Equipment that works

[brackbrew]

Since the wife has her first teaching gig and we have two moderately nice salaries coming in, we're looking for a house to move into in the next few months. Automatically, that means expanding the setup. If I wanted to get a GOOD middle-of-the-road 'baby's first all-grain set,' what kind of features and quality do I want to look for? I've seen the rubbermaid cooler solutions and I've seen the heavy duty plastic HTL/tuns and obviously the HERMS systems (which are, at this point, on a separate plane of existence from me). Thanks for all your help. Said this in another post, after brewing for six years now, I still feel like a novice sometimes.

BREW ON!

 

[brackbrew]

Ok, idiot me...should have posted this in the equipment forum. Sorry!




If an administrator catches this and would be so kind as to move this...

BREW ON

 

[david_42]

That's a really tough call, because there are so many approaches. I suspect most homebrewers either built something from scratch or it "just growed". I have a "just growed system". When I went from extract and mini-mash to AG, the only thing I added was a 40 quart kettle, the 30 qt kettle became my mash tun. When I moved to Oregon, I didn't have enough overhead for the block&tackle sparging bucket, so I got some industrial shelving, a camp burner & a pump.

The two basic approachs are gravity-feed towers and one-level with pump.

1. Inventory what you have now.
2. Decide how much lifting do you want to do.
3. Think about how handy you are with tools.
4. Think about playing with hardware vs. making beer. (I'm in the middle with this)

 

[Monster Mash]

There are too many variables and everyone has an opinion how a brewery should be setup. The best thing to do is look at systems and find what fits your style of brewing.

I went with a 3 tier so I wouldn't need pumps for sparging and running off.