First time brewer, what equipment should I buy?

[vilago]

I have been interested in homebrewing for a while but don't know anything yet. I have a kegerator that I've been using for a couple years now and I figured I'd get a couple of cornelius kegs and whatever I need to get started, and just dive in.
Since I have the kegerator already, I figured it's best to skip the bottling and hit the ground running with whatever else I need as far as equipment. I haven't done any reaearch whatsoever so I was hoping someone could give me a few of their opinions/pointers:
Should I buy an all-in-one like the mr. beer? should I "jury rig" some random stuff I might already have like the gatorade cooler method? should I pick up legit individual brewing components? which way of buying kit is cheaper, but still quality? What is the bare minimum list of stuff I need to get started?

 

[brewkinger]

You have a couple more decisions to make before jumping in.

First of all Mr Beer Kits are around 2-3 gallons (at least when I made them 5 yrs ago they were) so you would not be able to fill a 5g corny keg with one batch, you would have to brew double batches. I think that since you have are talking going the keg option you would want a different approach. If bottling is an option then MRB might be OK.

Next decision (and opinion): You have the option of Extract brewing which involves boiling water, adding liquid or powdered (or a combo of both) malt extracts, hops and any other additions and then cooling it, putting into a fermenting vessel and adding yeast which ultimately results in beer.
In my opinion, this is a great, quality and easy way to start brewing. Visit any local homebrew shop (henceforth referred to as LHBS) or online distributor like Midwest Supplies, Northern Brewer, etc... and get a basic strters kit. I would recommend the option that includes plastic buckets instead of glass carboys (search numerous threads on here and see the discussions of pros and cons. Simply put, if handled wrong, the glass option can be dangerous and potentially detrimental to your health.

Going this route will provide you with the practice to develop your process and learn the basics and then you can move on to Brew In A Bag (BIAB) or eventually All Grain (AG)

Start with this and then build.

 

[AlCophile]

vilago:
I strongly suggest you get John Palmer's latest "How to Brew", maybe cheap on Amazon. Best $ you'll spend.
If you start with extract brews, I suggest you use a no-boil syrup(extract).
This is a huge labor-saver for a beginner. ALL Munton's syrups are no-boil(I emailed them). This way, if you sanitize all equip't you merely add the ingredients to a fermenter. My complaints w/ syrups: not much body(mouthfeel), low on ABV, no aroma hops.
Many HBers like poly bucket fermenters, but I prefer small-mouth vessels like PET carboys, kegs, or even a 1/6 bbl Sanke keg with a custom in/out head, from a HBT vendor. You'll learn all this, eventually.
I'm all typed out. Someone else take over, please.
Good luck.

 

[BigFloyd]

How about holding off on kegging right now, learn to brew and use that kegerator for a temperature-controlled fermentation chamber? You could rig it up easily with a $20 STC-1000 controller (on Amazon or eBay). Unless you live somewhere cooler, your beer will be much, much better if you control your fermentation temps (usually in the 60's for ales measured on the fermenter, not the air). Room temps in most parts of the country this time of year are much too warm. Later, if you decide to keg, you will want to have the controller anyway for precise control of your service temp.

Here's a good starter kit that comes with a 5-gallon extract batch. A good one to start with is the Caribou Slobber. http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/...arter-kits/essential-brewing-starter-kit.html You'll need a stock pot or one of those turkey fryer setups too.

Lots of us got started using Mr. Beer and the little brown keg (LBK) fermenters work well. However, if you drink and also share enough beer with family/friends/co-workers you'll go through the 18-20 bottles in a Mr. Beer batch very quickly.

 

[brewkinger]

+1 to AlCo, I agree with getting palmers how to brew and agree with the taste and abv limitations with the no boil method, which is why I would go with partial boil or full boil extract first to get the sanitation and process down. The added work and time is small compared to the great benefits. Bit of advice here is get the largest pot you can afford to start. A 10 gal is awesome for everything up to 6 and 7 gallon boils for 5 gal batches.
+1 to Floyd
Skip kegging to start and use that as a ferment chamber. If this hobby absorbs you like it dd me, ferment temps are critical to great tasting beer and it took me 9 months to realize this so I am now at that stage. That kegerator is better utilized like Floyd said at this point.
Start with a basic kit for initial purchase or look up and try to individually purchase items but the latter takes a lot more work for little to no savings. It depends on how much dough ya got to play with.
For starters a nice kettle, starter kit, and read palmers book while it is being shipped.
There is a free online version but the newer edition is a tad bit better.

 

[ajf]

vilago:
I strongly suggest you get John Palmer's latest "How to Brew", maybe cheap on Amazon. Best $ you'll spend.
If you start with extract brews, I suggest you use a no-boil syrup(extract).
This is a huge labor-saver for a beginner. ALL Munton's syrups are no-boil(I emailed them). This way, if you sanitize all equip't you merely add the ingredients to a fermenter. My complaints w/ syrups: not much body(mouthfeel), low on ABV, no aroma hops.
Many HBers like poly bucket fermenters, but I prefer small-mouth vessels like PET carboys, kegs, or even a 1/6 bbl Sanke keg with a custom in/out head, from a HBT vendor. You'll learn all this, eventually.
I'm all typed out. Someone else take over, please.
Good luck.

All Muntons syrups are no-boil???
No-boil extracts used for brewing need to be hopped.
If you visit the Muntons web-site, I'll admit that all their syrups are pre-hopped, but if you google "muntons extract", you will find all sorts of offerings that are not pre-hopped, and that will require boiling with hops.

-a.

 

[Schol-R-LEA]

Some time back, I posted what I felt was a comprehensive list of starting equipment, for a friend with an eye towards getting everything at once. You might want to look at that list, as well as some of the rebuttals given here about it.

I have to agree with those who recommend using the kegerator for fermentation control. Unless you have a cellar with a remarkably consistent temperature between 60 and 70 degrees F (15-21 deg. C), you will need to be able to manage your fermentation temperature; this goes doubly so if you like lagers, which need to be between 45-55 deg. F (8-13 deg. C) during fermentation and then between 35-42 deg. F (2-5 deg. C) for lagering (cold aging, which lasts anywhere from one to six months). While often overlooked, a fermentation chamber really is a must if you are serious about brewing.

Another thing I'd recommend is a wort chiller, at least once you start with full-boil brewing. Getting the temperature down as fast as possible is really a necessity, and while an ice bath can do the job fairly well when the volume of wort (unfermented beer) is limited, a wort chiller really will work much faster - surface to volume ratios are much lower than with just a pot in ice water, especially with the high-end plate chillers (which are probably not what you'd be looking for just yet unless you're really serious about brewing - they start around $90US and go up to $200, plus you'd need additional equipment like a pump and a backflow hose to use it effectively). A good immersion chiller can save hours, and thus reduce the risk of infection.

Finally, make sure you get some decent cleaners and sanitizers, as the little packet of C-Brite that many kits have isn't going to cut it. If you can get PBW as a cleanser and StarSan as a sanitizer, you can keep your equipment in much better shape than with most other alternatives. Starsan is particularly useful in that it is a no-rinse sanitizer that you can use in several ways; if you fill a spray bottle with a Starsan solution, you can quick-sanitize things like a thermometer and or a winethief without rinsing them. If you go with, say, chlorine bleach or Oxiclean instead make certain to rinse everything very well after sanitizing.

 

[vilago]

OK i guess i'm getting ahead of myself. i just didn't want to deal with the hassle of bottling but if y'all say it's best to start small and work up, i'm ok with that. i dunno if i want to do the syrup thing though, i like my beer hoppy and high abv.

If i buy one of those kits then very quickly decide to scale up to something larger and use the keg, will anything included in it still be of any use?

Also i've got both of those same cleaners already to clean the lines in my kegerator so i'm set

 

[vilago]

just ordered the book, i'll take a look at it before i do anything. if there's anything else i need to know, feel free to post it on here. thanks gents.

 

[n240sxguy]

I'll walk you through the way I did it, and you can pick up what works best for what you want. I started with a propane turkey fryer and a basic homebrew setup from an online retailer. Fryers run around $50-70. The kit I bought was about $120 shipped with my first extract kit. So, I had a burner, brew kettle, plastic fermenter bucket, bottling bucket, capper, racking cane, several cases of bottles, a few odds and ends, and two glass carboys I already had. I fermented in a closet where the temperature stayed around 70. I never liked the whole bottling process. It's neat that it works with the yeast carbonating the beer in the bottle and all, but I always seemed to drink my beer faster than I wanted to be bottling more. Fast forward to today. I have built a three tier gravity fed brew stand. I use that same fryer to heat my strike and sparge water. It runs down to a 48 qt marine cooler that I converted to be my mash tun. From there it goes to a 15 gallon sanke keg that I converted to a brew kettle, sitting on another burner. I brew 10 gallon batches, and the 50' 1/2" copper immersion chiller I made when I was doing 5 gallon batches is no longer adequate. I just built a 27' 3/8" copper and rubber hose counter flow chiller. I have a whole house 1 micron water filter that I run the fermented beer through as I'm kegging it. I literally, just a couple hours ago, bought a grain mill. I will soon be buying a chugger pump to use with my chiller. I have a 15 gallon plastic conical fermenter in an old fridge I modified as a fermentation chamber. (It actually died recently, and I'm gonna build a window A/C fermentation chamber.) Next to it is a medium sized chest freezer I put a collar on to make a two tap keezer. I think I can fit five corny kegs in it, but I never make it to that many before they run dry. Some folks run with simpler setups; others put mine to absolute shame. What comes to mind with your situation is fermenting in the kegerator if you have to, then drop the temp, keg, and you're all done. Skip the whole bottling step. There are any number of ways you can go about your brewing depending on the time and money you want to put into it, and your ability to modify things to meet your needs.

 

[unionrdr]

Midwestsupplies has a starter kit for $65 that also has options you can add on. Early on,we bought a set of 4 polished SS stock pots with lids & steemer trays for some $25 on sale at Giant Eagle. They go from like 1.5G to 5G. So I've been usung the 5 gallon one since my 2nd brew. I started with kit-n-kilo,the adding plain DME's & varying amounts of hops to Cooper's cans to make variuos other beers from them. See my recipes for some examples.
They have good body,nice amount of hops,& ABV% is around 5%-6% on average. Anybody that says you can't make good beer with Cooper's & Munton's isn't trying hard or long enough. I did it for a couple years,& now on ocassion ad a Cooper's can to a partial mash.
All on my electric stove with aftermarket burners that heat up faster. I do PB/PM BIAB on that stove,& can heat from mash temp to boilingin about 18 minutes. So there are some options to concider.

 

[Schol-R-LEA]

Two more suggestions I'd like to make: one, keep a log or journal of your brewing process and the results, and two, get a good piece of brewing software such as BeerSmith for tracking your recipes. Fortunately, BS2 includes a place for notes about your brewing, so the two ideas do go together.

Logging both process and results is crucial, if you want to replicate and improve on those results. I keep a detailed log of the whole brew day, with notes on any deviations from plan and any mistakes I catch myself in; an example of my notes can be found here, though they aren't always quite that extensive.

I can't recommend BeerSmith 2 enough. It is a great piece of software, and quite affordably priced. It has transformed how I plan and work through my brew sessions.

 

[vilago]

hmm good tips. considering that soon after I start this, i probably won't follow established recipes anymore, that's a good consideration.

 

[vilago]

i was going to get one of these
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CHJHOA/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
thoughts? i'm assuming lid is absolutely necessary...

 

[grimstuff]

Don't buy any software yet. Use http://www.brewersfriend.com/ instead.

 

[vilago]

http://amzn.com/w/2ETB7J89U14NF

complete equipment list or missing anything?

 

[vilago]

or maybe this plus the pot, stirring spoon, lid and burner?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002BU7CVM/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[n240sxguy]

Depending on how long you plan to stay at this stage of brewing, you may not want to get a carboy. A plastic fermenter bucket is cheaper, and costs less to ship. The link you posted looks like a good deal with the free shipping. I started with the 6.5 gallon bucket, then did secondary fermentation in a 5 gallon carboy. After reading a discussion on here about not even doing a secondary fermentation, I stopped using the carboy. I'm hanging on to it to lager in one of these days. Also, if you're gonna buy an aluminum pot instead of stainless, you can find a turkey fryer kit like I did that comes with the pot and lid. They have a stainless version too I believe. I was told to boil water in the aluminum turkey pot before boiling wort in it. It turned the aluminum a dark grey. Not sure if that anodizes it or what.

 

[n240sxguy]

I do like the burner you linked better than some of the others available now. A lot of them have temp sensors and timers to shut off the gas. I guess they were getting sued by idiots who burned down their house trying to fry a turkey.

 

[vilago]

There's a homebrew store near me i was going to check out. i was going to use the carboy for primary fermentation, then auto syphon into a keg. no secondary fermentation. i just don't like plastic in general as a storage vessel for obvious reasons

 

[n240sxguy]

Two weeks in HDPE won't hurt anything. Glass is better though. Harder to clean, but will last longer.