$500 What would you buy?

[lutherslagers]

I was given a $500 American Express gift card today. I want to spend it on my hobby. What would you buy?

A little about my set-up. I'm all grain. 3-tier system with no pumps. I max out at about 8 gallon batches, so I usually brew for 5 gallons of finished beer. I have temperature controlled fridge for fermentation. I have a 5 tap keezer.

I think a beer gun is on the short list. But just curious what others would buy.

UPDATE: I also have a grain mill.

 

[Vance71975]

I was given a $500 American Express gift card today. I want to spend it on my hobby. What would you buy?

A little about my set-up. I'm all grain. 3-tier system with no pumps. I max out at about 8 gallon batches, so I usually brew for 5 gallons of finished beer. I have temperature controlled fridge for fermentation. I have a 5 tap keezer.

I think a beer gun is on the short list. But just curious what others would buy.

Honestly if i had your set up i would just buy Grains,hops,yeast, and spare kegs!

If you dont know this site already, this is where i get ALL my hops they are sooooo cheap and AWESOME quality!

http://www.hopsdirect.com/hops/pellethops.html

 

[brewmcq]

If I was set up like that, I would take pity on some poor HBer tucked away in Northern Maine and send HIM the gift card so that he would be able to start kegging.

But I'm a sap sucker like that. ;-)


(Pumps, definitely pumps.)

 

[wildwest450]

IF you're happy with your system, another temp controlled freezer for lagers?


_

 

[Beezy]

Id put it into a small fridge and cornies.

 

[Boy]

Go 10 gallon and use the rest on kegs. Grain mill?

 

[rexbanner]

Oxygen wand from williams brewing. Stir plate. Thermowells.

That's what I just bought. Can't say for certain what it will do, but from everything I have read, these are the tools that will allow you to produce the best and most difficult styles.

 

[superbob404]

I'd get some strippers & cocaine, but for $500, they'd be pretty ugly...spend it on a grain mill....

 

[cruckin78]

I was just in the same situation. I worked over memoral day weekend for my wife's friend and made $500....I bought a Blichmann Burner and legs (WOW effin awesome), a 1/2" 50' IC....$100 worth of cigars for my humidor, and I tented the windows on SWMBO's car.

Money well spent if you ask me!

 

[lutherslagers]

cruckin' what type of burner were you using before the Blichmann? What's the difference between your old burner and the Blichmann?

 

[jwaltz1313]

conical fermenter
large chest freezer
500 scratch tickets
various bits of cool\handy\neat brewing gear you wouldn't normally consider.

something for the misses and a week or so latter "find" an amazing price on the above and put it on the CC

 

[cruckin78]

cruckin' what type of burner were you using before the Blichmann? What's the difference between your old burner and the Blichmann?

I was using just a normal square style (non banjo burner) turkey fryer burner, the difference being it used to take 40-50 minutes to achieve boil (7.5 gallons). Now I can boil that same 7.5 gal in my keggel in 20 minutes. It also uses way less LP.

My old burner would almost freeze up my bottle after 60 minute boil. The same bottle with the Blichmann it is barely cool....Oh and it's quite! It does not sound like a F-16 on your deck taking off!

It's been the best $200 i've ever spent on brew stuff!

 

[rwmiscik]

I would definitely expand my setup. For instance i would tell you to get a bigger mashtun, HLT, and Boil kettle that way you can move up to ten gallon batches comfortably because getting ten gallons instead of five for essentially the same amount of work and time is soooooo nice.

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

I would definitely expand my setup. For instance i would tell you to get a bigger mashtun, HLT, and Boil kettle that way you can move up to ten gallon batches comfortably because getting ten gallons instead of five for essentially the same amount of work and time is soooooo nice.

This depends on how fast you drink your beer and and how often you want to brew. I don't brew 10 gal batches simply because I can't drink the beer fast enough and I want to brew 3 out of 4 weekends. I know this is opposite of many others but just wanted to post from the other side of that fence.

I've never used a beer gun but used to use a counter-pressure bottle filler. I now just use a BMBF (which is BETTER than a CPBF imo) and the bottles come out fine. Definitely do some research before getting the beergun imo.

How many CO2 bottles do you have and how big? I have a 20# and a 5#, the 5# is a 'spare' so I can let the 20# run out completely and don't have to worry about not having gas on a weekend or whatever.

And there's always a nitro/stout tap and a tank of beergas if you're so inclined. An extra bonus here is that you can use one of your existing faucets as a spare, which is nice when you decide to completely tear down a faucet/line for maintenance/thorough cleaning (just prep the spare and swap it out).

 

[FlatcapBrew]

^ what he said, there is nothing worse than running out of co2 and not having a spare, I use two tanks, one in the kegerator and one in the fermenting fridge for carbing beer. There have been a few times also that I have pulled the taps on the kegerator and nothing came out cuz the CO2 was gone, thank god for the spare! Stout faucet is fun if your into that also. I would pick up some pumps though. they are the next thing on my list to buy also

 

[Gwitz]

You could easily go electric for less than $500. If it were me though id get 4 perlick facuets, another regulator and a temp controller for my other freezer so i could do proper lagers. Or put it towards a tig welder so i could start building my 100 liter boil kettle.

 

[GuitarLord5000]

Dude, if I were you, I'd DEFINITELY get pumps and go single tier! Your back will thank you for it. There's tons of beer pron you can get with 500 bones, but very few things will make it easier for you to brew than the pumps.