I am an extract brewer, looking to try a few batches of partial mash soon and, maybe eventually, move on to all grain.
I have the basic equipment for extract - approx. 5 gallon cheap stock pot, buckets, a carboy (which I don’t really use). While I have used liquid yeast, my preference is for dry, at least until I get very consistent with the rest of my brewing. I use a swamp cooler when needed to keep fermentation temps down.
So, assume I have about $150 to spend on some equipment. What will give me the most bang for my buck and contribute the most to consitent quality?
Wort chiller (copper immersion)
Turkey fryer so I can move to large volume boils
Oxygen tank and diffusion stone
mash/lauter tun (cooler, plus stainless steel mesh tube)
You can get by with an eight gallon kettle for full boils but ten is preferable. So you would need either of these with the burner.
Chiller would be the most readily useful.
If you stay with dry yeast you can hold off on the o2 tank and stone. You can do a mini mash in a bag with your 5gal. stockpot. I would go with the turky fryer so you can do full boils. You will need a chiller to cool the full volume of wort. $150 should get you close to buy both. Watch for special deals this time of year on the fryer and use the rest of the money to either make or buy an I.C. Cheers.
It’s not on your list but an extra fridge from Craig’s list really helped all my brews. Now I have total control over fermentation temperature and I’m amazed at the difference it makes, All grain isn’t necessarily better, it just gives you more options as you control all the variables making the wort. Temperature is a critical variable during fermentation of ALL your brews. In general, Belgians like the high 70’s, fruity ales low 70’s to high 60’s, cleaner ales in the low 60’s and lagers in the 50’s. Your swamp cooler can’t give you the control you need to hit the ideal temp for any yeast you use.
Other than that, move toward full boils with a bigger kettle and chiller. You can’t go all grain without it. Immersion chillers are simplest, but take quite a while for a full boil. I like my Duda diesel plate chiller. Works as well as a Therminator for less than half the price…
I too made my own chilller. I think you could do the chiller and the turkey fryer both for $150 if you shop around.
After that, go for a 10-gallon kettle and then build a cheap & easy batch sparge setup, and you’re rolling. You’ll save a ton of money brewing AG, so it essentially will pay for itself. I bet you’ll save at least $10-15 per batch, maybe even more. Extract is expensive these days! I haven’t had to buy any for about 7 years.
So switching to AG will justify your other equipment purchases too. And the beer quality improves a lot, IMO.
I say get the chiller and make a cheap and easy mash tun something like http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew and start partial mashing. You can easily do that for 150. Then get a bigger pot and burner when you have the $ and are ready for all grain.
I’m probably alone on this one but i felt that better beer was achieved when i moved to kegging. Personally i hate bottle conditioning beer. If you shop intelligently you can get up and running for 150. If not kegging equipment, i would say used fridge and a temp controller.
[quote=“Demus”]It’s not on your list but an extra fridge from Craig’s list really helped all my brews. Now I have total control over fermentation temperature and I’m amazed at the difference it makes, All grain isn’t necessarily better, it just gives you more options as you control all the variables making the wort. Temperature is a critical variable during fermentation of ALL your brews. In general, Belgians like the high 70’s, fruity ales low 70’s to high 60’s, cleaner ales in the low 60’s and lagers in the 50’s. Your swamp cooler can’t give you the control you need to hit the ideal temp for any yeast you use.
Other than that, move toward full boils with a bigger kettle and chiller. You can’t go all grain without it. Immersion chillers are simplest, but take quite a while for a full boil. I like my Duda diesel plate chiller. Works as well as a Therminator for less than half the price…[/quote]
This is exactly right, including the piece about AG not by itself making better quality better.
You’ll get the biggest bump in quality by controlling your fermentation temperature better. After that, I’d say a bigger pot will be the next thing to improve quality, and a chiller would be #3. However, if you want to make your process easier/faster then the list goes 1) kegging set-up, 2) chiller, 3) bigger kettle, 4) grain mill.
Back when I was still building my set-up, I alternated between quality and ease-of-process improvements.
If you make your own chiller, be sure it’s tall enough to fit whatever kettle you’re likely to be upgrading to in the future.
Mine was a bit too closely tailored to the kettle I was using when I made it, and now it won’t rest flat on the bottom of the new one I got last month. :oops: It still works, but it’s irritating me every time I brew.
I recently bought a turkey fryer from Lowes. I purchased the Masterbuilt 30.7 20LB Gas Fryer and it was on sale for only $65. I’m assuming you can get the same type of deals at Menards, Home Depot, etc.
Although it was only my second brew ever, I would recommend this product to anyone reading on the board.
Before I would recommend an immersion chiller, what temp is your water supply? If you live in the northern frozen wastelands an immersion chiller will work well, but if you live down south where the water can come to you quite warm, a different chilling method may be indicated.
My vote would be for a keg setup, however unless you already have an old fridge or freezer it will likely set you back more than a 150 bones. In that case I’d build an immersion chiller and scout out a cheap turkey fryer set up. You can always build a Cheap and Easy batch sparge cooler set up for walkin’ around money: http://hbd.org/cascade/dennybrew/
