picked up a 21 liter stainless steel pot, which is just under 6 gallons at walmart. This was the most economical one I could find that was large and had a thick bottom to prevent scorching. I have needed a large pot for home canning for a while so this one will be dual purpose for brewing & canning.
36 - 750ml champagne bottles, a third will be used for sparkling hard cider & the other 2/3 will be used for my up coming pale ale. In coming months these bottles will be used only for sparkling cider and possible some brut if I make wine.
*starting in the top left, moving to the right
- carboy handle
- champagne hoods
- plastic champagne corks
- 26mm crown caps
- bucket spigot
- small mash bag
- wine thief/hydrometer reader
- auto siphon
- racking tube
- hydrometer
- emily capper
Gear picked up when I started brewing includes:
- siphoning tube
- bottle filling wand
- 23l plastic bucket & lid
- 23l glass carboy
- 2 airlocks & bungs
I am pretty much all kitted out now other then a few things that are not immediately needed. The champagne bottles have 29mm crowns so I will need a 29mm bell & 29mm caps. I also need 500ml glass beer bottles & grolsch beer bottles so I will be slowly collecting them over time. Glass bottles are really expensive, so much so that in terms of grolsch you can buy them filled with beer cheaper then empty ones.
*starting in the top left, moving to the right
Nice brew gear....hey I was curious if you have tried growing your own hops and if so what kind? I think I am going to give it a try.... And I agree with you on the high cost of bottles...we lucked out and found a bar that sells beer in the grolsch bottles while visiting Montana last year and they gave us a bunch for free....I like them so much better than having to cap the bottles.
ReplyDeleteSunny - I am going to grow hops next season, I am new to brewing, I started Oct of this year. From what I have read hops are planted from rhizomes in the spring and are hardy to Zone 4. You only need to grow one plant to get hops and they can climb 20 feet high. I will be mail ordering rhizomes this spring and will probably try two kinds. If you want to try them now is probably a good time to source a place that will ship them to you.
ReplyDeleteNice Dan!
ReplyDeleteThat stock pot is going to take forever to heat up, although not using a mash concentrate and dilluting gives way better flavors.
What one of my brew crew does is uses a sixth barrel keg with the top cut off (5 gallons) and a turkey fryer. Recyclers won't do kegs, so we made lemonade from a keg we lost the sticker on.
Hey Red, our largest gas burner on the range is 16000btu's, it boils our 5 gallon enamel canner in about 20 minutes. I hoping this one boils about as fast. For the ale I will be only be adding 3-4 gallons and top up the rest in the bucket which should speeds things up. It's to bad our big enamel pot is chipped, it would work great for brewing but the rust means it's only good for processing jars.
ReplyDeleteThe turkey fryer sure sounds tempting! I think I need to stop investing in gear for a while though... :-)
Nice kit ! Can't wait to see how the cider turns out. It's looking good.
ReplyDeleteWow, Dan! You're going at this full boat. I suppose that's truly the only way! Good luck!
ReplyDeleteMiss M - Thanks
ReplyDeleteRibbit - Brewing seems to be a lot like canning, you need quite a bit of stuff to start. Most of it is pretty inexpensive through, only the pot & bottles are expensive.
How much was the pot? I'm slowly gathering equipment to start brewing in the spring. Right now I'm buying wort and just fermenting at home. I also had my eye on a turkey fryer at Canadian Tire that was 80,000 BTU's or so, but managed to source a 185,000 BTU burner for the same price with shipping from the states ($80), I should get it this week. I have about 50 500ml bottles from Grand River in Cambridge that I use, about a year worth of saving bottles. I'm quite interested in you progress on your honey ale.
ReplyDelete