Homebrew Equipment

From Brewwiki

Martel's thinking of starting out, and is making a list of all the equipment he needs. It occurs to me that it would be a good idea to list that sort of thing here with pros/cons for other future starter uppers..

Basic Brewing Equipment

I actually have a bit more stuff than this, but this is the bare minimum to make one batch the first time:

Brewing Necessities:

• 1 rubbermaid bus tub
  • I find this convenient for sanitizing all of the equipment (bleach)
• 1 16-quart stock pot
• 1 digital stick thermometer
• 1 nylon grain bag
• 1 long plastic or stainless steel spoon
• 2 colanders/strainers: 1 fine mesh, one course plastic
• 1 7-gallon food grade bucket - without spigot
• 1 lid for bucket - drilled for airlock
• 1 fermentation lock (airlock)

Bottling Necessities:

• 1 7-gallon food grade bucket - with spigot
• 1 self-racking cane for siphoning.
  • This rocks, makes starting a siphon a total breeze.
• 1 length of plastic tubing
• 1 bottling wand
• 1 double lever capper
  • I prefer to use the 16oz self-capping flippy lid style bottles, but it is handy to be able to recycle commercial beer bottles as well, so the capper comes in handy for those.
• Bottles and caps

Helpful things to have:

• digital kitchen scale
• large tub to hold your fermentation bucket - in case of catastrophe
• basement, or somewhere it's roughly 61-73 degrees all the time

Things I do not use that other people do:

• Hydrometer
• Bottle brush
• Special cleansing solutions

Intermediate Brewing Equipment

• Glass carboy for primary or secondary fermentation
• Funnel
  • To pour wort into carboy
• Immersion chiller

Brewing Outside

• Inexpensive propane burner
• Propane burner/Stock Pot Combo
• Kick ass banjo burner
• Stainless Steel Pots