The equipment kit I bought came from Strange Brew in Marlborough, MA.
You can also buy kits off of Amazon, and another online favorite of mine is High Gravity.
The equipment kit I bought is called the True Brew Home Brewing kit. It comes with the following materials:
- Handbook
- Glass Carboy & Stopper (some kits are sold with a plastic fermenting bucket with lid instead. The one that comes with a glass carboy is a little more expensive. It depends more on your personal preference. Some people like to use all glass, and some people use all plastic buckets.)
- Bottling bucket with hole for spigot
- Spigot for bottom of bottling bucket
- Brush for cleaning inside of bottles
- Adhesive thermometer for outside of fermenter
- Glass hydrometer
- 3-piece airlock for top of fermenter
- Bottle capper tool
- Siphon equipment and hose
- 8 packets of C-brite sanitizing cleanser
Other materials that will make it easier:
- Copper tubing (found at Home Depot)- coil it up, and you will use to cool the beer before you put it into the fermentation bucket and add the yeast. Without it, you will have to sit around and wait for the beer to cool before moving onto the next stage.
- Plastic Tubing (found at Home Depot)- This is hooked to either end of the copper tubing and the siphon to run the water through the beer. 10 ft should be more than enough.
- Auto-siphon (bought at Strange Brew)- This is an upgrade from the one that comes with the kit. This is an alternative to you having to use your mouth to start the siphon.
- 15 gallon Stainless Steel Stockpot (bought at High Gravity)- For most kits you can make it in 1-2 gallons on your stove in a smaller stockpot, but this reduces the likelihood of boiling over. You can also brew a bigger batch in a bigger pot if you ever want to expand.
- Burner (bought at High Gravity)- Use with a small propane tank and it will enable you to make the beer outside of the kitchen (your wife will thank you).
- Stirring Paddle (bought at Strange Brew)- A long handled paddle to help you stir in the 15 gallon stockpot.
- Thermometer (bought mine at Wal-Mart)- You'll need this while cooking. For most recipes, the first steps require a close monitoring of the temperature.
- Timer- Certain parts of recipes need to be timed.
- Additional Fermenter Bucket (bought at Strange Brew)- I bought this to change my process from a one stage to a two stage fermentation process. Using the bucket first is the first stage, and transferring to the glass carboy is the second stage. This refines your brew one more time to remove more dead yeast and other particles that you don't want in your final product.
- Glass Bottles (I saved and cleaned out bottles from beer I bought at the store)- These should preferably be brown to let less light in that can damage the beer. The glass bottles should also be pop off since during the carbonation process, carbonation can leak out of twist off bottles when reused.
- 5 Star, Star San Sanitizer (bought at Strange Brew)- Some sanitizers are bleach based, so I bought a less harsh cleaner.
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