Equipment - what's the minimum?

[Gill]

Firstly, I want to say that it's probably going to a good while before I'm brave enough to attempt an AG brew. I don't have much room, I have no experience (only just conditioning my first kit!) and time isn't exactly something I have a lot of either. However, I DO want to move on to all-grain eventually, once I've racked up some experience in the basic kit method.

My question is this - what's the ABSOLUTE minimum of equipment I'd need (including huge pots for boiling, etc.) that I'd need to make a reasonable batch of ale? When we eventually move house - next year, fingers crossed - I'll have a bit more room for equipment, but I'd still like to know what the minimum is to make good beer. Obviously I'm already in possession of bottles, fv bins etc., a keg and so on, but this is just about the actual grain processing to get to the fv point.

My LHBS owner said I just needed a big pot and a cool box, if all else failed! Is this really adequate, or what would people recommend as a minimum kit?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me, on my future foray into The Dark Side.

Gill.

[floydmeddler]

Howdy Gill.

You will need a boiler (plenty of homemade 'how tos' within these forums), a mash tun (converted cooler) and a wort chiller. Think that's it!

[vacant]

I did my first few AGs using BIAB so I needed to get a large net curtain, immersion chiller, boiler with some sort of hop strainer (small sheet of stainless steel mesh twisted into a tube and stuffed into the back of the boiler tap). Under £60 to upgrade from kits.

[mysterio]

A boiler, very common is basically a 5 or 10 gallon plastic bucket with one or two kettle elements fitted. You can get these pre-made for something like £50. If you go for the bigger one you can do 10 gallons at a time if that interests you.

A cool-box converted into a mash-tun, basically with a hole trilled in, a tap added, and a copper manifold fitted at the bottom... £40 maybe?

A chiller is very handy, if you're going to make one item it should be this as they're easy to make by coiling copper pipe, or they can be bought for 20 - 30 quid.

Then thats it! A sack of grain, some speciality grains, some hops, some yeast, a good recipe!

[DarloDave]

As for room, you need a lot less than you think. If you nough room to stand 3 buckets, you have enough room

[Gill]

As for room, you need a lot less than you think. If you nough room to stand 3 buckets, you have enough room

Only if they don't have to stay there. Seriously, I have a two bedroom flat, a partner with carboys and demijohns everywhere, and a very adventurous baby.

Thanks to all for the information so far. It all seems a bit scary at the moment! As I said, it won't be for some time whatever happens.

Gill x

[Invalid Stout]

Right, that's the gear that most people use, but the ABSOLUTE minimum is less.

You can mash in a grain bag in a FV. Then you need something to boil it in — a huge stockpot if you have one, or buy/make a plastic boiler as described above. Again, a chiller is good, but not ABSOLUTELY necessary.

So: over and above what you already have for making kits:
1. Grain bag
2. Big stockpot/boiler.

This has done me for several months, and I've made some good beer, although I will be moving to the set-up other people have talked about eventually.

[Dennis King]

A good step up between kits and AG is extract brewing.

[floydmeddler]

A good step up between kits and AG is extract brewing.

Good call. Made some cracking beers using extracts... pretty expensive though.

[Gill]

Good call. Made some cracking beers using extracts... pretty expensive though.

Unfortunately that's what puts me off extract brewing - the extra expense I've heard about. Though I might have a couple of brews made up that way on my gentle progression to AG in the future. I also noticed that many of the recipes in Graham's book have extract methods noted for them too, which would make that quite a good path to experiment in if not for the expense.

Thanks to everyone for your answers, I really appreciate this and I'll bookmark this thread for future reference.

Gill x

[Drafty]

As others have said, you don't need much more than you already have for kit beers. I've just done my first AG brew (nearly finished fermenting), and the only equipment I added was:

- Boiler. I got a very old burco for £5.50 off ebay. The seller didn't want to post it, so there wasn't much interest in the auction. If you keep an eye out you can probably find something similar. I ended up spending some more cash to fit a new tap (ball valve from screwfix) and hop strainer, but it's still only about £10 all told.
- Mash Tun. I made the false-bottom mash tun from a fermenter, and wrapped it in a couple of layers of camping mat. Again it was quite cheap - the most expensive bit was a £10 camping mat before I found some cheaper ones! A neat side-effect is that I leave one mat on the fermenter all the time, which seems to help keep the fermenting wort at a stable temperature.
- A couple of spare 5 gal bins. You might already have these. As the boiler was heating mash liquor as well as boiling the wort I needed somewhere else to keep the wort while I was still (batch) sparging. Add in somewhere else to keep the treated water.

However, having done all that, it might be simpler and easier to just buy a decent boiler in the first place. The burco (5 gal) was not really large enough for the brew, so I ended up with a large pan on the stove too. Also, it might well be handy to be able to do 10 gal sometime, as it is quite time consuming from beginning to end. Once the 10 gallon boilers come back to hop and grape I'll probably get one and just use the burco as a HLT.

For the absolute minimum of kit you could see if you can borrow a boiler and mash tun from someone? You'd only need them for a day, and that way you could give it a try and then decide if you want to get proper kit from the off.

Matt

[OldSpeckledBadger]

Unfortunately that's what puts me off extract brewing - the extra expense I've heard about.

The costs are on a par with the best quality kits.

[Mitchamitri]

Just a thought to remember - if you live in a flat and dont have a garden you'll need to be boiling in the bathroom where the extractor fan is (even then it might not be enough) - for your 90 minute boil you are supposed to leave the lid off the boiler.

Your minium boiler size is 5+ gallons (ie enough to allow for evaporation down to 5 gallons), your chiller etc can live in it when you aren't using it, and you'll need space for your mash tun, and to store your grain (and hops in the freezer).

I assume you've got thermometers, hydrometers etc already!!!!

Its all worth it, of course!!!!

[wetdog]

I've just moved into a house with fairly large dining kitchen and a patio door so plenty of room now,
The house I moved from had a galley kitchen with about 2 square metres of room.
take a look at this thread with pics of my first AG brew and you'll see the limited space I had;-

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=16883

I did several brews here and never had any problems. Steam management is an issue though but you will see how I did it

[Tequilla6]

The really cheap way of doing it is to find a friendly AG home brewer like I did and go an see a brew in action.
He also lets the odd friend take their grain bill and hops round and after a brew session they take away a tight fitting FV with around 23L of wort ready for fermenting.

Great learning, good practical experience and a really cheap way to understand the real essential equipment and if you have room