Starter Kit for beginner

[Mark Collins]

Made home brew in my uni days in a plastic barrel, but going to start up again.

Which starter kit?

http://www.brewshop.co.nz/brewing-equipment/mangrove-jacks-craft-se...

http://www.brewshop.co.nz/brewing-equipment/mangrove-jacks-starter-...

Plastic barrel + gears for $100

Stainless steel + gears for $269

I want to take this seriously and make some great tasting product.

[Scott H]

You don't need the stainless steel fermentor to get serious. prob better investing that money into a kettle ect

[Mark Weusten]

Completely agree with Scott. You could buy a BIAB setup second hand for that price.

[Peter Smith]

Mark, buy the basic kit ($100), and spend extra money on an stc-1000 temp controller ($35) ,  an old fridge ($50 or less), and a heat pad ($40)...

for the $299 spend you will be able to temp control your brew, way more important then stainless at this point.

you can pickup the kits second hand easy enough on trademe if you dont want to go new...   I sugest getting a small container of starsan no rinse sanitiser... its the dogs bollocks, would never be without it.

Welcome to the board - where are you based? 

[Cain Harland]

Totally agree with what these guys have said stainless is nice but there is more important stuff you could spend your money on. Temperature control being the biggest thing and its usually easy to find a cheap or free old fridge.

Probably the best investment I made early on was a bottle rinser, here is one I found for  $45. Even with this washing bottles is the worst bit of home brewing but its so much worse with out it.

[Sam DT]

+1 for BIAB set-up with temp controller and plastic barrels.

I've just gotten back into brewing after a few years off post uni as well. I went straight to BIAB and am now 5 batches in, would never go back to kit or extract brewing. The results have been way better than I'd thought was achievable.

I already had basic brewing and fermenting equipment from back in the day but the $69 pack looks good (I wouldn't bother with the cheap packs included in the branded sets.

What I bought:

• 70L pot off trade-me approx $100 including shipping - it's reasonably thin but hasn't caused any problems - you could get away with a 30L but 70L gives you room for double batches and no boil over issues.
• Immersion chiller $100 ish - saves waiting around for wort to chill & leads to clearer beer
• STC 1000 $35
• Large BIAB bag $15

With a starter kit that'd leave you at around $320 - I managed to pick up an old fridge for free (depending on where you're based and if you're not planning on doing lagering you may not need a functioning one) and have an incandescent 100W bulb with a pot sitting over it as a heater (can heater set-up).

Then all you need is a heat source. Camp master do a good three ring burner for around $70 bucks) which you'll need for a 70L. When I was setting up there were none in the country (anywhere) although they were promising to have them back in stock by September so you might be in luck now - also they pop up on trademe every now and then. Add a regulator and it'll bring you up to another $100. Due to the shortage I had to improvise and managed to wedge my pot into my BBQ which has been working a treat and saved me $100. Pics here:

Then all you really need is some grain, hops and yeast - I've been working my way through the brew-shop all grain recipe packs for practice before breaking into full on recipe design. I picked up a pack of WLP001 with the first pack and have just washed and re-pitched for the rest of their ale recipes - been very happy with the results.

You can also get a free trial of Beer Smith which once I got my head around it was really helpful in understanding recipes (you can enter all the details for the packs directly from the instruction sheet)

EZ Water calculator is also really helpful in figuring out what salts you need & how much acid malt to add (depends on your water supply). Again it takes a bit of figuring out but once you've found a local water report and understand which malt is which it's not too bad. General consensus seems to be that water adjustment is one of the last things to look into but I definitely think a decent mash pH is worth an hour or so of head scratching.

[Mark Collins]

Thanks for the great advice. Will do some more study and then some spending.