Brewing Equipment

Below are items you need to brew basic partial mash beer. Some homebrew shops make nice kits that will give you most of this equipment.

Large Brewpot
This pot should be 5-8 gallons and made of stainless steel or enamel.

Heating Source
A burner on your stove should work, but realize it takes a while to boil 3-4 gallons of water, especially with electric. I recommend buying a turkey fryer burner, which operates with a propane gas tank. Buy your turkey fryer burner in early December when they go on sale after Thanksgiving, or ask friends/relatives if you can borrow one. Your propane gas tank from the backyard grill will power the burner.

Sanitizing Solution
You do not need to worry about sanitizing until you are done boiling and placing the wort in the primary fermenter. The primary and secondary fermenter and bottles, along with all items used in those phases must be sanitized. Read this previous entry for my recommended sanitizers.

Primary Fermenter
Most people start out by using a 6 or 6.5 gallon food grade plastic bucket with a lid, and these usually work well. Make sure the bucket is new and be careful to prevent scratches that can occur when objects or other buckets are stored inside the bucket. Scratches can harbor microorganisms that can damage your beer. Once your budget allows, buy a 6 or 6.5 gallon glass carboy, which is a glass water jug. Glass is not porous like plastic, it is more difficult for items to grow on the walls, and glass allows you to monitor the fermentation process. The bucket/carboy must have a lid seal, and an airlock. The airlock is filled with water, which allows built up carbon dioxide to escape, but it is a one way system preventing microorganisms from entering.

Thermometers
Buy one sticker thermometer for all of you fermentation buckets/carboys. You will also need a floating thermometer, which can be placed into the boiling wort and when taking specific gravity measurements.

Hydrometer
A hydrometer looks like a floating thermometer, but it has three different scales to measure liquid density, sugar percentage, and potential alcohol. You first take a hydrometer reading after the boiled wort cools down, before the yeast is pitched. It is important to record the temperature along with the specific gravity reading. Take one more thermometer/hydrometer reading after the beer has fermented, before you add the priming sugar for bottling. With these two specific gravity readings you can determine the final alcohol content. The thermometer readings are used to scale the specific gravity readings for the standard formula. Your hydrometer should come with the proper tables and equations.

Spoon
A long stainless steel spoon is ideal for stirring the wort during the boil.