What's been your single most beneficial homebrewing upgrade?

[Thorrak]

Temperature control. Almost everything else has been marginal/quality of life upgrades.

As far as the best quality of life upgrade, kegging equipment. I do not miss bottling.

 

[willjamr]

After my first few batches I really wanted kegs. When I was comfortable with kegging I tried racking from secondary to a keg, adding priming sugar to the keg and using a picnic tap on the keg to fill bottles. My original bottle filling setup was clumsy and problematic.

 

[bracconiere]

@NGD I have a plate chiller I've been meaning to test for months. I think I finally have the right connections to do it now, but both of my kegs are full and I have no motivation to make anything until after the new year.

you gotta drink, up and as this song says!

 

[NGD]

What is a "low o2 transfer" and how do you accomplish that?

Kegs, co2 and jumpers from fermenter to keg.

Edit: changed leg to keg.

 

[bracconiere]

fermenter to leg.

you need to work on your aim! misses must hate you!

 

[NGD]

Man, eff tying replies on my phone. Hilarious mistake though.

 

[Dgallo]

It’s tough because there are a few that made a big difference. But if I had to choose, fermentation control is what makes the biggest difference in initial quality. You could have a great recipe and no control and the beer will be awful. You could have a not so good recipe and great temp control and the beer can still turn out good.

 

[Dgallo]

I do not miss bottling.

A few months back I had to bottle 9 gallons of varies wilds/mix fermentation beers. This was my first time bottling in nearly 3 years after moving to kegging and 20 minutes into washing bottles I thought to myself, if I kegged and force carbed I’d be drinking this beer already lol fast forward 3 hours (still not done) and I told my wife I’ll never bottle beer again lol

 

[NGD]

@Dgallo I dont mind bottling. Then again I dont bottle 9 gallons

 

[GrowleyMonster]

So far I haven't had a batch that didn't taste great. But the PITA factor went way down when I upgraded from bucket fermenters to Big Mouth Bubblers. They are the bee's knees, for 5 gallon batches. I love them.

 

[GrowleyMonster]

Oh yeah, and kegging. Way cleaner and easier. I only bottle any overage that won't fit in a corny.

 

[Thorrak]

@Dgallo I dont mind bottling. Then again I dont bottle 9 gallons

The sad thing is that 95%+ of my batches have been 2.5 gallons or less. I couldn't stand bottling 2.5 gallons of beer -- I can't imagine 9!

 

[Gozie Boy]

Going to a conical fermenter (with CO2 blanketing), definitely. It gives you opportunities to make several step change improvements: easy dumping of break/trub (eliminating need for secondary, if you go that way); capturing yeast; very low oxygen operations (dry hopping (e.g. w/purging), sampling, and transfers (using closed loop gravity filling); easier temp control (with heat transfer coil and heating blanket); and probably several items that I haven't listed. Some of the above are hybrid processes involving other items, but you gotta have the conical to make them happen.

 

[TandemTails]

Aside from having temperature control which many other people have mentioned, there are a couple other upgrades that I've found really beneficial:

1. Blichmann Riptide pump - I use this for transferring wort from my mash tun to the boil kettle and then I can use it for recirculating the hot wort during whirlpool and to help keep the wort circulating around my immersion chiller for faster cooling. I also use it to clean my kegerator by recirculating PBW and then starsan through my lines.

2. BrewSSSiphon - I do a lot of mixed fermentation brews along side my clean beers. I was having trouble with my autosiphons and tubing getting contaminated and infecting my clean beers. I bought one of these so I can either leave it in the oven at a low temp to kill everything (temps that would melt plastic) or I can run everything through the dishwasher. This is made of nothing but silicone or stainless steel. BrewSensible® - All Stainless Steel & Silicone for Sustainability

3. Beergun 2.0 - I've found it's a lot easier to rack my beer from primary into a keg with priming sugar and then bottle via my beer gun. It lets me purge the O2 from the bottles and seems a lot less messy than my old bottling bucket / bottling wand was

 

[Bobby_M]

I can't give you just one as my journey from zero to hero included a few very important upgrades.

1. Ferment temp control. Keeping cool at peak fermentation and warming up on the back end for all beers was major fix for Diacetyl and Acetaldehyde.
2. Proper pitch rates. Unless you're brewing with kviek strains, a single 2 month old pouch of liquid yeast is not enough for most beers, let alone lagers.
3. Start with RO water and use minimalistic mineral and acid additions.
4. Low oxygen packaging, fully purged kegs, pushed transfers with CO2 backfill.

 

[BarryBrews]

The best upgrades that improved the taste of my beer were kegging, low oxygen techniques and the use Kveik.

Proper yeast pitch, temperature control, RO plus salts, good recipes and sanitation are not really upgrades but the point at which brewers should be starting.

The most beneficial upgrade for me was going to electric which led to the RIMS and pump setup which includes an input and output temperature probes, a flow meter and a hop-clog-proof CFC. About the only time this system isn't running is during the boil, which means all my temperature readings are done with two probes in the picture. The RIMS is (as are a lot of my electrical components) thanks to Bobby at Brewhardware.com. This set up is even a bigger deal to me than my "no stir no stuck mash" technique.

 

[JAReeves]

I am constantly upgrading little things here and there as I become aware of them and can afford them .

But if I sit down and think about what has made the biggest difference in my beer? Temperature control (moving from a cold bathroom floor to a wet t-shirt+fan to ice baths surrounding the fermenter to an Anvil cooling system and a cooler full of ice),

or maybe even more important, simply filtering the water (chlorine/chloramine=no bueno).