Basic Brewing Kit

What do you need to get started?

Here’s the basic things to get you up and running in brewing

Brewing Items

Here’s the basic items you’ll need for the brewing side:

• 5 Gallon Stainless Steel Brew Kettle
• Siphonless 6.5 Gallon Fermenter w/ New Gasketed Lid
• Bubbler airlock
• Testing Equipment
  • Triple Scale Hydrometer
  • test jar
  • lab thermometer
• 21″ Stainless Spoon
• Tubing
• Cleaner/Sanitizer (you’ll need this for bottling too)

Bottling Items

Once your brew has boiled and fermented, you need to put it somewhere:

• Bottling Bucket w/ Spigot Assembly
• Racking Cane and Tubing
• Spring Tip Bottle Filler
• Bottle Brush
• Bottle Capper
• Bottle Caps (60ct.)
• Bottles

So what about this equipment? Why do you need it?

The 5 gallon kettle is where it all begins. You’ll be mixing and boiling your ingredients in this. You don’t need to get all fancy on this one. As my mentor told me, you don’t need something with a heavy or thick bottom, that can actually hurt your process as it will hold the heat. You also don’t necessarily need something set up for all sorts of gadgets. Just remember, the more nooks and crannies in the kettle, the more potential for bacteria to grow if you don’t clean it well.

The fermenting bucket is where the magic happens. This is where all that yeast eat the sugars forming the alcohol. As a beginner, you don’t need anything more fancy than a 6.5 gallon bucket. Your local home brew shop will have what you need (support local if possible), or a simple online search for fermenter buckets should give you all you need.

The airlock is there to keep oxygen out of your fermentor, but lets CO2 – a natural byproduct of beer fermentation – release from the carboy. Oxygen during the fermentation process is bad, the airlock is like the bouncer at the velvet rope keeping oxygen out.

The testing equipment is needed to make sure you have beer and not beer flavored kool-aid. The hydrometer and testing jar are used to test the amount of alcohol in your brew. You pour some of your wort (pre-fermented beer) into the jar and the hydrometer floats in it due to the density of the liquid (the sugars in the liquid make the liquid more or less dense). You’ll be doing this before and after fermenting to figure out your alcohol content. The thermometer is used all throughout the brew day to make sure your temperatures are good.

The spoon is for stirring and the tubing is for tubing stuff, ’nuff said.

The cleaner / sanitizer is because the three rules of brewing are Sanitize, Sanitize, Sanitize.

The bottling bucket and spigot assembly are how you bottle. The fermenting process produces solids that you don’t want in your beer, so you transfer the sweet sweet liquid to the bottling bucket where you can then transfer it to the bottles.

And how do you get it from the fermenter to the bottling bucket? Why with the racking cane and tubing of course. This uses a bit of a siphon and gravity to pull the liquid from the fermenter and send it down the tubing to the bottling bucket. Of course, if you stick the racking cane into the solids, you’ll send the solids in too, so get comfortable using it.

The spring tip bottle filler sends that precious liquid from the bottling bucket to the bottles. The spring at the bottom keeps a little gasket in the tube closed so nothing gets out. When you press the bottle against the spring tip, it opens up allowing the liquid out.

Let’s knock out all the bottle related stuff in one go. The bottle brush cleans out the inside of the bottles. Pro tip I got from my mentor, use the brush on a cordless drill (never use corded products near water) to really get those bottles clean quicker. The bottle capper crimps the caps on the bottles like little hats for your bottles. The bottle caps are those little hats.

And that leaves us with the bottles themselves. There’s a lot out there, and you have lots of options. First, screw top bottles are a no go. You can’t crimp caps on those, and your beer will be ruined. That leave you with metal capped bottles or the bottle with the ceramic caps. Both will work, it’s your choice. What about color? Light affects beer, so stay away from clear or green bottles. The darker the bottle, the better, so going with dark brown bottles is a perfect choice.

That should give you everything you need to get started in brewing. There’s all sorts of extra things you can always buy, some good, some bad. Think of if it will make your job easier or harder, and does it make your beer any better.