Favorite Equipment Piece

[IIWolfpakII]

I am trying to get some new equipment to improve my beer.

What piece of equipment do you feel has improved your beer the most? What do you feel has made the largest impact on taking your beer from good to great?

 

[MikeWI]

I'm still new to the game (9 batches) and haven't amassed very much equipment yet. I loved getting a second fermenter (actually converting the secondary that came with the kit into a fermenter) since it doubled my pipeline. Over the summer I'm looking to get an old fridge/freezer and temp controller since I believe solid temperature control is the next big step to better beer, and I'm really looking forward to making some lagers.

Sadly the thing that I feel has improved my beer the most is going to starsan in a spray bottle. My first batch I used bleach to sanitize and had no clue as to what I was doing. I had some a few days ago and it's pretty bad. I didn't think so at the time but compared to the stuff I'm brewing now it has some bad off-flavors and is pretty skunky.

Mike

 

[Pilgarlic]

Suggestion: Assess your beer as honestly as you can. Get a second opinion or two. Decide what it is about your beer that you'd most like to improve. Then think about how to do it. It MAY be equipment, it may be technique. Simply buying tools or equipment that other have found success with is a scattershot way to go about improving your product. Unless your objective isn't to improve your beer, but to buy equipment. In that case, get a chest freezer and a temp controller.

 

[Gduck]

Building my fermentation chamber so I can control the temperature of my fermentation and keep it consistant. This has been the single best brewing investment I have ever made. The importance of the cold side of the brewing process can't be stressed enough. The hotside of things is a lot more forgiving.

 

[oakbarn]

I think getting our Stout Conical fermenter made the process easier. Our Stout MLT with HERMS made us more consistent. The absolute best beer was made using a Blickmann Hop Rocket with fresh green hops that were picked and brewed with in the Hop Rocket the next day.

 

[TopherM]

This topic has been asked many times, and the concensus best investments you can make, in no particular order are:

1) Temperature Control for Fermentation
2) Equipment to control yeast pitch rates (Flasks, stir plate, etc.)
3) Oxygen equipment to oxidize wort pre-fermentation

Yeast health and efficiency is the single most important factor that determines beer quality, well, maybe besides basic sanitation.

 

[mredge73]

My favorite is my plate chiller; It cuts my brew day down by over an hour.
As for improvement; it is a toss up between my water filter and my fermentation chamber.
I did both at the same time and my beer improved dramatically. I live in South Texas, we don't have nice cool basements like a lot of folks on this board.

 

[jwalker1140]

I've been brewing for less than one year, but so far it would be a toss up between BeerSmith 2.0 and a 2' x 2' grain bag that helped me transition to partial mashes (I mash in a 16 quart camping cooler that I already had). With my equipment I can mash 6-7 lbs, so BeerSmith lets me tweak all grain recipes to fit my system.

I recently built a stir plate but haven't used it yet and I hope to get a mini fridge for fermentations next month. Maybe one or both of these will deliver even bigger improvements. Let's hope.

 

[bad67z]

This topic has been asked many times, and the concensus best investments you can make, in no particular order are:

1) Temperature Control for Fermentation
2) Equipment to control yeast pitch rates (Flasks, stir plate, etc.)
3) Oxygen equipment to oxidize wort pre-fermentation

Yeast health and efficiency is the single most important factor that determines beer quality, well, maybe besides basic sanitation.

^^^ This in the same order for me and I would add #4 Wort Chiller.

 

[Supurb]

I think Topher hit it on the head. If you are through those upgrades I enjoy filtering my beer. I know this is controversial to begin with as some people think it strips the flavor. I haven't really experienced that and i like to serve bottles without sediment. I think its a fun process as well.

Other things that helped me were the addition of a hop blocker and moving from immersion chiller to a plate chiller with and inline thermometer.

 

[Psych]

1) Going electric - though this is comprised of many individual parts
2) Barley Crusher - definitely huge time savings, cost savings (bulk grain is super cheap), predictable and high efficiency.