Homebrewers, help me plan a quick, affordable setup!

[deevergote]

I know we have a few accomplished homebrewers on here. I could really use your help!

My birthday is coming up, and I want to ask for a few things from the friends and family that buy me gifts. For that reason, I want to find the most cost-effective way of getting parts that I need!

I've brewed before, using someone else's equipment, so I'm not a total noob. However, much of the equipment I used was far more expensive than I care to afford at the moment, and certainly too much for me to ask anyone to buy for me!

Still, there are certain things I want to avoid... such as plastic containers and aluminum pots. That raises the cost considerably!


I'd like to start with the ability to brew 5 gallons at a time (I know many people start with 2.)

My plans so far include:
an 8 gallon stainless steel pot ($$$)
a 5 gallon glass carboy (with a harness to make it easy to carry)
a standard plastic airlock
2 copper coil immersion chillers ($$$)
a plastic bucket for ice (for use in the chilling process.)
a siphoning tool (to transfer from the pot to the carboy) and a bottle filler
A capping tool
A mesh grain bag.
Various utensils (stainless)
Sanitizer in bulk (because it's cheaper to buy a lot of it!)

That seems to be it... though I may be leaving things out.
I plan on borrowing my mom's turkey fryer to be my heat source. HOPEFULLY it'll be hot enough to keep the 5gal pot at a boil!

My previous brewing experience consists of 2 Mr Beer batches at home, using only their all-extract methods, and one batch of grain/extract brewing (we boiled a few types of grain, and then added extract.) I have yet to do an all-grain batch, though it's something I would like to do in the future.

Anyway, here's where I could use your help. Aside from searching craigslist and ebay (which I plan to do), I could really use some assistance finding the best components at the best prices. I'd like to get a good idea of exactly what parts I'm going to want to get (brands, sources, etc...) Diving into this brewing thing is reminiscent of diving into Honda tuning... so many options, and not all of them are good!
Any suggestions, corrections, additions, or warnings are welcome, of course.
I figure the pot and immersion chillers are probably going to be the hardest to find at a low price (I'm looking at spending nearly $300 for those items).

[toycar]

Nothing to contribute to the thread, want to follow where this goes and copy/paste your build.


LOL


I've been wanting to brew beer for a while now and have been planning on jumping back in full force with a 5 gallon setup. Would like to take advantage of the results of this thread, so, yeah.

In for results.

[deevergote]

Gah, I was hoping you'd be one of the experienced homebrewers on here!


My only "real" batch that I made was done about a year and a half ago, so my memory is foggy. It was dumb of me to wait so long before moving on building my own setup.
My friends and I paid about $160 for a brewing lesson, which included all materials, all tools, guided instruction, and a place for our beer to sit in the primary fermenter (the carboy) for 2 weeks. We brewed 5 gallons. It worked out really well. The Black IPA that we brewed was surprisingly comparable to some legit craft brews (21st Amendment's Back in Black IPA was our target, and we came damn close.) https://untappd.com/b/three-dudes-br...ack-ipa/236317

Brewing 5 gallons at a time instead of 2 keeps costs down. I know I could just buy grain in bulk and just portion it out for 2 gallon batches... but I feel a 5 gallon yield would be a better payoff for my efforts! It's roughly the same amount of work... so why not go big and have more beer on hand!

[toycar]

I've brewed in the past. Was hoping someone would link some cheap supplies for a larger system.

My setup was a 2 gallon jobby too, and id like to upgrade to something larger.


I used an old pressure cooker and a couple 1 gallon glass carboy.

I fabbed my own copper coil from refrigerator water line(found at hardware store for running h2o to the fridge) and just wrapped them around a 3" pvc pipe to make the coil.


Using 1/2" (may have been 5/8") clear tubing and worm drive clamps and a faucet adapter I connected the coil to my sink faucet and fed the other end of the coil down the drain via more clear tubing and another worm drive clamp.


Worked great. Just make sure to get your bends right on the copper. You want them about 90 degrees off the top and coming up from the bottom of the coil to hook up the clear tubing. I ran two coils running in a series and it cooled in about 30 minutes from boil-tops.

I used a fish tank syphen modified to have a screen inline to draw the beer from my pot to my carboy.


And I used a "china hat" strainer with cheese cloth

I could ramble on and on about diy'ing the setup . I was hoping someone would have a link/post with some solid supplies at a reasonable cost for doing it on a larger scale.

[bobbycos]

the only "homebrewed " stuff i drank was "pruno" and that was a number of years ago

[Stoner51]

I have notihing to offer for homebrewing. But I got all my keg stuff from either Micromatic or beverage factory. The later was the cheaper prices. I got my Aluminum CO2 tank for 55 shipped.

I am not allowed to have kegs anymore. As I will drink too much which leads to the wife drinking too much and then bitching she gained too much weight from beer.

I do have some friends that brew their own I will ask them wed at work.

steve

Yes I know commercial kegs are a little different setup.

[deevergote]

Thanks, Steve!

I'm actually interested in kegging at some point as well. I have a very useless little space next to my fridge that would make an awesome spot for a kegerator!
Kegging my own is something to consider down the road, of course.


Justin, I've considered making my own immersion chiller setup, but copper tubing seems to come at a premium these days. I hadn't thought about fridge lines, though. I might be able to find scrap parts to use! That could cut a good $150 off my expected cost.
http://www.northernbrewer.com is the site that I often browse on. Some prices seem good, others seem a bit steep. It's
the largest and easiest to navigate homebrew site I've come across.

[toycar]

Justin, I've considered making my own immersion chiller setup, but copper tubing seems to come at a premium these days. I hadn't thought about fridge lines, though. I might be able to find scrap parts to use! That could cut a good $150 off my expected cost.
http://www.northernbrewer.com is the site that I often browse on. Some prices seem good, others seem a bit steep. It's
the largest and easiest to navigate homebrew site I've come across.

Check it out;


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kenmore-25-C...45#ht_44wt_900



$14.99 + like $9 for shipping and you'll spend maybe $10 for everything else for the chiller. You could buy a cheap $10 pipe bender to help with bending the 90's and not kinking anything.




I have a DIY setup. I just want something 6 gallons or so in size so I can yield a full 5 gallon batch.


***Edit***



Looks like you can buy a cheap ass 23quart pressure cooker on ebay for around $100 too.


for the carboy(s) why not just just do your fermentation with DIY carboy(s)? I used a DIY fermentation lock and carlos rossi glass jugs.


It was a win/win, got hammered a bunch of times of some sangria in a jug and then had free carboy(s) left over. Just fit them with a nice tight cork, drill a hole through the cork and run a tube into the airspace or head area(dont submerge the tube I guess is what I am saying) and then have enough left over to make a few 6" circles.


Twist tie/zip tie the circles together and keep them above the jug. Once you have fabbed the lock, you just add water. Literally. You add enough water that both sides of the bottom of the circle are sealed. Does that make sense? You need enough water in there so that there is no air passage on the top of the water that is resting on the bottom of the circle. This creates an air lock, that will allow the pressure to release from the jug without allowing contaminents back into the brew.

Its easy. Hard to explain, easy as shit to do. Just buy some 1/8" tubing when you buy the 5/8" for the diy immersion chiller.



Thats what I was going to do, just haven't had much time for anything really lately. I wanted to use individual gallon size jugs for fermentation so I could use different yeasts and see what I liked best. Down side, carlos rossi is almost as much as the individual gallon fermentation jugs, so, you don't save THAT much money but x5 jugs, its $20-$25 saved.



***Double Edit***



Mike, I think you just inspired me to get back on track with doing this. I miss my home brew. I used to make some nice stuff and there are local shops now that you can buy ingredients/recipes and shit from that has had my interest for a while now.


Im thinking when I get home, im all in.

[deevergote]

You have some great ideas! I never even thought about using wine jugs instead of carboys. My only concern there would be getting an even distribution of yeast and priming sugar in each. I suppose that's the main benefit to one large primary fermenter... everything is all together.
I know what you mean about the airlock, though. The guy that taught me how to brew showed me a setup like that. He said that some brews will need it, while others others wouldn't, depending on the amount of CO2 that is generated in the primary fermentation process.
The basic plastic airlock thingies are only about $2 a piece, so that's no big deal. Though perhaps they wouldn't work well on recycled wine jugs!

Carboys themselves are only $25-$40 each, from what I'm seeing... so they're not terribly expensive. I'm kinda hoping that'll be one of my birthday presents


Is there any benefit to using a pressure cooker, other than it just being a large stainless steel pot?

[phatdoughnut]

Have you thought about using corny kegs to do transfer from and too? I hear its a lot better and cleaner. Don't have to bottle and you could build a fairly cheap keggarator. Easier to carbonate also.

I dont brew but my wife wants too, I think its cheaper to just go to a brewry and pay 50 bucks for 5 gallons. :P

[deevergote]

I haven't looked into them yet, but now that I do, I see they're pretty affordable. $50 or so for a refurbished one on cornykeg.com.

I don't know much about kegging, though. I'll need to look into it more. The only fermentation method I'm familiar with is the standard two-step process... primary fermentation (carboy, or my stupid Mr Beer plastic jawn...) and then adding priming sugar for secondary fermentation in the bottles.

Edit: I figure I'll share my findings regarding kegging for anyone else that is curious. This is proving to be an interesting read: http://morebeer.com/themes/morewinepro//kegging.pdf

[phatdoughnut]

I haven't looked into them yet, but now that I do, I see they're pretty affordable. $50 or so for a refurbished one on cornykeg.com.

I don't know much about kegging, though. I'll need to look into it more. The only fermentation method I'm familiar with is the standard two-step process... primary fermentation (carboy, or my stupid Mr Beer plastic jawn...) and then adding priming sugar for secondary fermentation in the bottles.

Edit: I figure I'll share my findings regarding kegging for anyone else that is curious. This is proving to be an interesting read: http://morebeer.com/themes/morewinepro//kegging.pdf

I think you ferment in one corny and then transfer to the other to carbonate, which I think is what the secondary fermentation does? I also heard this is good because then your beer isn't exposed to air? a lot of people fill the keg with Co2 prior to transferring. Just something to think about.

[toycar]

keg's are cool. I always wanted to get into kegging.


I got back to town last night and went straight to the storage room to fiddle with my shit. LOL



My pressure cooker is 23qt and I don't use it like a pressure cooker for the boil.


I just use it for the "pot" needs.


I picked aluminum because it conducts heat better and will allow you to heat more fluid easier than stainless. Also, it was cheaper for the quality vs a quality stainless jobby. I didn't want to use a cheap ass wal-mart pot and the money for a quality jobby wasn't worth it to me.




A quality aluminum pot will outlive you, but it will not outlive the stainless.


Who cares?



I'm probably going to make some wine this year. We have an apricot tree and an apple tree, which make excellent wine. I also have some natural honey I wanted to play around with and a buddy was going to teach me how to make wine with dandelions. Mulberries grow all over the place here(wild) that can be picked to make wine as well.

Plenty of options for me, so, Im considering this as well.

Brew season is coming man!

[deevergote]

Oooh, honey. I've been looking into making mead. Apparently it's VERY easy. It just takes a fairly long time (like 2 years) for it to really mature. You CAN drink it sooner, but supposedly it's not quite as good.
The guy that taught me how to brew beer actually had 3 different types of mead aging in his shop. He brewed it to give to his daughter (who was a month away from being born at the time) on her 21st birthday. He let us try a bottle of each, though... and holy crap it was good!

As for pot materials, I've been told that aluminum can alter the flavor of the beer in a bad way. I forget the technical reason the instructor told me, but it was enough to keep me away from aluminum. I MIGHT try it if I can find a pot cheap enough, though.

[toycar]

Oooh, honey. I've been looking into making mead. Apparently it's VERY easy. It just takes a fairly long time (like 2 years) for it to really mature. You CAN drink it sooner, but supposedly it's not quite as good.
The guy that taught me how to brew beer actually had 3 different types of mead aging in his shop. He brewed it to give to his daughter (who was a month away from being born at the time) on her 21st birthday. He let us try a bottle of each, though... and holy crap it was good!

As for pot materials, I've been told that aluminum can alter the flavor of the beer in a bad way. I forget the technical reason the instructor told me, but it was enough to keep me away from aluminum. I MIGHT try it if I can find a pot cheap enough, though.

Thats interesting about the aluminum affecting the flavor. I've never had a complaint, however, it could be one of those "you never knew it till you tried it" kind of things.


Now, I must read about said theory and establish an opinion-lol




Mead interests me, but I don't really get it. I mean, I understand it but its so easy sounding that it makes me wonder whats really going on here? I have a couple quarts of pure organic(isn't it all organic?) honey. Straight from a farmer who harvested it to jar. And it is so damn good. I mean-its incredible compared to what you get at the store.


Wine interests me because my wife doesn't drink beer and getting her approval on a hobby/results of said hobby is always nice.



I'd really like to brew bourbon but apparently thats really illegal. I don't really understand why either. Stills of today are basically plug and play with preventive sensors and shit to avoid overheating and all of the crap that makes it unsafe.

Oh well.

I think I'll be brewing an Ale first. What are you going to brew?