Looking to put together a homebrew (beer) setup

Hey Pete,
I have been brewing for quite some time and have been perfectly content brewing mini-mash recipes (5-8#'s dried malt extract & 4-6#'s Cracked malted barley). As for Grain bags, they are essentially cheesecloth tubes that are sewn on one end, I use regular cheesecloth and tie some butchers twin (or any all-cotton string) at the top and make little bags for my boil. I believe my home-made wort chiller was done for about $40 or so dollars, using mostly the refrigeration aisle in Home depot (copper tubing, compression fittings, female hose adapters and vinyl intake/outtake tubes). I have not seen the need for a lauter tun as of yet, and I do secondary fermentation in a glass carboy which also helps with clarity, alcohol percentage but reduces yield by a around a half gallon. Bottling can be easily done with a clamp, a vinyl tube and the ability to siphon, so long as you take care in keeping the end of your tube about an inch from the bottom of the bucket. Please let me know if you need anything...I love talking beer!
-Paul

As far as a wort chiller goes. I tried making one myself and it came out ok, but it was very sloppy looking. I searched online and was able to find a 50' for under $50 which was done way better. I also think there are a lot of Stainless Steel ones out there now because of the cost of copper. Not sure of the difference cooling wise.

I found that 25' took about 30 minutes to cool my 5 gallons. 50' brought that down to 15-20 min.

Get yourself a nice pale ale kit and dive in. They're the easiest to do and not much can go wrong. I would suggest making a yeast starter though

And while it's brewing... Sit back, relax and have a homebrew (or someone elses in your case)

Here is a great interactive community that offers advice and other resources

http://www.reddit.com/r/homebrewing

peteinsuffolk said:

So.. DIY wort chiller. Any advice Paul? I'm curious to see what approach you used. Does it connect to a faucet? garden hose?

Click to expand...

I used 50' of 1/4" copper tubing, the stuff they use for refrigerators and air conditioners. I coiled it using a gallon jug of Carlo Rossi Wine or something similar in diameter...enough to fit in my brew pot. On each end I put a 1/4" to3/8" compression fittings with the 3/8" tubing adapters (available at Home Depot) and attached my 3/8" vinyl tubing. I put a female hose adapter on the end of the intake tube which I actually did reversed going from bottom to top as the bottom usually remains the hottest for the longest amount of time. I have found this bottom to top cooling cuts down on time as well. I hook mine up in the sink as my brew pot is not huge, and if you're doing a mini-mash or kit batch with a 5 gallon yield, you should need anything larger than an 6 quart pot. HOWEVER...if you are really going on an extreme budget, I used to save 2 Liter soda bottles and remove the labels, fill them with water and freeze them. When it was time to cool my 1 gallon wort, I would fill the sink half way with ice water and stir the wort with the frozen soda bottle...brought it down in under a half hour no problem. I usually make a 1 1/4 gallon wort for a 4 1/2 gallon final yield after primary and secondary fermentation with dry-hopping in the secondary fermentor. I usually bottle in 22oz. brown bottles, as they block the most light and preserve flavor and clarity,however a Brew Hog is worth the investment, it's a 1 gallon mini keg that you don't need to carbonate, you just bottle it regularly and condition for the two to three weeks.