Brewing Essentials: Equipment, Tips and More!

MoreBeer’s Homebrewing Kit 

This is a run of the mill beginner brew kit, Even at $70 you can make great beer with this kit. Most brewers start out with something like this either from a shop or cobbled together from stray buckets. It’s a perfectly inexpensive way for a brewer to get their feet wet before committing to the equipment addiction most of us homebrewers have.

Clawhammer Electric Brewing Kit 

This kit includes everything a brewer needs to brew great beer. It doesn’t include a recipe kit but you can find lots of recipes here. Just supply an electric outlet and you’re set. Electric brewing is an awesome way for brewers who don’t have outdoor space but still want to do all grain brewing. I’ve been using an electric system for years and can attest to how nice it is to not have to hike all my equipment outside. If you have 240V power, that’s the way to go it will be faster but the 120V system still gets the job done nicely.

The Brew Bag

Most  home brewers graduate from extract to all grain brewing and the easiest way to do that is get a Brew Bag. It’s a bag that holds the grain in the mash so you don’t have to deal with building or buying a mash tun and it works great. The use of these bags has become so popular there’s an entire style of brewing called Brew in a Bag or BIAB!

Anvil 10 Gallon Kettle

 If you’re going to start making all grain batches, even if you’re still doing it on your stove top, you’re going to need a kettle that’s larger than a soup pot. I absolutely love this one, it’s double walled so it retains heat well for your mash and the construction seems like it will last for centuries.

Bayou Classic Stainless Steel Turkey Fryer Kit

If you have space outdoors and to join the ranks of garage and backyard brewers, a really inexpensive way to get a decent kettle and propane burner is by getting a Turkey Fryer kit. I’ve brewed on many fryer burners and they actually heat faster than my fancy homebrew burner!

Floating Dip Tubes

For a homebrewer who is already kegging their beer, a floating dip tube is a cheap yet essential piece of equipment if you like clear beer. It works by allowing the tap to pull beer from the top of the keg instead of the bottom where all the hop and yeast sludge is. This cuts down brew to drink time from a month to around two weeks, and who wants to wait around for beer?

Ferrari of Italy Emily Bottle Capper 

Most beginning brew kits come with cappers that aren’t great. For $17 you can save yourself from broken bottles and prevent carpal tunnel with this upgraded capper. It’s literally the Ferrari of hand cappers. It’s well made and you end up using less force even though they look similar to the ones that come in kits.

Refractometer 

Most homebrew kits come with a device to measure alcohol known as a hydrometer. They are usually glass, break if you look at them wrong, and you have to use almost a whole pint of beer to get a reading. If you hate wasting beer as much as I do, a refractometer might be for you. You can get ABV readings with just a drop of liquid once before and once after the yeast do their magic.

The Hydra Immersion Chiller by Jaded Brewing

If you hate wasting time and water and are still using the chiller that came with your first kit, a great upgrade is the Hydra chiller. This chiller can cool from boil to room temperature in less than 8 minutes!

Wallpaper or ‘Hudson Sprayer’

This is the single most requested piece of equipment I have. It’s basically a pressurized sprayer meant for spraying wallpaper. It makes it so easy to coat your equipment with sanitizer without giving yourself carpal tunnel.

Brewfather App

This is my favorite homebrew app! I use it exclusively now. The user interface is easy to understand and has everything you need to develop recipes and keep track of your beers! It also pairs really well with electronic airlocks like Tilt and Plaato.

Kegco Homebrew Kegerator Conversion Kit

If you have an old fridge that still runs you can convert it into a kegerator and serve beer right out of the door! Best part is you still have the freezer to store your hops in!

Distilled Hop Oil

I have an endless fascination with this stuff. It’s the essential oil of hops. If you have an IPA that just isn’t quite right, you can add a drop to a glass or an entire bottle to a keg and it will really elevate the hoppiness and mask some of the unwanted off flavors.

Tapcooler Counter Pressure Bottle Filler

This device allows you to easily and cleanly fill bottles off a carbonated keg. The counter pressure reduces foaming in the bottles so you don’t lose beer and it allows you to purge bottles with CO2 so you don’t oxidize your beer!