I’m was planning on buying the kit to start brewing soon so I’ve been trying to decide what equipment I need to buy. You can pick up the most basic brewing kits for around $60 but they’re really only designed for the basic production of extract kit brews. If you want to brew ‘all-grain’ rather than from extract you require some type of mashing system to extract the sugars & other good stuff from the grain. Home-brew mashing system range from a plastic bucket with a false bottom through converted water coolers all the way up to brewing sculptures – miniature versions of industrial brewing systems. If you read the various online brewing forums, most of the old hands recommend starting with a basic system as part of your brewing apprenticeship but I’ve decided this is not for me and to go straight to the more advanced system. I’ll eventually need to upgrade to a brewing sculpture so it seems pointless to waste money on equipment that I’ll soon outgrow.
I’ve been checking out every homebrew equipment supplier I could find online to see what is available and a company called Beer, Beer & More Beer (aka B3) stands out as having the best kit. Luckily they’re a based in Concord which is only an hour away so last weekend Ealish & I took a trip up there to take a look at things. They’re a very friendly & helpful bunch and were happy to open up their workshop to show me some brewing sculptures under construction. I left Concord without buying anything but with a definite idea of what I wanted. Unfortunately I was so absorbed by what I was seeing that I forgot to get the name of the guy who was helping me.
Ealish & discussed things at home and on Tuesday I rang B3 to speak to their Brewing Sculpture guy James Cossart. After a brief discussion I put my name down on the list to get a B3-1550 system. I haven’t decided on all the options I’m getting yet, but unfortunately there is a two month waiting list at the moment so I can pop up there in a couple of weeks to spec it all out completely.
It’s frustrating that I’ll have to wait that long to get started but I guess in the meantime I can keep reading all the books on brewing that I’ve collected and studying the work of established micro-breweries. Especially the latter. In fact I must study some more right now.