Hi,
im new to home brewing. I’m wondering what is the first equipment beyond a starter kit to invest in. I’ve been looking at the following:
Tilt hydrometer
Yeast starter with stir plate
Wort chiller
Upgraded fermenter - conical
Upgraded fermenter - siphonless wide mouth
Carboy cleaning drill attachment
Crashing refrigerator
Aerator ? What type
obviously I’d like it all, but $$’s says one at a time. What do you think would be the best order to acquire this equipment ? Best bangfor the buck ?
I’m not planning on brewing heavy beers like stouts, I’m more of an ale/ipa guy with ABV’s in the 5-6 average range. Starting with extract kits.
if you had to choose one …
If you are trying to get in cheap, forget about the conical, the Tilt, the stir plate, dedicated crash fridge, aerator, carboy cleaner and carboys.
The Big Mouth Bubbler is a great fermenter and I have four of them, all with spigots for siphonless transfer. One would be enough, I suppose. But I have four. They are inexpensive but work great. The wide mouth is a big help in cleaning. The Fermonster appears similar and is probably just as good, haven't tried one. I already have basically three more fermenters than I need and can't justify the Fermonster until I wear out a BMB. Fermenting in a plastic bucket is the cheapest, but getting the lid on and off is a PITA and it can be difficult to get a good seal and so I don't recommend it.
A wort chiller is pretty near essential. You can make one out of stainless tubing. Copper, maybe, if you will keep it clean. Just wind a coil around a bucket and pipe cold water through it.
A brew kettle. A big stainless gumbo pot will work fine as long as it will hold about 9 gallons for a 5 gallon batch. Bigger is better. A long handle brewing spoon. A mash thermometer. A hydrometer. Stoppers both one and two hole. Tubing, airlock, hose clamps.
If you only want to do extract kits then you can use a smaller kettle and do a concentrated boil, then add chilled distilled water to bring it up to standard batch size and get a start on reducing temp to pitching temperature. Ice made from distilled water would be even better. You could maybe dispense with the wort chiller. Give the kettle a cold water bath in the sink, and add ice until correct pitching temp is reached. Transfer to fermenter, do final volume adjustment with cool distilled water.
Keg and associated piping, faucet, regulator, and initial CO2 tank, and an old refrigerator to convert, if planning to keg. Bottling bucket with spigot, wand, bottles and bottle racks, and capper, if bottling. I am a staunch proponent of kegging but bottling is cheaper to start with.
A gas burner if bringing a big brew kettle to boil on the kitchen stove is not an option. But you need one of them anyway, for boiling seafood or frying turkeys or other things of that nature, so don't count the price for that.
Under $200 all in, for a decent startup kit that will never "need" to be upgraded just to brew beer. Just a little over $100 if you repurpose a pot you already own for a kettle, and forego the chiller.