Expanding Your Home Brewing
One of the biggest benefits you get from expanding on your home brewing system is the increased volume of beer you produce as well as the extremely reduced work load! For those of you who use extract to brew, there are basic things you can start doing to build on your current process while still using extract to brew.
The first step would be to get a bigger kettle, the bigger the better.
You want this to be able to boil your entire wort at once.
This alone will be a major improvement to the taste and quality of the beer.
This also means you are going to need an outdoor burner, as most stoves just aren't made to boil extreme amounts of liquid.
If you are going to conduct a full boil, you will need to get a decent chiller.
This will chill down the wort very fast and that is necessary to reduce the risk for bacteria and growing yeast infections.
Not to mention you also get some weird flavors if the beer is not cooled down fast enough.
For those of you who have moved on to all grain brewing systems, you will need to look into a brewing sculpture in order to really streamline your brewing process.
A refractometer is also a great tool that is used for simple gravity readings.
And obviously you have to have means to pumping all your liquid, which is where a good mash paddle comes into handy.
The fermentation temperature is an important factor for all brewers to consider.
This part of the process probably has the most impact on the taste and the quality of the beer.
The temperature fermenter is definitely something to invest in if you can afford it.
Before you start investing in all the fancy equipment make sure you have a long term plan for the next five to ten years.
There is nothing worse than having all this fancy stainless steel equipment and then having to get rid of it in a couple years because it doesn't fit into your plans.
One thing you really want to think about is if you ever plan to transition to all grain brewing.
Then you also want to think about what batch sizes you are going to be brewing.
If you are going to be batching 10 gallons at a time then you need to plan for how you are going to store everything and what not.
Overall my biggest recommendation is to move away from the stove and get a good propane burner.
This will definitely make the boiling much faster and prevent ridiculous messes in the kitchen! Obviously wort boiling does not require moving outdoors, but by using a propane burner you will be able to boil the wort a lot more quickly than the time it would take to boil on your stove.
If you are still a beginner and trying to figure our what microbrewery equipment you need, visit the blog!
The first step would be to get a bigger kettle, the bigger the better.
You want this to be able to boil your entire wort at once.
This alone will be a major improvement to the taste and quality of the beer.
This also means you are going to need an outdoor burner, as most stoves just aren't made to boil extreme amounts of liquid.
If you are going to conduct a full boil, you will need to get a decent chiller.
This will chill down the wort very fast and that is necessary to reduce the risk for bacteria and growing yeast infections.
Not to mention you also get some weird flavors if the beer is not cooled down fast enough.
For those of you who have moved on to all grain brewing systems, you will need to look into a brewing sculpture in order to really streamline your brewing process.
A refractometer is also a great tool that is used for simple gravity readings.
And obviously you have to have means to pumping all your liquid, which is where a good mash paddle comes into handy.
The fermentation temperature is an important factor for all brewers to consider.
This part of the process probably has the most impact on the taste and the quality of the beer.
The temperature fermenter is definitely something to invest in if you can afford it.
Before you start investing in all the fancy equipment make sure you have a long term plan for the next five to ten years.
There is nothing worse than having all this fancy stainless steel equipment and then having to get rid of it in a couple years because it doesn't fit into your plans.
One thing you really want to think about is if you ever plan to transition to all grain brewing.
Then you also want to think about what batch sizes you are going to be brewing.
If you are going to be batching 10 gallons at a time then you need to plan for how you are going to store everything and what not.
Overall my biggest recommendation is to move away from the stove and get a good propane burner.
This will definitely make the boiling much faster and prevent ridiculous messes in the kitchen! Obviously wort boiling does not require moving outdoors, but by using a propane burner you will be able to boil the wort a lot more quickly than the time it would take to boil on your stove.
If you are still a beginner and trying to figure our what microbrewery equipment you need, visit the blog!
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