Basic Brewing Equipment

There are a variety of ways to acquire the basic beer brewing equipment necessary to making your own beer. The simplest is to visit your local home brew supply store and ask them to help you select the items you will need. This is also the most expensive way. I will discuss here a few different ways of acquiring specific tools, such as fermenters, airlocks, grain bags and hop bags, and other brewing equipment that are must haves for home brewing. Some of them you will want to buy new at the home brew supply store, and others are more easily acquired at different places. The tools I describe are essential for both all grain and malt extract brewing techniques, but you will need additional tools in order to brew all grain beers.

The brew pot. The best pots to use as brewing equipment carry five gallons and are stainless steel. The next best choice are the enameled steel pots, although if these become dented, the enamel can chip and cause rust spots to appear. The best place to find good quality brew pots is at a yard or estate sale. Here, these tools will be the least expensive, and the owners just want to get rid of them because they are bulky. The next best place to look is in the appliance section of thrift or second hand stores. If you want to buy a brand new pot, the home brew store will be priced as well as anywhere else. It is very important to have a lid for your brew pot that fits well. The brew pot is the easiest to acquire, and most basic of the beer brewing equipment you will need.

The following checklist will help you make sure you have everything you need before you start.

Spoons and more... A long handled spoon (24-36 inches) is essential for brewing, and can be acquired more inexpensively at a restaurant supply store than at the brew store. Also, it is preferable to have both a slotted spoon and non slotted spoon. The slotted spoon is for retrieving hops bags and grain bags from your wort. Reusable nylon draw string bags are very helpful for adding the hops flavor and overtones of different malts to your beer, and are a good alternative to the one time use muslin hop bags and grain bags. They are worth paying the additional price, and can be used as both hop bag and grain bag. If you wish to use loose grains in your wort, then you will also need a fine wire mesh strainer that is very large for your initial straining. A large baker's hand sifting basket will function quite well in this regard, and can be purchased at the restaurant supply as well

The care and feeding of glass carboys. Glass carboys are one to six and an half gallon glass bottles that are the primary fermentation vessels, or fermenters, of your homebrew. Often, you will see these, perfectly good glass carboys, sitting out on the curb during trash day. They can also be found inexpensively at the flea market or yard sale. I would expect to pay an average of $6 per carboy for used carboys, and up to $20 for brand new ones at the home brew store. You will want to have an ever increasing number of these fermenters in your collection as you brew more and more. Some brews, especially mead, take up to a year to finish fermenting, during which time they occupy the glass carboy they are fermenting in. Beer, on the other hand, can be made almost as fast as it is fermented, bottled, and drank, in the same fermenter. I recommend buying five and six gallon glass carboys, as these fit quite nicely in milk crates, which offers them some protection from chipping and cracking.

You will want to buy the essential cork and airlock for your fermenter at the brew store. If you didn't buy your carboy there, you should bring it in and make sure you have a cork that fits the carboy well. While at the brew store, make sure to get a bottle brush for cleaning your carboy, cleaning supplies, and a siphon tube that is about 5 feet long. Make sure you have all the beer brewing equipment you need before leaving - a checklist helps.

Siphon tubes are used during the bottling process. The simplest way to preserve your beer is bottling, and for this you will need a few items that can only be acquired from your home brew supply store, such as bottle cappers (I recommend the plastic handled metal jawed hand capper), virgin bottle caps, and virgin bottles. You can always sanitize your own bottles, but this process is time consuming, and disgusting to some.

With this brewing equipment, and a little knowledge, any capable person can easily and continually brew a delicious variety of home brew.