Winemaker wanting to make beer

[sixdoubleo]

Assuming I already have all the equipment necessary to make wine (primary buckets, carboys, siphons, sanitizers, stoppers, hydrometer, ph meter, etc) what do I need to add to my arsenal to make beer? I'm not sure if it's something I want to do long term, but I would at least like to try a simple beer kit or something.

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Deezil]

The one thing i know i dont have, is a large boil pot. And a way to cool the boiling wort down - i'll probably go with the sink-full-of-ice unless i stumble across a better idea.

I dont have any kind of blow-off carboy adapter either, for those instances when a krausen (i believe thats how its spelled; the foamy 'head' that builds on a fermenting beer) gets too big for its britches and decides to overflow.

 

[pkeeler]

You will need a decent sized boil pot. A kit will probably specify the boil size. For you first, you can get by with two pots. BTW, with two pots, it is not necessary to split the hops evenly.

The only other area a wine maker would be lacking would be a bottle capper. The hand held ones work fine.

 

[pkeeler]

I dont have any kind of blow-off carboy adapter either, for those instances when a krausen (i believe thats how its spelled; the foamy 'head' that builds on a fermenting beer) gets too big for its britches and decides to overflow.

If you put a 5 gal. kit in a 6.5 gal. carboy, it should not blow off. If it comes to it, you can stick your racking cane into the stopper hole, then attach hose to the other end of the cane and run that to a bucket half filled with water with some bleach.

 

[WinoOutWest]

Assuming I already have all the equipment necessary to make wine (primary buckets, carboys, siphons, sanitizers, stoppers, hydrometer, ph meter, etc) what do I need to add to my arsenal to make beer? I'm not sure if it's something I want to do long term, but I would at least like to try a simple beer kit or something.

Thanks for any advice.

I thought the same thing and after reading about whole grain process I decided to make a few kits first. I've now done about a half dozen of the BrewHouse kits and couldn't be more pleased. They recommended a separate primary for the beer and to use Idophor as a sanitizer instead of kmeta.

I was very pleased with the taste vs effort of these kits. They are less work than the wine kits.

 

[Tom]

You will need a capper and long neck bottles.
Also need different chemicals, and a big pot (5gal)
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