Equipment upgrade question

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funkadelicturkey

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I am looking to expand from extract brewing to partial and all grain brewing. I have everything for extract brewing, and have completed about 15 batches most tasted pretty yum. I am considering what equipment I need to move to grain, so far my shopping list consists of ... a burner something like the banjo KAB4, a Blichmann 10 gallon kettle, a 10 gallon rubbermaid cooler to convert to a MLT and an 50' cooper immersion chiller. I figure to start off I can use my 20qt pot as a HLT. Is there anything else I need or that would be recommended? Thanks and this site rocks, so much awesomeness happening at HBT!!!
 
I would consider a bigger kettle, whether it is Blichmann or not. If you have already made the jump to BIAB, all grain is not far down the road...then 10 gallon batches, etc.
 
There's about a thousand different combinations you could get and a lot of them work equally well, a lot just comes down to personal preference. As obvious as it sounds, I recommend having a solid plan before getting your equipment. For a while I slowly bought stuff as I needed....a cooler and fittings for the MLT, a Blichmann burner, etc. Now I just finished a brutus 10-style structure and I'm about to use a keg for the MLT and another for the HLT and realized I wasted a lot getting here instead of planning and committing from the start. I don't need the cooler anymore, and although the Blichmann burner is solid, I no longer need the stand, and the KAB4 would have been just as good for a fraction of the cost. Think about what you might want in the future in addition to what you need to just get started...instead of getting the 10 gallon Blichmann pot for $300 you might want to just fork out the extra $100 for a 20 gallon and double your size. Take a look at all the setups here. A lot of people do a really good job of documenting what they've done and you can pull a lot of ideas from each one.

That being said, my first all-grain batch was done with just a 12 gallon cooler and a cheap $50 turkey fryer/7.5 gallon aluminum pot combo that I had to watch closely to prevent boilovers....well, minimize boilovers as it was pretty much inevitable! I cooled with a wheelbarrow full of water and ice, which took about 20 minutes.

I'd also recommend doing as much yourself as you can. You could get a cheap steel pot for example and add your own valve and sight glass for a lot less than a Blichmann.
 
You should definitely look into BIAB before you buy all that equipment:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/biab-brewing-pics-233289/

I'm planning on doing my first BIAB batch soon and the only equipment I purchased was a propane burner, a 10gal BK, and an immersion chiller.

Thanks for the link, I'd heard of BIAB before but Seven has the process worked out very well.

@ Brew'n - I am only planning on 5 gallons batches so I think a 10G kettle should be good for now. If I want to move up to 10G batches (unlikely) I might be able to use the 10G kettle as an HLT.

@ nameless - I wish I could build/buy a brutus 10 or other sculpture but my storage space is limited, so I need a setup that I can breakdown and put away, maybe one day I'll have that 3 car garage I've been dreaming about.
 
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