What equipment to buy and in what order?

[inbreda]

Hi - I'm new to the forum - please be kind.

I have started out doing some kit brews, then progressed to do a few extract brews. Definitely a worthwhile hobby! I want to progress to full grain, and will obviously need more equipment, but I don't know where to start. Not sure what size to get (don't want to buy something that will make more wort than will fit in the FV for example), don't know whether to go all out and get big expensive stuff or to improvise a little first.

at the moment I boil in two pots (haven't got a single pot big enough) to get a 5 gallon brew. I ferment it in a trash bin, and condition in a 5 gallon keg, with a pin valve, that just fits in my fridge.

Sorry this is a vague question, but would I be better off getting, for example a 5 gallon pot and improvising the next bit of kit required? or buying a mash tun / boiler all-in-one sparge thingy with temperature control blah blah...??? Or should I get a decent CO2 system and just experiment with chucking some grains in to my boil??

I am keen to self manufacture (all part of the fun, and this forum is an excellent source of info) but still don't know where to start. Can anyone suggest a route of step by step (idiots guide) enhancements that will get me to a full grain brew with minimal wastage of bought equipment?

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Build yourself a boiler and an immersion cooler. Use them for a few extract brews to get an idea of evaporation and hop losses then if you decide to go AG build a mash tun.

[CJBrew]

my £0.02

Easiest way to get started -- and what I did: Make yourself a double-bucket lauter tun. You need 2 basic fermenters and an electric drill, one of the buckets needs a tap with a bit of tubing attached.

Mash in your largest bucket or saucepan wrapped up in some old quilts and sat on something insulating. Pour the mash into the double-bucket thing. This will give you some sparging experience before you try it with a large batch of grain.

You can use this to do a couple of partial-mash brews where you make 2 or 3 gallons of all-grain wort then bulk up the sugars with extract.

You could also do an all-grain concentrated boil and then top up with cooled boiled water once it's in the fermenter. If you have the ability to get your cooled-boiled water really cold (maybe in your conditioning fridge) this will really help cool the wort after the boil -- just dump it (hot) into a fermenter half-full of nearly ice-cold water.

[inbreda]

Thanks for the replies! From the sounds of it, there is no need to splash out on expensive equipment at all and you're suggesting I just experiment. A bigger pot and another fermenter sounds like it would be handy. I'm still learning what all the beer brewing jargon means so will need to translate cj but I think I get what you're saying. Is there a difference between Mash tun / lauter tun? And what was the drill for?

At least I know to concentrate first on adapting the boiler/cooler and then look at the specific bits of the forum about mash tuns.

Thanks again!

[CJBrew]

I'm still learning what all the beer brewing jargon means so will need to translate cj but I think I get what you're saying. Is there a difference between Mash tun / lauter tun? And what was the drill for?

No probs -
A mash tun is what you actually mash in -- i.e. you add the grain and liquid etc.
Lautering is the German term for seperating the wort from the grain (This process usually but not always involves sparging).
So a lauter tun is the vessel you use for that purpose.

Therefore you can do the two different jobs in two different vessels and there are some advantages -- if you use a standard metal pot for the mash tun you can pop it on the hob to bring the temperature up without adding more liquid -- that is very very useful when you're already nearly full.

Or -- you could use your double-bucket for mashing too, if you insulate it well enough. If you wanted to quickly heat up the mash you could do a "decoction" -- where you take a portion of the mash and boil it up on the stove.

So as for the drill -- you will need two buckets that fit inside each other, ideally quite snugly. The idea is you drill about half a million small holes in the base of the inner bucket. This becomes your screen for a false bottom -- the grain sits in there and water can flow out through the little holes. I think the opaque white sort of buckets are a bit better for this because they are less likely to crack when you drill into them.

It'd probably be best to get a homebrew shop to drill the tap hole for the outer bucket. If you explain what you want I'm sure most shops will understand and sell you the right stuff.

[inbreda]

Thankyou cjbrew. Must say I am very impressed with this forum. I'm going to learn a lot. The info on self manufacture is brilliant as I live on a small island without a brew shop and delivering anything over 1kg (e.g. a single can of extract) incurs a charge of over 20 quid!

I have drill. I have bin. I have enthusiasm. I have this forum. And soon I will have beer.