Hey all! I am just getting into homebrew thanks to my coworkers. I have been lurking here for the past month or so and thought i should introduce myself. I am only one batch in so far. I did a brewers best English brown. It is one week into bottling so i havent tasted it yet other when i racked it. I have all the equipment for fermenting and bottling and use my buddies kettles for brewing. I am looking to get into doing it myself at home and was looking at getting a 15g kettle to do 5 and 10 gallon batches. I think and hope i will move from extract to BIAB and maybe eventually into a herms or rims setup. I have a question though...How should i set this first kettle up? As a HLT, MLT, or a BK? I was thinking as a MLT because it could still be used for all three purposes. The other item i am missing is a chiller. I cant make my mind up on that yet but will probably go with immersion until I can buy a pump. Any thoughts? Thanks all.
Hello from Southern Maryland
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normonster
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Welcome to the forums! Glad you joined.
I hope your English turns out well.
To answer your question, there isn't really much of a difference between the three kettle types. My advice it to just go with a quality kettle and not a cheap one to start. Then, as you add the other two, get the same brand and type so your system is consistent.
That first kettle should probably be set up as a BK. With that in mind, there are a lot of commonalities between the BK and the MT. They both have to hold stuff back out of the valve. That said, if you set it up as a BK go ahead and add a false bottom or a screen. Then when you move to a separate MT you'll already have the false bottom (though you'll have to figure out how to keep hops out of your fermenter from the BK after you rob it of it's false bottom). The HLT is the easiest one...nothing special required.
Boiled down, it comes to this for me: get quality pieces of equipment that you can later match.
Cheers! I hope it goes well man (or woman)! :cross:
In the meantime, you could do partial mash BIAB in the one kettle with a nylon bag. I do it with a dunk sparge & works great! Welcome to the best site on the net for good info & people! Nasdarovie!
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