Adventures of a Beginning Home Brewer
Starter Kits: Single Stage vs Secondary Fermentation
Let me start by saying I am a beginning home brewer. I have only been brewing a few years, so I’m not here to be your “expert” on home brewing. But, since I am still basically a beginner, I suppose I am an expert beginner home brewer! Adventures of a Beginning Home Brewer will be a place where I will offer guidance, share my successes, laugh off failures and struggles, and heck, maybe occasionally go off topic and just talk about beer stuff in general. So, crack open a bottle of your favorite craft beer and let’s get started!
So,
you want to be a home brewer… Well, let’s start things off by talking about starter
equipment as this is where any new home brewer needs to start. There are many
pieces of equipment you will need to brew your own beer. The add-ons and
upgrades are endless! But let’s not get confused with all that yet; we are
beginners after all.
Here
is what I suggest; buy a starter kit! Why confuse yourself with trying to get a
pro kit put together with countless trips to the supply store? Depending on a
couple factors, you could be set up and brewing beer for around 125 - 200 bucks.
That is including the ingredients for your first batch, bottles, caps,
everything! Most even come with an instructional DVD.
When
buying your starter kit you basically have to make one choice; do you want a
single stage fermentation set up or do you want to have secondary fermentation
in your rig. So, what’s the difference?
(Single Stage Fermentation Start Up Kit)
(Start Up Kit with Secondary Fermentation)
In
a single stage fermentation set up, you have one bucket that your beer ferments
in. Like the name says, a SINGLE stage. In a set up with secondary fermentation
you will do everything the same as in a single stage, but after the beer is
done with the primary fermentation you transfer the beer into a glass vessel
called a carboy for the secondary fermentation. Secondary fermentation is kind
of a misleading name as the beer is pretty much fermented after the primary
fermentation is done. The secondary fermentation is basically a place where sediment
is removed to give your beer clarity and where your beer can age some. This is
also where you would add hops for dry hopping when or if you eventually decide
to do that.
My
vote; go with the secondary fermentation. The whole brewing process takes weeks
(mostly inactive time on your part though) and you have used quality
ingredients. Not having the best beer you can in the end seems silly to me. It
really doesn’t add much time as the only additional work is a little bit of
equipment sanitizing and about 10 minutes of transferring your beer to another
container. So pop for the kit with the extra equipment to make your beer as
good as you can.
Here
are a couple of kits you can buy that will have you set up and ready to go!
Single
fermentation kits:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/beer-equipment-starter-kits/essential-brewing-starter-kit.html (Does not include bottles.)
Kits
with secondary fermentation:
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/brewing-starter-plus-kit.html (This is the set up that I
started with and still use today.)
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/deluxe-brewing-starter-kit.html (Does not include bottles.)
There
are additional components that you can purchase to add to your starter kit to
make things a bit easier, but for now I would say you should just start with a
starter kit and brew a few batches to see if you like home brewing. After that
you can start dumping money into pimpin’ out your home brewery with fancy
add-ons… We will address those add-ons down the road.
No comments:
Post a Comment