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!!!

I ordered this yesterday from morebeer.com. I have done a fair amount of ordering fom these guys in the past and I am usually pretty pleased. The customer service is generally quite good on technical issues and order issues. I’ll track how long the order takes to get from West Coast to East Coast.

I also ordered a new high pressure gauge for my CO2 regulator. I knocked over the tank when moving the fridge and smashed it. The regulator still works fine but I can’t tell how much gas is in the tank anymore. I also ordered a regulator cage to protect the gauges for the next time I knock it over. I’ll post pics of the replacement procedure once the gauge and cage show up with the oxygentation setup.

Happy Brewing!!

Now that I have a propane cooker, I need to get some other equipment. The most important item is a wort chiller. Since I will be brewing a larger volume of wort, I need something that will cool this larger volume from just under boiling temperatures to fermentation temperatures (around 70 degrees).

When you first start out brewing your own beer, you boil a concentrated wort that ranges from 1 to 2 gallons for recipes that make 5 gallons of beer. After you are done boiling it, you add it to your fermentation vessel with enough plain ol’ water to make 5 gallons. As you probably can guess, it’s a lot easier and quicker to cool 1 to 2 gallons of almost boiling wort to 70 degrees. I would take my boiling pot and let it sit in my kitchen sink in an ice bath for about 10 minutes. While the pot was sitting there, I would take 3+ gallons of spring water that were cooled in the fridge and pour them into my fermantation bucket. Pouring my wort into this cool water always brought the wort to a temp where I could put my yeast in and not be afraid of killing the little guys.

Why do you need to cool the wort quickly? Well, the faster you can get the wort into the fermentation vessel (just fancy talk for bucket), introduce yeast, and seal it up, the less chance there is for wild yeast to get into your wort and make it taste funky. Quick cooling means more control over the final taste of the beer.

After some research, More Beer looks like it’s the place for me to buy this piece of equipment. The free shipping offer on orders over 59 bucks is the biggest reason I am ordering from this site.

Here’s a photo of the one I want:

I have some other items I want to buy too. Once I get a moment to order it, I will let you know how the experience is.

Here’s a post about getting my wort chiller.