First brew - Equipment selection

You're over-thinking some things, and under-thinking others. But at least you're thinking! You've obviously put some thought into this, so bravo. Here's my initial thoughts:

• make sure one of your books is how to brew.
• 6 gallons too small for a boil pot. Go bigger, at least 7.5 gallons.
• If you want to brew inside, go for it, but make sure you can get a good rolling boil with the lid off..
• A turkey fryer setup has a big pot and a burner that will boil that much liquid easily, which is why a fair number of us (including me) have used turkey fryers for brewing.
• You need an auto-siphon. cheep plastic, makes it much easier when you have to transfer wort or bottle. Racking canes do work, but once you've used an auto-siphon, you won't go back.
• plastic works fine. you don't need all glass carboys to brew. For most beers, a plastic bucket will work. Only for extended aging is glass required. Glass is harder to clean (a lot), and can be very hazardous if you break a carboy. Plastic is easy to clean and won't cut open an artery if you drop it when it's full.
• in order to keep two batches going at once, you need two fermenters (plastic or glass) and a third (carboy or bucket) for bottling. I have two buckets (one 6.5 gallon, one 8 gallon) and one glass carboy (5 gallon), plus a 3 gallon better bottle, and a Mr Beer Keg. This is plenty of fermentation volume for a 5 gallon system, at least for me (I don't brew anything too overly fancy). I rarely use the better bottle, and make experimental batches with the Mr Beer keg.
• if you still decide to go all glass carboys, get two 6.5 gallons, plus a bottling bucket/carboy (any bucket, or a five gallon carboy is ok for bottling, and the stuff for a blowoff tube for each, and the carboy cleaning brush.
• my 8 gallon fermentation bucket is awesome. it's shorter than a 6.5 gallon, but holds more, and is less likely to need a blowoff tube for a 5 or 5.5 gallon batch. Unfortunately, I haven't seen them available all the time, it's more sporadic. But keep that in mind, the 8 gallon buckets are worth looking for.
• get more than one gravitometer. They break easily, but they're cheep.
• get some campden tablets if you're not sure whether your water has chloramines in it.
• get the more expensive bottle capper
• for cleaning, you can use oxyclean, or PBW. Sometimes a dilute bleach solution is appropriate too. I keep oxyclean and bleach handy (but don't use the bleach except for once in a while, and only a capful at that).
• for sanitation, get starsan. Don't fear the foam.
• bottles: I clean them with HOT water, then dry upside-down until COMPLETELY dry, then cover with a square of tinfoil. Any bottles that require a brush to remove the debris from the inside are rejected and sent to the recycle bin.
• "starter kits" are not bad, in fact you may pay less for the same list of items if it comes in a kit than you would if you ordered them separately. Just keep that in mind while shopping.
• a really big strainer with a long handle is helpful. I bought one at the homebrew store which was rather expensive (over $20) but has proven itself worth the price.
• having more than one thermometer can be helpful, especially if you batteries die on your electric thermometer. This happened to me once, and the only thing that saved me was that the turkey fryer came with a thermometer (which os surprisingly accurate when compared to the electric brewing thermometer that I bought, even tho you wouldn't think it to be so).

Now here's another thing, with a budget as big as yours, you could easily go straight to an all grain equipment setup. I have a buddy who's getting into brewing, wants to do things right, and is going this route. He'll probably never brew an extract batch of beer, instead starting out with all grain. The keys to this route? Knowledge is #1, having someone who knows what they are doing who can help you is #2, and both are important (tho having done your homework is most important).

Basically, to start off all grain, you need a starter kit with two buckets and a carboy, with the usual accessories, plus a mash tun (which is a cooler with a bazooka tube and some hardware, available at home depot or online, the design of which is extremely flexible*), a burner that will boil 7+ gallons of wort, and a boil pot big enough to do full boils (7+ gallons, boiling, again, a turkey fryer pot is sufficiently large, a six gallon pot is too small), and a wort chiller/pre-chiller setup.

You may also need fermentation temperature control, depending where you live, and what times of year you intend to brew. If you live in a cold place, well, you'll have to keep your beer warm. More likely is that you live in a hot place and you'll need to keep your beer cool far more than you'll need to warm it up. A steady ambient room temperature of 68F is about the upper limit of acceptable temperatures for brewing ales (IMO). I used to keep the fermenters in a closet that was a very steady 68F, and this resulted in tasty beer. Keep in mind that an ambient room temperature of 68F does not mean that you beer is 68F. Fermentation is exothermic, and your beer could be considerably warmer than that (and will be when fermentation is most active). Fermenting too hot is a sure-fired recipe for drainpour ale.

Now, because I'm in texas, and there's no reasonable way to keep my house at 68F during the summer, I bought a chest freezer, and got a Johnson controller for it. This is my fermentation chamber, and it keeps my beers at an ambient room temperature (inside the freezer) of 62-64F. Tasty beer. I actually have two freezer/controller setups, one of which will fit two buckets (tho one has to be the shorter 8 gallon bucket), and the other which will only fit a double-batch sized bucket (13 gallons, I think it is). So consider shape and volume of buckets and carboys if you go this route. There are other ways to keep your beer cool without this investment, but if your ambient room temperature is a lot higher than optimum fermentation temps, these methods may become more effort than they're worth.
Bottom line on temperature: if you ferment in a room that's pushing 80 degrees or higher, you won't be setting yourself up for success. Even mid seventies is too warm. This is important. The primary things that lead a beginner to tasty beer are probably sanitation, pitching temperature, and fermentation temperature control.

On pitching temperature, you need a wort chiller, obvious. Stainless or copper, don't matter much which one you prefer. Now I built a smaller coil out of copper which is a pre-chiller to the wort chiller. I run the tap water till the wort gets to about 130F, then drop that pre-chiller into a bucket of ice. This gets my wort below 70F in under 20 minutes (can be even faster, if I have enough ice and pre-chill in ice the entire time). You need the wort below 70 before you pitch your yeast. Equip yourself accordingly.

*it is possible to make a mash tun from a 5 gallon cylindrical water cooler. this is what I currently use. the drawback is that you're limited to about 13 pounds of grain with a 1.25 q/lb water to grain ratio. That's five gallons of about 1.065 OG beer going into the fermentation bucket (on my system). If I want to brew anything stronger, I either have to pull off some mashing tricks (ok for slightly more than 13 pounds grain), or reduce the batch size (necessary for big stouts, basically anything 9% and up). Since I don't make these beers much, it's no biggie. But you may want to get a ten gallon cooler instead of a five gallon cooler. Shape of the cooler isn't an issue, rectangular ones work as well as round ones for batch sparging.

Think about it some more, and don't be in a rush to buy. Your first batch will take at least a month to be finished, so rushing things isn't a very viable strategy.

 

A lot of good info from alcaponejr. He basically covered everything. Here is what I would add.

I use a 10 gallon kettle for 5 gallon batches and wish I had a little more space sometimes. So 10 would be a minimum for me.

1 to 2 hours to bring your water to boil seems long. If you are brewing extract expect at least a 3 hour brew day if not more. For all grain it is about double. And that would be assuming you can get your water to a boil in 20-30 minutes. I would find a better way.

With the wort chiller. You can easily make your own. I am not good with tools and was able to make one. Get 20-25 feet of 1/2 inch copper, 3 qty ring clamps, one female hose end, 10 ft of 5/8 inch rubber tubing with the thicker outer diameter. You will find everything in the pluming section except for the hose end which will be with the hoses and garden equipment. Also consider getting a pipe bender if you want to make sure you get no kinks. Around $60 for a better wort chiller than you will find online.

If you want to recirculate the chilling water get one these.
http://www.amazon.com/Superior-Pump...?s=kitchen-bath&ie=UTF8&qid=1376232689&sr=1-1
Its best to run the chiller off of ground water until you hit around 100 degrees and then switch to the pump and ice water. Otherwise you will have to use a lot more ice.

Sounds like you are doing your homework first before jumping in which will make things easier. Even then more than likely your first brew day will seem a little hectic. But it will get much easier as you dial in your process. In the end with good sanitation and preparation you should be able to make some good beer. Have fun and good luck.

 

OP - if you want to go electric, investigate a "heat stick". That usually requires a pump to circulate the wort through.

 

I will add just a few notes here, as AlCapone's response was incredibly detailed.

• I do not ferment in a bucket anymore, I do not like them as they are rarely air-tight, and I like being able to see my beer without opening the fermenter
• I use both glass carboys and better bottles as my fermenters, 5 gallon glass and 6 gallon better bottle. The 5 gallon size is good for secondary, as you don't want a lot of head space if you're going to age it.
• I find the glass carboys easier to clean, as krausen tends to stick to plastic better than glass...and I'm always being careful not to scratch the plastic...where glass doesn't matter.
• If you do go glass, you have to be very careful...many, many people have been seriously injured by broken carboys.
• Use an auto-siphon
• If you use a glass carboy, purchase some 1" tubing to use as a blow-off...in place of an air-lock during primary.
• Purchase a bottle tree http://www.midwestsupplies.com/45-bottle-drying-tree.html and bottle rinser http://www.midwestsupplies.com/bottle-rinser-sulfiter.html as it will save you a ton of time.

 

Impressive list!

OP:

The one thing I'll add is that you won't need to do much cleaning on your equipment if it's new. Mild soap and water will do wonderful for this stuff. Rinse well. On brew day you need to worry about sanitation. This is the process of taking your clean equipment and going the extra step to make sure that it has as few microbes on it as possible. Any no rinse sanitizer is GOLD. Iodophor or Star San is probably what most of us use. It's flavorless (when mixed correctly). This process will be for ANYTHING your beer touches AFTER you're done with the boil. A short list:

Fermenter
Fermenter lid
Fermenter grommet
Air Lock
Brew Spoon

Later:

All bottling equipment
All bottles --After delabeling and cleaining.

You'll want to start out paranoid here and you will learn where you can cut corners later. Your best friend is a good sanitizer in a spray bottle.

 

That's a lot of preparation, which is smart. Before I started brewing I'd already finished a couple books. I'm new at this still, but one thing I can tell you is that even though a long lag to get to boiling doesn't affect the process, it does affect your day. Brewing is a long process with a lot of down time. If it were me, I wouldn't want to have to budget an extra 1-2 hours just to start. Currently it takes about 45 minutes for me to get 6.5 gallons of wort to a boil. I'd prefer that to be under 30. I'm fine with taking it slow on brew day, but don't be surprised if a couple batches in you're wishing you got to boiling faster.

It's now 4:20 EDT. I started heating my strike water at 12:05. My chiller's been running about 20 minutes now and I'm down to 90. I don't have a fancy pre-chiller like AlC, but that just got bumped to the top of the list.

TL;DR - if you have a way to speed up temperature changes (heating or cooling) do it. It's the least rewarding part of a brew day.

 

One note about my fermentation: I don't even live where the beer ferments, so I don't care if I can see it. My brother doesn't check it either, we both leave it alone till dry hopping or bottling. So on that note, buckets work for me.

Also, if you ferment inside a freezer like I do, the freezer itself fills with CO2 as the beer ferments, as does the bucket. You can verify this by attempting to check the temperature strips using a lighter (it won't stay lit). Thus, I surmise that using a fermentation freezer lessens any effects that oxygen might have on the beer, given the permeability of plastic to oxygen. I am unconcerned with it (however, for any extended aging, I would still use glass). CO2 is heavier than air, so if you don't disturb it too much, you can pop the lid to add dry hops without losing much of your CO2 blanket, and without exposing your wort to much O2. These are mainly musings to entertain myself, and shouldn't necessarily sway anyone towards plastic over glass. OP: you'll have to decide for yourself based on the evidence*. You can always add more pieces to your equipment collection later, so don't over-think it! You WILL add more pieces as you go anyway.

Bottling tree = SUPER HANDY.

Milk crates are good for transporting carboys. You can get a handle for carboys too, but if you pick up a full carboy by this handle, it could break the neck. Thus you still need support underneath the carboy (although the handles do help out a lot).

Blow-up, err, blow-off tube, check. Blowoff tubes may be necessary for plastic buckets too. However, an eight gallon plastic bucket usually won't require a blowoff tube for five gallon batches. I don't generally have a problem with the 6.5 gallon size either, but I've come close to a blow-up once, so don't think that 6.5 gallons is automatically not going to asplode on you. Know how to set up blowoff tubes, and have the parts you need handy.

*making decisions based on actual evidence, rather than hyperbole, testimonials and anecdote? Truly a novel idea in today's internet based world.

 

Any decent length of copper or stainless that you can get into a cooler of ice will work. My pre-chiller really isn't fancy at all, it's actually even slightly fugly. It's about 1/3 of the length of my wort chiller, and is bent into four coils of approximately 9" diameter. This fits into a five gallon bucket which I fill with ice (they do make styrofoam cooler inserts for five gallon buckets, which I also use, but it wouldn't really matter much). It's attached inline before my wort chiller via plastic tubing and hose clamps. Not fancy, not expensive, but cuts cooling time from well over an hour to about 20 minutes, if you have enough ice*.

You could theoretically insert this pre-chiller of mine into any cooler and it would work, as long as the cooler had ice in it.

*for a day of drinking beer plus making beer, keeping your beers on ice, and transferring most of the ice to the bucket near the end of the brew day, 20 lbs of ice is enough, but 10 lbs is not enough

 

Oh yeah, buckets will work fine for anyone...they are a lot easier to clean...for instance. I just enjoy looking at the beer from time to time, to see how it's coming along. I also like having the ability to completely seal the fermenter...not that is matters a great deal during primary. Strictly a personal preference. I also ferment in a chest freezer, and there have been many times when I stick my head in there, to take a closer look at the thermometers, and my eyes immediately start burning. Quite a bit of CO2 hanging out near the top.

 

Seems like as good a thread as any -

Does anyone know if buckets are light-permeable? I've been having a hard time keeping it below 70 in my closet, but it's now cruising at 65 in the middle of the floor with a fan on it and some ice in the swamp cooler. I feel like I read that inchrisin doesn't worry about light because of fermenting in buckets. It makes sense that between the bucket and a dark t-shirt, it should be fine, but it's just strange to me.

 

A blow off tube is just that, a tube that fits into the hole in your fermentor. One end in the fermentor, the other end in a bucket of water. Basically a giant airlock. The first few days the yeast will be very active and will rise accordingly. The tube allows all the excess gas an krausen to leave easily and the water keeps it airtight. When it calms down you can put your regular airlock back on. Youtube is your friend.

 

These questions come up a lot'round here.
Have you searched the BA archives?
Lotsa good stuff to be had.