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After more than a decade in a crappy apartment I finally bought a house, which means I have some space for a dedicated brew space. And since I haven't used my brew setup in about 2 years I'm looking forward to actually getting back into it. I don't plan on overhauling the brewing equipment much, since what I have does work decently well already. However it was designed to be broken down and stored between uses (because apartment) so now I can give it all a permanent home.
Space overview. The house has a roughly 2/3 full basement and 1/3 crawl space basement. Of the full basement just under half is "finished". The rest is unfinished, and that's where I get to put my brewery. There is a large room, probably 15'x15' give or take. It houses the main breaker panel, the oil tank, and not much else. There is a utility sink already in the room, though it's gross and getting replaced, so there are water hookups. And there is already a decent sump pump setup in the room that the washing machine, utility sink, and well water treatment both drain into. There is another floor drain that I have no idea the state of. It could work fine and dump out into the backyard somewhere, or it could be clogged. The ceiling is a nightmare of water pipes, heating pipes, drains, drier vents, electrical, etc.
Few picture of the room itself. Taken with a wide angle so perspective is a little weird.
My setup is a fairly simple single vessel electric BIAB system that I'm quite happy with. I don't really want to build it out further, the small footprint suits me fine. So I won't need a ton of space dedicated to the actual brewing parts. I will mention that I have a steam condenser on my kettle, so I have no plans on adding any kind of vent or hood.
So the main point of this thread. What have you found to be essential things in your brewery build? Things I won't have considered coming from an apartment where I always had to break down and store my equipment. I have the following early list of renovation for the room, and details to include in the build out.
Room renovation:
- Epoxy Coat the concrete floor. Was considering some kind of flooring, but don't think I want to go that route. This will never be a 100% finished area so I don't want to go the tile or other flooring route.
- Properly finish the wall where all the brewery stuff will live, including a waterproof back splash of some kind. Potentially finish the walls in the rest of the room depending on budget
- Drop Ceiling for at least half of the room if not the whole thing. I can't do anything too permanent as I will likely need access to the water lines in the future.
- All of the lighting. I loath rooms that can't be lit completely, and basements often fall into that. I will be installing literally all the light.
- Considering building the oil tank into it's own room, but need to educate myself on codes in that regard so I know what's legal and what isn't.
- redo the entire drier vent to better tuck it out of the way.
Brewery Planned details:
- New Utility sink (larger hopefully) with dedicated cleaning tray/side table.
- More work surfaces. I have a couple stainless benches that have been sitting in a storage unit for a while that I can finally put to use. I plan on retaining the existing kettle stand that I built as I like the height, and then putting a work bench next to it for staging ingredients and tools.
- Dedicated Chiller. I've long had the thought of keeping a dedicated chiller in the brewery to use for post boil crashing instead of using the well water, and in the future fermentation control if I decide to upgrade to something shiny and fancy.
- Better storage. I've seen some use tool boxes, others just shelves. Curious what people have found to be the best answer for storing the various brewing tools, ingredients, etc.
What isn't there that should be?
Space overview. The house has a roughly 2/3 full basement and 1/3 crawl space basement. Of the full basement just under half is "finished". The rest is unfinished, and that's where I get to put my brewery. There is a large room, probably 15'x15' give or take. It houses the main breaker panel, the oil tank, and not much else. There is a utility sink already in the room, though it's gross and getting replaced, so there are water hookups. And there is already a decent sump pump setup in the room that the washing machine, utility sink, and well water treatment both drain into. There is another floor drain that I have no idea the state of. It could work fine and dump out into the backyard somewhere, or it could be clogged. The ceiling is a nightmare of water pipes, heating pipes, drains, drier vents, electrical, etc.
Few picture of the room itself. Taken with a wide angle so perspective is a little weird.
My setup is a fairly simple single vessel electric BIAB system that I'm quite happy with. I don't really want to build it out further, the small footprint suits me fine. So I won't need a ton of space dedicated to the actual brewing parts. I will mention that I have a steam condenser on my kettle, so I have no plans on adding any kind of vent or hood.
So the main point of this thread. What have you found to be essential things in your brewery build? Things I won't have considered coming from an apartment where I always had to break down and store my equipment. I have the following early list of renovation for the room, and details to include in the build out.
Room renovation:
- Epoxy Coat the concrete floor. Was considering some kind of flooring, but don't think I want to go that route. This will never be a 100% finished area so I don't want to go the tile or other flooring route.
- Properly finish the wall where all the brewery stuff will live, including a waterproof back splash of some kind. Potentially finish the walls in the rest of the room depending on budget
- Drop Ceiling for at least half of the room if not the whole thing. I can't do anything too permanent as I will likely need access to the water lines in the future.
- All of the lighting. I loath rooms that can't be lit completely, and basements often fall into that. I will be installing literally all the light.
- Considering building the oil tank into it's own room, but need to educate myself on codes in that regard so I know what's legal and what isn't.
- redo the entire drier vent to better tuck it out of the way.
Brewery Planned details:
- New Utility sink (larger hopefully) with dedicated cleaning tray/side table.
- More work surfaces. I have a couple stainless benches that have been sitting in a storage unit for a while that I can finally put to use. I plan on retaining the existing kettle stand that I built as I like the height, and then putting a work bench next to it for staging ingredients and tools.
- Dedicated Chiller. I've long had the thought of keeping a dedicated chiller in the brewery to use for post boil crashing instead of using the well water, and in the future fermentation control if I decide to upgrade to something shiny and fancy.
- Better storage. I've seen some use tool boxes, others just shelves. Curious what people have found to be the best answer for storing the various brewing tools, ingredients, etc.
What isn't there that should be?