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Equipment For Microbrews

Equipment For Microbrews

Before you can start brewing beer, you'll need to
have the right equipment. If this is your first
time brewing, you should start simple. Before
you begin, the first thing that you'll need is a
brewpot. Before you rush out and buy one, you
may already have one that will work just fine.

The pot should hold at least three gallons of
liquid. The next thing you'll need is a fermenter.
For the average five gallon batch, the fermenter
should hold six gallons or more, allowing space
for a foam that will form during the vigorous
process of fermentation.

For this stage, a glass carboy or food grade
plastic bucket is often used. You'll also need
an airlock for your fermenter to allow the C02
to escape while also keeping the air out. A
siphon hose is also needed to transfer beer from
the fermenter when it's ready, without having
to mix air into it.

A bottling bucket will also help to make the
process much easier. Bottling buckets are
similiar to fermenters, except the fact that they
have a spigot at the bottom that allows you to
fill the bottles directly, which makes the
entire process less messy and gets things done
much quicker. You'll also need a capper to
seal your bottles; as bottles and caps or even
a keg will be needed to store and serve your
brew.

If you look around, you may be able to find a
kit that will contain everything you need. You
can purchase kits on the internet, many of
which offer the top quality equipment you'll
need to brew. All you have to do is look around
the net, as there are many different web sites
that offer equipment for microbrews.

If you don't want to buy a kit, you can always
buy each piece of equipment seperately. This
tends to be a bit more expensive than buying
a kit, although you'll be able to pick each
piece of equipment yourself, without having to
take what's included in the kit.

Once you get all of the necessary equipment
together, you should know how to use it before
you get started. This way, you won't run into
any problems once you start brewing. The
equipment needed for brewing is easy to use, so
you shouldn't have any problems.

Brewing microbrews can be both fun and exciting,
especially when you start brewing your own
creations. You can drink the brew yourself,
or serve it to friends and family. Microbrews
are fun to drink and create - which makes having
the proper equipment all the more while.

Microbrews Equipment

My recommendations for homebrewing equipment:

Use only a glass carboy for fermenting and get 2 of them. I would recommend to get at a 6.5 gallon glass carboy for a 5 gallon batch as the fermentation overflows a LOT in a 6 gallon glass carboy. Using a plastic bucket is only inviting failure since you will likely put small scratches into the bucket over time and that will be a perfect place for bacteria and wild yeast to grow that will destroy your beer.

Do complete a secondary fermentation after the bubbling from primary fermentation has appeared to stop. Take a racking syphon and transfer all the liquid above the material that has fallen out of solution (another reason to use a glass carboy...so you can see it).

Do not bottle out of a bottling bucket. Instead use a racking syphon and fill the bottles from your glass carboy after secondary fermentation. The racking syphon will decrease the amount of air that you introduce to your beer before carbonating, thus decreasing the likelihood of failure.

Make sure that you boil your glass bottles if you are filling regular beer bottles. The key to successful beer making is cleanliness! I hate filling all those individual bottles of beer and perfer to use a few 6 liter bottles that I bought on the internet. You can also use mini kegs which hold about 4-5 liters as well. This makes cleaning much simpler!

When using the priming sugar for carbonation, most kits will include a powdered white sugar. For better flavor in your beer, you should consider boiling some honey in a little water and adding that to each beer for fermentation or more malt. Both of those work well and lend to a better flavored result.

You can basically come up with all sorts of combinations for your beers and they are fun and make great additions to parties as each one is pretty special. I have made a espresso-stoudt, licorice-porter, cherry wheat, ginger beer, green tea beer, etc... You can also make them without alcohol or to what every alcohol level you want by knowing the chemistry. I usually make them about 3.5 percent but people swear they are higher (they arent because I have tested them with a hydrometer).

The article above mentions buying kits and they can be cheap, but I can tell you if you buy a plastic food grade bucket...after a few batches and cleaning...all your beer will taste basically the same because of wild yeast that exist in your equipment. Plastics micro-scratch too easily and are too hard to clean to the level that you can brew beer. If you buy the glass carboys from the start, you will end up saving money!