I use as kettle. It works very well for me 20-ish batches later in it. You can spend hundreds of dollars on a high-zoot, Stainless steel kettle with all the options, but until you get some experience it won't give you better beer.

For example, here is one from MoreBeer.com.

http://morebeer.com/products/personal-home-brewery-kit-3-bottling-deluxe-1.html

And asking your LHBS is a good idea too.

You could also check craigslist. Sometimes people are upgrading to 10 gallon+ systems, and will see all of the 5 gallon equipment cheap.

No matter what you get now, you'll find yourself later upgrading or supplementing it with new gear that you convince yourself (and then maybe your wife) that you really need. That's part of the addiction.

I'll thrown in a few that I have come to value in my brew life:

-use StarSan no-rinse sanitizer. Put some in a spray bottle that's not ever been used with cleansers. You'll thank me later.

- depending on where you live, setting up a fermenter fridge or freezer (check Craigslist) with a controller outlet box (which you can build in inexpensively using an STC-1000) will greatly improve your beers and make your brewing life easier. Yeast is very temperature-dependent and a few degrees can often make a noticeable difference.

Enjoy.

+1 on both the learning curve idea and the davekippen advice

even following daves advice your first 5 or 6 batches might not be 'craft beer' quality .. so send me those and I will drink them for you

Everyone here has great ideas, but I think the most important aspect that some of you have touched on, but probably not enough for someone wanting to homebrew as a hobby, is the aspect of TIME.

The most important thing you will need in order to be successful and last in the hobby is TIME. Without being able to commit time, you can make beer, but if you want to make good beer, you need time.

You will find yourself devoting time to the following things:



I'm sure I've missed a lot with regards to what will use up your time, but if you are willing to devote a ton of time, and are willing to truly learn and listen to a million different opinions to form your own, then you will be successful and this will be a lifetime hobby.

I know a lot of people who don't want to devote the time, and don't care to improve their knowledge. Yes, they brew, but they don't brew as well. The person who got me hooked on brewing fell in this bucket, and after 6 months I knew 10x about brewing than they did.

I started by reading this forum for a while, doing research, reading through How to Brew, and then buying a basic starter kit and kettle. That is enough to get started successfully. After that, you need time and commitment to learn.

You can make great craft beer if you start by brewing extract, you'll still need a lot of what I posted below you just won't need a mash tun, hlt, ph meter, various mineral additives. Pitching the proper amount of healthy yeast and proper wort oxygenation plus controlling temperature of the beer while it's fermenting is a must.

To brew all grain you will need a stir plate, mash tun, boil kettle, hot liquor tank (optional as you can use your boil kettle for this), water (I would use RO), various mineral additives, ph meter, malted barley, hops, yeast, a way to chill your wort and a way to aerate the wort prior to pitching yeast, a few carboys/ ale pails, a ferm chamber, and most importantly the knowledge of how to make all those work to make great craft beer.

For a lot of beer styles you don't need a super expensive system for the production of wort you just need to be able to hold a temperature steady for an hour to an hour and a half.

I'm sure it sounds complicated and expensive right now but it's not. Buy stuff up as you slowly get addicted (which you will) read read read, and most importantly have fun! Welcome to HBT

Wow, thanks for the advice everybody. Sounds like I have a decent amount reading and searching to do, but also sounds like it'll be worth it!

Most on-line retailers have starter brewing kits. Like Northern Brewer,Midwest Supplies,AHS,Morebeer,etc. Some,like Midwest have options to add to the brewing kits depending on what you have/don't have. An extract kit with some steeping grains would be a good first beer,nothing fancy. Like a pale ale or red ale. I've worked my way up from kit-n-kilo brews to partial boil,partial mash brew in a bag with the same 5 gallon SS stock pot I started with.
It's the quality of process you come up with that gives great beer,not the equipment. Just spend your money on what you really need minimally to make good beer. The things I also find handy are in my Gadget brewing videos on Youtube,under Unionrdr's channel. But here 's a short list anyway.
Glass hydrometer in plastic tube (NB sells blue base for it to measure with)
2-3 cases of 12oz pop top bottles
Stock pot of at least 5G (20 QT) capacity,I like stainless steel
Capper
Caps
Bottling wand with tubing too fit it
fermenter,at least 6.5G
Bottling bucket,again at least 6.5G
Airlocks
Racking tube to fit spigots
Bucket lid prying tool
Collander to drain grains in that fits brew kettle
Large dual layer fine mesh strainer-keeps BK gunk out of fermenter
Starsan sanitizer
PBW-cleaner
Bottle brush
Cheap digital scale-weighs hops,priming sugar,grains,etc
Bottle tree
Vinator to fit bottle tree (for sanitizing bottles)
Auto siphon with tight fitting tubing
long handles spoons &/or paddle (I like the white plastic ones,24" long)
Sturdy 1 gallon jugs for storing mixed Starsan & PBW in-I like SunnyD jugs
Spray bottle for some Starsan-sanitizing on the fly
*I also go to the dollar store for the spray bottles,measuring spoons,measuring cups,funnels & the like. I also use a cheapy rubber mallet for sealing bucket lids firmly. These are about all I can think of that'll give you a good start & make brewday & bottling day quicker & easier.

This might be going over the top but you never know...here's some items that have helped me out. If you have them around the house that's cool too but it makes brew day easier:

No slip mats (can get these by the roll at the $1 store) to put under things to keep them from sliding when wet


Table that folds in half and can be put away easily


Clamps for holding things to the side of your pot or whatever else


Lots of towels that are only for brewing that your significant other doesn't mind you messing up


Oven mits for handling hot stuff


These if you can get them (I don't have them but I imagine they would be helpful)


LARGE clear container to hold all of your brew supplies in


SMALL container to wash things in

We have a LHBS in the Portland, OR area that has a nice website with mail order items. The staff are friendly and helpful - and the store is kept clean (a little pet peeve of mine).

I've picked up lots of advice, recipes, help with equipment, etc. You can find a basic kit at www.mainbrew.com and spend as much or as little as you like.

I agree with aslander that reading, researching and talking with other brewers is more helpful than the best equipment!

Good luck!

When anyone asks me about getting started, I point them to this set up from Williams Brewing: http://www.williamsbrewing.com/COMPLETE-HOME-BREWERY-WITH-32-QUART-BREWKETTLE-C291.aspx

It's a little pricier that your basic Brewer's Best in a box, but I think it's worth it because:
1 - It comes with a 8 gallon pot (you can do full boils and avoid learning about boil overs the hard way)
2 - It comes with a wort chiller which will improve your process (and cut down on your brew time)
3 - It comes with a beer kit
4 - The spigot on the fermentation bucket is a great innovation and makes transferring infinitely easier than a siphon (and you end up with clearer beer)
5 - You'll end buying all this stuff anyway, and pay more in the process

My advice. Buy this kit and brew on it as is for 20 batches. Get your sanitation and process down pat first. Taste your beers and ask others to do the same. Join a homebrew club and soak up the collective knowledge. Get to the point where you know what you don't know and then start adding complexity. You'll be a better brewer in the long run if you take your time and get the basics knocked first.

Good luck - welcome to the obsession!

Learning curve
learning basics

I touched on those earlier but have to say a little more

what ever you want to brew, you will need to know the basics and develop good and solid techniques

learning curve, even the craft breweries had that, they worked on recipes to develop them, they did not just pop out a great beer on their first try. Just go to MoreBeer.com and see how many breweries own their beer sculptures. They buy a small system to experiment on. So remember you will need to brew the same style quite a few times to get it down. Another pointi si how do you even know how good you can brew unless you can brew the exact same beer twice. To many guys in this hobby do not even know how to nail a beer because they have not spent enough time brewing the same beer to learn how.

My advice, pick a beer, one you like from a craft brewery, and try to make that beer. keep trying till you can, and you can on multiple occasions. then move on to another beer. That is how you get good, that is how you get craft brew quality.

fermentation temp and control is king. you can make great beer in a $7 bucket and a $10 bottling kit that will taste great. but you HAVE to maintain constant low temps for most ales. 60-70 degrees, with no big temp swings.

buy what you can afford so you don't have to "upgrade" and waste money in the end.

from the origonal post

uofmguy said:

I don't want to make crappy beer and it seems the brewing systems are either like 100 bucks or 2000. Is there a middle ground or can you make quality beer in cheap systems?

Click to expand...

lets review this

yes you can get into the hobby for 100 bucks and a brew kettle
yes you can make good beer with it, but that takes good knowledge and technique
Yes it is easier with more and better equipment

but there in lies the problem, how much more and better?

that is an experience answer

and how do you get experience, you either buy in and go for it, making all the mistakes and buying whatever you THINK you need
or
You go out and find a club and brew with a few different guys from the club, and experience all the different styles of equipment and why you need it. If you do this you will also see all of their stuff they do not use but bought because they needed to have it. I think also you will find the guys making the best beers do not have the biggest shiniest brew systems, the are in the middle somewhere. But they have the most knowledge and the best basic techniques. Because they have brewed over and over and over again.

Also, that way you can taste the beer of the guy you are taking advice from. After all if a guy offers you beer that is soso, do you want to learn his way? or the way of the guy who hands you beers you want to learn to make?

davekippen said:

Its not about the gear. Its about a few things IMO:

Patients
Fermentation Temp Control
Great simple recipes
Yeast! (type and pitch rate)
Sanitation

Do those things well and you will have beer that rivals craft.

Click to expand...

Quoted for emphasis. Can't go wrong doing these things right.