Hello all,
I am going to start making homebrew beer and was wondering if anyone had any suggestions which is the best kit to purchase??
cheers
Andy
Starting off home brew beer - which is the best kit to buy?
afah0447 on 26/11/2018 - 22:38
Comments
I haven't done it this year because I haven't had time but its super easy and if you have time you are making money practically, sterilise everything and you should be right
Hey Andy
Start off with something called a "Fresh Wort Kit", it's easy and will help you get a few brews under your belt. Just make sure that you really clean your equipment and watch your fermentation temp. Good luck.
https://aussiehomebrewer.com/ this website is good but theres a few people that are clearly over the top
Coopers diy kit is $99 on special at big w at the moment dont know how long for but usually $120 ive got 2 of them and does the job
Why did you buy 2?
To make twice the beer and stocking up for new years
You don't need to buy the whole kit again, you can just do one brew after the other. Or buy another fermenter bucket.
I've got 5 brews in storage and have only ever bought one starter kit. The hardest part is collecting enough glass long neck bottles.
@WatchNerd: One brew after another i would still have buy beer trying to stock up is difficult when i drink a few a night
Cheers mate. I think this looks like the best option so far!
Hi Andy,
I just wrote a massive post and OzB decided to crash and not respond… so youll have to accept these cliffnotes instead:
A coopers kit is a pretty common starting place, or a fresh wort kit (essentially the same thing, however less condensed and made by your local). This is a great way to test the waters and if you enjoy it i recommend progressing. The only downside of brewing like this is, most of the brewing has been done by someone else. You are really just adding finishing touches (additional hops, extract, or other fermantables) diluting with water and pitching your yeast.
You can spend as much as your budget allows, but consider if this is a hobby you will keep up. Small outlay to see if this is the thing for you is recommended. Some people jump straight into a 3V all grain setup and love it.
I personally started with a coopers kit a bit over 10 years ago. I wanted to move into All grain brewing, but was a bit sceptical about it being too hard. Ended up joining a movement, known simple as "brew in a bag" as it was emerging. Its essentially a single vessel version of all grain brewing. I find it quite simple and the results are amazing.
Having said that, people have won beer competitions with no more equipment than a pot.
The big thing that deters people from brewing, asides from the initial information overload and fear of failure, is sanitising your equipment. The main gripe is bottles. I personally lasted maybe 10 brews before i moved into kegging. Once you move towards kegs, you're gonna be spending some money, so stick with the bottles initially.
If you're in melbourne (im northern sububrbs), i can part with a variety of bottles for not much. I've got a mix of fliptops and crown seal suitable bottles.
Any questions, I'm happy to help out a new brewer.
And the gospel of homebrew and my parting advice for the day you take the plunge - 'relax, don't worry, have a home brew'.
Cheers mate for your advice. I have to admit i have been putting it off for years based on your very advice…fear of messing it up!
Im in Canberra but thanks for the offer on the bottles. I think the Coops DIY for $99 might be easier and cheapest way to begin the brewing journey.
No worries mate. To be honest, its very easy to make decent beer. it's just practice and refinement to go from good to great beer.
Then being able to replicate great beer is a challenge when you allow variables: temperature control, quantity control, quality control are all things youll learn so you can minimize variance.
Go the DIY kit. If you love that after a few brews and youve got some money to spend, i couldn't recommend a robobrew enough if you decide to then move onto all grain.
The coopers yeast is usually a bit eh, so id recommend some US-04 or US-05 pending on if youre gonns start with a lager or ale base.
Andy,
First, as another learned user has said go to a specialist brewing forum - like https://aussiehomebrewer.com/ or perhaps even better the Coopers forum - I say this as AHB tends to be very dominated by folks who brew from scratch i.e grain - so using kits isn't as common as on Coopers - who are very newbie friendly.
Secondly, by kit I assume you mean the hopped malt extracts? And not the starter brewing 'kits' they sell that have extract, a fermenter, and a bunch of other bits in them? This said there really is no BEST kit to buy as it depends on what your preferred style of beer is.
As someone who's brewed for several years - and as K&K (kit and kilo) brewers go I think I know my stuff the only thing I'd say is ensure it's an ale (you likely won't have ability to keep a lager anywhere near the temps needed during fermentation) and you'll actually find something like a stout, dark ale or porter more forgiving of any mistakes other styles.
Again Coopers forum is the best one for learning - the couple of bits of advice I'd give you are:
- ensure you buy yourself some quality Starsan/or similar acid no-rinse sanitiser (the old school ways of sanitising (which is different from cleaning!) are poor in comparison) - over the top hygiene is key to getting good results so be pedantic!after hygiene, temperature is perhaps the next biggest variant in the end result - so UNLESS you can keep your brew constant at you desired temps you will end up with crappy flavours. Look for a small bar fridge that will fit a fermenter inside it and add a simple temp controller to have PERFECT temps for the 2-3 weeks you're fermenting. I did this from my first brew and is a million times better than the nonsense others have to do to keep their brew at good temps.
use 100% malt in your brews rather than dextrose or 'brew enhancers' - it's marginally more expensive but makes a noticeable difference - NEVER use sugar unless it's a niche recipe.
use extra hops and grain steeps to massively improve stock kits - even the best kits are pretty so-so if left as is - but a simple 100g grain steep and 50g of the right hops either as a late boil addition or dry hop and it's suddenly a craft beer quality effort!
And ensure you bulk prime your end brew - do not individually measure sugar into each bottle - is PITA and good way to end up with exploding bottles.
Buy some bulk sodium percarbonate to 'clean' your gear - is the active ingredient in Napisan and is fabulous stuff (must be mixed with water 60c+ to release O2.
Don't go opening your fermenter to check - thats a big no-no - trust what you did was correct and give all brews a full 3 weeks in the fermenter - the extra week will decrease the time it needs to sit in the bottle secondary fermenting to lose that 'greenness'.
Folks will say bottles are PITA - and honestly once you have a good system they're pretty easy plus no need for dedicated fridge for kegs etc - try and locate QUALITY bottles - i.e the Coopers glass ones - they have much thicker walls than the other glass bottles other brands use (which you will see SPECIFICALLY SAY NOT TO REUSE!) - you take a risk of explosions if you use the thinner ones. Gumtree is a good way to find bottles as folks often home brew and then quit as they find it too hard. Get brown bottles ONLY _ never clear or green.
And again be absolutely fastidious about cleaning your gear before and after use. Just takes one silly move and you can ruin 20-25L of beer.
Others will say you don't have to be so careful - and thats 100% true but a lot of folks will have 'tainted' brews that they don't even recognise as they're so used to it that way - it's only a really bad infection that makes a batch undrinkable but minor ones throw the flavours off. I've never lost so much as a single bottle via breakage or infection in 5yrs+.
Anyway try the Coopers forum…..FWIW the Coopers Australian Pale Ale is a good very versatile kit - that was my first brew (with hops and grain steep on the 1st one used) and I still use them now (liternally one in brew fridge as I write). Good luck and enjoy, just make sure you know what you're doing as the first brew can seem a bit of a tricky one but is pretty easy when you know the best process. :-)
If you want to get into home brewing I recommend visiting your local home brew shop & speaking to them face to face. I bought my starter kit from one & don't regret it at all. This way you can ask lots of questions and their kits usually come with a good quality bench capper which makes life a lot easier, plus most supply an extract can for your 1st brew which will be better than the Coopers cans.
Also don't get a fermenter where the sides curve in at the top & has a screw top lid, these are harder to clean. You want one with straight sides and a rip lid, like this. The sooner you can get 2 fermenter buckets so you can do bulk priming the better.
Start collecting your long neck bottles now. The Coopers ones are awesome as they have thicker glass & crown seals. Keep an eye out on Gumtree for home brew equipment like bottles and a 2nd fermenter bucket or even the whole starter kit.
Good advice. If you don’t have a home brew shop handy, the Coopers DIY kit is also a decent starting point, it comes with everything you need to make reasonable beer and it has straight sides these days. $99 delivered @ Coopers.
For a first brew I would make a Coopers Australian Pale Ale with Brew Enhancer 2. It’s super simple and you can’t go wrong if you keep everything clean.
Whatever you decide OP, be sure to give it a go. Home brewing is an awesome hobby I would recommend to anyone.
I use the coopers 23 L fermenter, I find it is easy to use and clean. My favourite extract so far is the coopers bootmaker pale ale. If you want to improve this kit I would recommend steeping 50g of galaxy hops in a 5L 70 degree pot for 20 min and then adding to the fermenter through a strainer. In the last few days of fermenting add another 50g of galaxy hops to the fermenter in a hop sock.
I find a 50/50 split of light dry malt extract and dextrose makes for a good beer at a good cost. I like brewing ales at 16 degrees for a clean flavour and usually use two packets of coopers yeast or one packet of SafAle-US-05 yeast. If you don't have a spare fridge find a used bar fridge on ebay/gumtree and purchase a temperature controller.
Cleaning and sterilising bottles is the worst part of brewing. I add 1/2 teaspoon of brigalow bottle washing detergent to a longneck, fill with hot tap water and soak for couple hours, rinse well with hot water and then sterilise using a vinator with diluted starsan and allow to dry in the dishwasher rack. I cap bottles using a bench capper. Once you drink a beer try and rinse it within few hours, if you don't then you might need to wash with a bottle brush after soaking the bottles.
Stock up on extract cans when they are on special, take yeast from the top and store in fridge until you need them.
If you need ingredients I recommend Triple J Home Brew Good luck :)
Coopers
I did Coopers for decades before I moved to shine
Coopers is the best
try strawberry stout
1 can Coopers Stout
10 Weekbix
1 or 2 jars of jam
(melted in a pot of water & strained)
leave for 3 weeks in fermenter
bottle & leave for 2 monthsMight have to try this one sounds interesting
It tastes even better :)
If you don't like strawberry, use raspberry or a favorite is blackberry - yum
I used to have a 60l fermenter, so I made a double batch all the time, I had a few hundred bottles
I do not use sugar, it shows how much sugar is in Weetbix, I used to say I could have it for brekkie 'cos of the Weetbix ;)
Ozbargain brewing equipment tip-
Go to bunnings and buy a 25 litre water container for $19.50.
for the airlock - drill a hole in to the lid and use some clear tubing into a large jar of water.
also buy the tap for $1.98 at the same time.
or look on gumtree/facebook for your equipment.
$6 vs free.
hand in your ozbargain badge Watchnerd.
seriously, I prefer the tube+jar of water as the small amount of water in the airlock can and does evaporate.
the airlock holds less water and needs to be checked more often.a large jar full of water is very unlikely to evaporate to the point that air/impurities can get into the tank and ruin the fermentation process.
I love checking the airlock and watching it bubble away though. Happy to do some overtime at work so I can afford to pay the $6.00.
a good source of free beer bottles are mexican and japanese restaurants.
Japanese and mexican beer bottles (actual imported beer) have crown tops.
ask them to put them aside.
In addition, if you want to drink other beer as well as your own, Aldi sometimes (one of those times being today, by chance) has German beers with swing top bottles that are perfect for easily bottling homebrew. I like to bottle some in those and some in PET bottles to have both 330mL and 750mL bottles on hand without having to use crown tops.
One thing I've encountered is that you want to ensure you're getting quality ingredients - I've had issues that turned out to be due to one local homebrew shop improperly storing yeast at ambient temp. Switched to yeast from another store that kept it in the fridge and my carbonation and high final gravity issues went away. As someone starting out, it threw me for a bit of a loop at first. That's also where having a chat with the local shop comes into play, they're usually more than helpful with problems you may encounter.
Thanks to everyone above for the time you have put in offering me advice.
As many have mentioned, I think I will opt for the Coopers DIY kit currently on sale for $99.
I should be able to make my money back pretty quickly as the price of beer per case these days is creeping up to near the $50 mark!
I spend near 100 a slab when i buy beer, so home-brew is definitely a win win.
I spend 40 dollars and some time and produce over 2.5 slabs of quality beer.
200 bucks saved.Exactly like me saving alot now cant believe how much ive saved too especially when cartons are $50 plus
If you just want to dip your toe in, you could try a brewsmith 5L kit. They start at $55 for the equipment with the cider kit, and you buy small beer refills from there. I've been doing it for a few years now, and it's a nice way to ease into it with small batches. They are also part grain kits, and give a decent result with little effort. The guys are also super helpful with questions, and have chucked me some free ingredients over the years to help with experimental brews.
All the best.
that is terrible value.
It's also terrible value to mess up a 20 litre brew. Maybe it suits people better if they don't want to experiment with large volumes.
I second the Small Batch brewing option if you want to dip your toe in without all the equipment outlay. I started brewing 10 years ago with a small carboy and a grain bag and experimented with various ingredients to see what flavours worked. There are a couple of options out there like BrewSmith mentioned or Small Batch Brew https://www.smallbatchbrew.com.au/
are there any fresh wort kits available you can brew in the coopers craft brew fermenter - 8.5l? the only ones I have seen have been for like 20+ litres.
Yes, I am drinking one I made up now. Go & search now or ring up tomorrow
Pretty much whatever you can get your hands on, can't go wrong with a Morgans kit from a homebrew store or Coopers from Big W. If secondhand make sure it isnt scratched up inside.