Friendly advice is killing my move to all-grain (advice on setup please)!
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bobeer
Fermentation Specalist
I started brewing all grain with my extract 5.5 gallon pot. I just did 2.5 biab batches. It was fun but sparging was a pain in the rear... I built a mash tun and still just used my 5.5 gallon pot and the stove-top. My setup now isn't much different except I bought a 9 gallon kettle off of homebrewing.org for about $60. It's nothing special but I've had zero issues with it and I've used it on a burner and on my coil stove-top. I don't have a rig or anything to do my sparging but I make it work. It's sort of different every time depending where I brew. It's really just about using what you have and if it makes good beer then just upgrade when you have the extra money.
Now in the winter I brew 3 gallon batches inside with the mash tun and 5.5 gallon pot and use the big 9 gallon pot as my hlt. The 9 gallener has a weld in it so that makes sparging easy. When it's nice out I use the 5.5 gallon pot as my hlt and the 9 galloner at the boil kettle. The 5.5 galloner doesn't have weld so I just use an auto siphon to sparge. I could use a bigger mash tun but it's not in the budget atm so I just make do with what I have. I can only brew 3-3.5 gallon batches of imperial beers; which is fine. In the summer I can do up to a 6.5 gallon batch of a nice lighter summer beer.
If I had to do it over again I'd just get a big 9 or 10 gallon kettle and a 10 or 15 gallon mash tun. I probably wouldn't use it to it's full potential very often but I'd at least have the option to make full batches of bigger beers. What I have works very well though and I'm grateful for it.
Now in the winter I brew 3 gallon batches inside with the mash tun and 5.5 gallon pot and use the big 9 gallon pot as my hlt. The 9 gallener has a weld in it so that makes sparging easy. When it's nice out I use the 5.5 gallon pot as my hlt and the 9 galloner at the boil kettle. The 5.5 galloner doesn't have weld so I just use an auto siphon to sparge. I could use a bigger mash tun but it's not in the budget atm so I just make do with what I have. I can only brew 3-3.5 gallon batches of imperial beers; which is fine. In the summer I can do up to a 6.5 gallon batch of a nice lighter summer beer.
If I had to do it over again I'd just get a big 9 or 10 gallon kettle and a 10 or 15 gallon mash tun. I probably wouldn't use it to it's full potential very often but I'd at least have the option to make full batches of bigger beers. What I have works very well though and I'm grateful for it.
