Just startin

[JohnnysBarIsIt]

I've only brewed one beer so far, (should be done on saturday) and its something i'm going to be doing more of. I have your basic beer making kit and was wondering what else i could get to help make the whole experience better. And by better i mean Good tasting beer, faster fermentaion (if possiable), Or just being more efficent. Thanks

 

[two_one_seven]

Chiller was my first purchase after a starter kit. Speeds up chill time and decreases chances of any nasties getting in the beer. Other thing I would recommend is a set up to do yeast starters. Have fun and lots of homebrews.

 

[RM-MN]

Good tasting beer and faster fermentation are opposites. Warm temperatures make the ferment go faster (within the limits of the yeast's tolerance for heat) but the yeast then throw off some interesting (in a bad way) flavors and fusel alcohols that don't make better beer either. Fermenting towards the cooler end of the yeast's preferred temperature range makes cleaner beer but the ferment takes longer.

My experience says that you want to leave the beer in the fermenter longer than the kit makers say. For most of my lower alcohol beer that means about 3 weeks in the fermenter, one of them at the low 60's F. and 2 more at room temp. After bottling it still takes time for the beer to mature. Sometimes it is pretty good at a week, sometimes 3 to 6 weeks from bottling to get good beer.

 

[imrook]

There is no end to equipment that you can buy or build to improve your brewing. The chiller is a great tool, but it does cost more than some other upgrades and is most useful for full boils, which I'm not sure if you're doing. As a very newbie brewer, I would suggest the following things:

1. Another fermenter. You can't really make beer faster, but you can make more of it at the same time. With 2 fermenters, you can brew every weekend, alternating fermenters which gives each batch 2 weeks in the fermenter. This will help you get more beer production throughput which will make the wait more bearable and it will allow you to make sure your beer is fully fermented and the yeast have time to clean up before bottling, giving you better tasting beer.

2. Mason jars. You may have heard about liquid yeast already. It's great stuff and will improve the quality of your beer -- but it's expensive. The secret is to not buy liquid yeast for every batch, but to reuse yeast. There is a good guide on how to do this here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f163/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/ You probably already have all the tools you need, with the possible exception of some mason jars to store the harvested yeast in. Don't worry, this isn't as scary as it seems. Liquid yeast will improve the taste of your beer by giving you a wider range of flavors and styles to choose from. Since it's pretty easy to make using liquid yeast cheaper than buying a pack of dry yeast per batch, it's also a money saver which is good.

3. Autosiphon. I started a siphon manually once. Then I bought an autosiphon. I use it to get the beer out of the fermenter and into the bottling bucket. I also use it to siphon my cooled wort from my kettle into my fermenter as my kettle doesn't have a valve and I don't really care for slopping around 5.5 gallons of precious wort. As an added bonus, I get to aerate my wort by splashing around the low end of the siphon hose as it goes into the fermenter!