Brewing Equipment

As intimated in other areas of the site, there doesn't have to be shiny stainless steel vessels with electronic bells and whistles in order to brew to a high standard. The checklist below should help.


Boiler - My setup has two, one to hold the hot liquor and one to boil. Having two removes the need to lug 25 litres of very hot water/wort about the place! With the boiler, you'll need a hop strainer which usually is a piece of copper sheet with holes drilled in it and folded round and over at one end. Search for Hop Strainers on the web to see what they can look like. Chances are if you bought a boiler from a home brew shop it will have come with a hop strainer anyway.

Mash Tun Again these can come in many shapes and sizes, a common one being a picnic cool box. These are so widely used because of their ability to keep a constant temperature so well, which is important for the mashing process. The mash tun will also need a strainer of sorts to avoid the tap getting gunked up and stopping the flow of wort through to the boiler during the sparge.Mine is just some mesh attached to a copper "T" with some plastic tubing going off to the tap, but more commonly brewers fashion their own manifold style strainers from copper.

Chiller - Chillers are used to cool the wort as quickly as possible after the boil, to reduce the chance of infection. Mine is a commonly used immersion chiller that can be bought from home brew shops online. There are, again, many variations of chiller which achieve the same end result more or less effectively, for, as you'd expect, more or less expense. I've got a couple of standard hose adaptor ends on mine, and a length of hose each for in- and out-flow. Quite a lot of water is used in the chilling process, so see if you can re-use it in some way, for example keep it and use it to clean your equipment after the brew, or maybe water the garden with it.

Fermenting Vessel - Known simple as FV's, this is a food grade plastic container to hold the wort while it ferments. I use a standard offering sold by most home brew shops with scale up the side and a tap, but anything of suitable size and quality will do. Plastic kegs are also widely used for FV's.

Thermometer Traditional mercury thermometers will suffice but an electronic one with a probe will prove a lot easier to use and read from during the boil, and when heating the liquor.

Hydrometer - The hydrometer used to check the gravity of the wort during sparge and after the wort is transferred to the FV. If you want to know the alcohol content of your brew, which of course you will,  you'll need one of these. Along with the hydrometer you'll need a test jar, which is a platic or glass tube in which a sample of the wort and the hydrometer will sit. Mine is plastic, and as a result is warped due to the heat of the sparging wort and general wear and tear, so I would advise a glass one personally.

Long Spoon - A long handled plastic or metal spoon will be used to aerate the wort, fish out unwanted foreign bodies from the boil and general reaching purposes.

Scales - Kitchen scales will be needed to weigh out hops and grain. A decent set of scales would be advised here. My electronic scales are all but useless, handling about 500g at a time and turning off after about 4 seconds requiring me to change the measurement unit, so emphasis is on the word "decent" here.

Water treatment - Campden tablets are a widely used water treatment. These will remove chloramines from the water, as will boiling the water before use or using distilled water. Water treatment is a whole separate subject in it's own right and can be researched in depth on the internet. Suffice it to say though, I have used Campden tablets to great effect in all my brews and have never had a noticable detriment in the quality, so I would go with Campden tablets every time.

Sanitiser - Any non-scented sanitising agent can be used here. I use Young's Brew Steriliser and Cleaner, which is specifically for home brewers and hasn't let me down yet (touching a large lump of sideboard for my latest brew). Cleaning brew equipment properly, especially that equipment used after the boil, is one of the most important parts of the process, so it pays to do it properly!

Sundries - These include standard kitchen items that you will probably have lying around the house: A measuring jug (e.g. Pyrex jug), containers for weighed out hops, kitchen towel (stuff get's everywhere until you're used to what your equipment will do) and tin foil (all will become clear later).


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