To talk about this item, I couldn’t use the ol’ rectangle to highlight it.

Not sure what kind of shape that is, but it gets the job done.

This is an item that you may not have seen before, unless you have random, esoteric instruments of measurement sitting around the house.

A hydrometer is used to measure the specific gravity or density of a liquid as compared to water.

If you look at the photo, there are two things highlighted. The plastic cylinder on the right is used to pull a sample of your brew. The other item, the glass tube with the black tip, is placed inside the plastic cylinder and allowed to float in the sample.

The glass tube has a weight at the bottom of it and scale visible near the top. When the tube comes to a stop after floating in the liquid for a few seconds, you can line up the top of the liquid with the scale on the tube. The reading on the hydrometer tube can be recorded as your wort’s specific gravity before fermentation.

For your reference: Water has a mark of 1.000. My maple porter had a measurement of 1.080…which means my wort was denser than water due to the addition of a lot of malt and maple syrup. Note: We actually didn’t use a hydrometer to get this reading. We used Mike refractometer to get this reading. These are more expensive devices but make measuring specific gravity a whole lot easier.

Taking a reading before and after fermentation can give you an idea of how much alcohol is in your beer. We will get into that calculation in another post.

Even though a hydrometer doesn’t help you to make beer, it can help you to better understand your beer.

We continue this beginner kit review…already in progress.

The item highlighted above is a bottling bucket. You can tell it’s a bottling bucket by the spigot that is visible near the bottom.

After the beer is done fermenting, you can transfer the beer (also known as “racking”) to this bucket so that it can easily be transferred to bottles for future consumption.

The bottling bucket allows you to get the beer off of the yeast and allows you to add some priming sugar to the beer before you put it into bottles. Plus the spigot makes it easier to get your beer into bottles if you let gravity help you out.

In the photo, you can see more plastic tubing. This tubing has a special valve at the end of it that only allows liquid to flow through it when the valve is pressed against something…like the bottom of a bottle.

It makes bottle filling easy and less messy.

Here’s an item you may have never seen before. Well, you may have seen plastic tubing before…but maybe not the long clear plastic cylinder with the black rubber and plastic components on it.

The item that is enclosed with the red rectangle is a racking cane. It’s a tool that allows you to transfer your beer from one vessel to another. Mostly likely as a beginner, you will use the racking cane to transfer your beer from the fermenting bucket to the bottling bucket. As you get more experienced and you buy more equipment, you may use it to move your beer to a secondary fermentation vessel or into a keg.

The cane part (the cylinder) generally hooks on the top of your bucket. The end of the cane has a rubber tip that allows beer in enter the cane indirectly. Here is my really crude drawing of how beer flows up the ranking cane tip.

With this tip, the possibility that the yeast sludge that has settled on the bottom of the bucket won’t get sucked through the cane and into wherever you are sending the beer.

This kit’s racking cane actually has an auto siphon on it. It allows you to start a siphon without having to start on with…your mouth…which isn’t really optimal. To work the auto siphon, you would push on the plunger on top of the cane to force air out of the bottom. When you pull up on the plunger, beer gets pulled in and your siphon should start. Pretty sweet!

Let’s get back to the items in the beginner brewing kit and discuss the fermentation bucket.

The white bucket that’s highlighted with the red rectangle is the fermentation bucket. Once you are done boiling your wort in your brew pot, it gets poured into this bucket for the fermentation process….hence the name.

These buckets are made of food grade plastic, which means it’s plastic that has nothing in it like dyes that are harmful to people. A beginning brewer should keep in mind that if he or she uses the bucket to store things like chemicals or other nasty things that are harmful to people, then the bucket is no longer food grade. So, to be safe, only use your fermentation bucket to ferment beer, and not to mix oil-based paint.

Buckets you get in a kit can hold at least 6 gallons of liquid, so you will have plenty of room to brew a 5 gallon batch of beer.

It comes with a cover that seals tight on top with a hole to insert an airlock (That’s the funny squiggly plastic thing on top of the bucket with the red cap in the picture). The airlock is an important piece of the fermentation bucket, since it allows carbon dioxide to escape but keeps the outside air out.

If you didn’t have an airlock, then you would run the risk of air getting into the fermenting beer through the little hole in the cover…which can bring in wild, weird yeast into the mix and result in off flavors.

If you didn’t have an airlock and the cover didn’t have a hole in it, all the carbon dioxide the yeast produce during fermentation would build up and you would have…yeah…a beer bomb. BOOM!

There are a few different styles of airlocks, which will be discussed in a later post.

There are other types of fermentation vessels, but for the beginner the bucket works just fine.

I know yesterday’s post discussed a starter brewing kit and did imply that I would write about the different items in the kit, but I think I want to stop myself before I get waaaaaaaaay ahead.   There is  a very important piece of equipment all beginning homebrewers need to have: A brew pot. 

Every brewer, not matter the experience level, needs a brew pot.  You need a pot to boil your malts and hops to make your beer. 

You could buy a brew pot from a homebrewing supply store right off the bat, but it’s not a requirement…like the kit is.  Most people have a large stock pot in their kitchens that can be used for homebrewing.  If you are just starting out, my opinion is that you shouldn’t have to invest any more than is absolutely necessary.  Believe me,  it can get expensive.

Most beginner homebrew recipes only require you to boil an amount of 1 to 2 gallons at the most.  When I started, I was only brewing a gallon and a half of wort so I only needed an 8 quart pot.  If you have a larger one, that’s fine.  The picture below depicts a 22 quart pot.

I don’t think you need one this big to start, but do whatever you want. It’s your money.
I would stick with stainless steel and one with handles that makes it easy to move.

Tomorrow, we’ll talk fermenting buckets!

I just wanted to put a post up stating for the record that I own a Corona Grail mill.  I know, I know.  Many folks knock this mill for many reasons: shreds grain instead of crush, poor adjustability, hand crank is not motorized.

Well, let it be known here to all that this mill works just fine for the budget brewer.  I have used the mill as is, without modification for years (at least the last 7 years) and it performs just fine.  I have used it for upwards of 25 plus pounds of grain before.  I have it dialed in just fine, and I don’t require much tweaking of the milling plate.  However, I have it setup so that with just a couple turns of the wing nuts I can easily increase or decrease the crush on the fly if necessary (which I only find required when I am using wheat malt).

Would I like a roller style mill with a motor?  Sure.  But I own a Corona mill and I make great beer with it.  My standard efficiency is close to 80%.  Someday I’ll upgrade, but until then I’ll save my money for malt and more critical stuff.

Well I got my order last night from MoreBeer.  I received my replacement high pressure gauge for my busted regulator, a regulator cage (so I don’t knock it over and bust it again), I received a racking cane clip to hold the cane to the bucket (just a cheap fun gadget) and I received my coveted aeration/oxygenation setup to improve my yeast starters and wort fermentation.  Lastly, I also received a weldless thermometer set up to install in my kettle (damn I have a lot of stuff to do if I want to be ready to brew soon).

So today is the 28th which means it took just under two weeks to get here.  Not to bad from the west coast with regular ground shipping.  It may have arrived sooner if they had actually picked the order the day or day after I placed it, but they still turned it around in time for this weekend…..

Which reminds me I am tentatively planning a double brew day this holiday weekend.  Not sure when yet, but I am planning a batch of Scottish 60/- and Belgian Tripel.  I’ll post up the recipes I am planning on using soon and I’ll hopefully get up some pictures and a Brewlog with it. Exciting Exciting!!!