New brewer with equipment questions

[jeep_junky]

Hello all. I am wanting to try my hand at making my own beer. I want to go straight to kegging it and putting it in the keezer. All of the starter kits I see come with everything to bottle the beer. Would I be better off getting individual items over getting them in a kit? What are the basics I would need?

 

[gspot]

Well, if you know for certain that you want to jump right into kegging, then it might be better to just buy what you need piecemeal rather than in a kit. Most kits consist of pretty basic equipment. There are plenty of people around here that can advise you on what to buy. First things first: get yourself a nice 10gal stainless pot and a 30 liter Speidel fermenter. You can go cheaper, but you'll never outgrow those.

 

[brewbama]

You need a mash/lauter tun (cooler with a screen in it works) to separate the grain from the liquid. You need a pot to boil water and wort. A spoon to stir the mash with. A bucket to hold sparge water. A way to boil (a lot of) water/wort (turkey fryer works). An (accurate) thermometer. A hydrometer. A watch/clock. A fermenter with airlock (can be a hose and a bucket of water). a way to transfer from fermenter to keg (valve or siphon). a CO2 tank. keg hoses, quick disconnects, valves. A glass.

 

[Natdavis777]

I jumped straight into kegging and never turned back. Same with AG. A simple Rubbermaid cooler with some parts (write up can be found easily online), a stainless 9 gal pot (AIH has great deals), a burner, and a fermentor will get you going just fine. Tack on the initial cost of kegging (keg and cobra tap will suffice for service, tank and regulator may set you back some) and you can easily make out with kegging out of the gate. Its completely possible.

 

[mongoose33]

I got into kegging after my second batch--HOWEVER, I'm glad I have the bottling equipment. There are times you'll want to bottle up a six-pack to take with you someplace, or share with friends, or enter into a competition....

There is little in the kits that is useless...there's a bottle capper and a bottle filler, and some caps and that's about it. It won't cost so much that you'll feel it and you'll likely be glad you have it.

Here's the biggest reason I got into kegs right away: I wanted to bottle already carbonated beer without the yeast settling to the bottom of the bottle, and having to avoid pouring it into the glass. You have to decant, and if friends have the beer they may or may do that. Pouring that little sludge into the glass doesn't help the flavor.

But if you keg it first, force carbonate it, and then bottle from the keg, you avoid that sludge.

So--my suggestion is to get a kit, set aside the bottling equipment for now, and move ahead.

 

[jeep_junky]

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[LBF]

I'd say it kind of depends on what you want out of brewing and how much you're willing to spend to get started. I got started with a kit because my brother bought it for me for Christmas one year. I started with Extract kits and by the end of the year I had progressed to my own recipes and partial mash BIAB brewing, but my brew days had gotten a bit out of control. When I took a step back and thought things through, it was easy to see that I was long overdue for taking the next step. As far as the kit which I got goes, the only things out of it that don't get used anymore are the wing capper and the 5-gal kettle and I have no problem holding onto them should I ever need either for something (I've been thinking of possibly doing some experimenting on the stove in the winter with the small kettle). I still bottle, but I quickly replaced the wing capper with a bench top capper which has proven to be far more efficient.

So what did I move to? Well, this past Christmas my brother bought me an Edelmetall Bru Burner, so naturally I had to put it to use. I got a 15 gallon v3 kettle from Spike Brewing (I had considered cheaper kettles and smaller ones, but in the end decided to do it right), built a MT (mash tun) and HWT (hot water tank) and bought a copper counterflow chiller (I splurged there because it was on sale). I could still stand to have a pump and a good grain mill, but that will come with time, I'm headed in the right direction. This was where I wanted to be since not long after I started brewing. I can brew all-grain batches of 5.5 gallons or 11 gallons. I'll use the 5.5 gallon batches for tweaking a recipe and the 11 gallon batches for punching out a bunch of beer in a hurry. I've found it takes the same amount of time to brew either batch. At first I was worried that I would want to be able to brew even more at once, but now that I've produced a few batches in the new equipment, I realized that it's not a problem. All 7 of my fermenters are full and I'm running out of bottles to put things in. Even if I needed to produce more beer for some reason (say if I was kegging and needed to produce four kegs for a party), with an extra set of hands and a long day, it would be possible to brew it all in one day. I can live with that since my last couple partial mash brews on the stove (5 gallon) were taking me all day.

So think about what exactly it is that you want to achieve. If you want to be able to brew 10-11 gallon batches (two kegs worth) at a time, buying a kit with a 5 gallon kettle is probably not worth it to you. Instead you'll want to move to an outdoor burner and all grain right away. And you'll only want to buy the equipment once, so get good stuff. If you just want to brew once in awhile and one keg at a time in the kitchen, then yes, a kit would be a perfect starting place.

 

[jeep_junky]

One keg at a time is what would work for me. I am the only beer drinker in the family and live in a area where I am not from so do not have my friends to drink with. I do have a burner for outside use that I use for turkey frying and seafood boils. From what I am gathering a kit would be the way to go since the majority of the items are used for either kegging or bottling.