I’ve brewed plenty of extract beers, all worked out great. I’m confident I can do that now.
Still got about 20 pints of Coopers Mexican lager left which has turned out very nice.

But now I want to go to the next step, brewing grain, copying beers. Hobgoblin is my favourite beer right now, if I could make that I’d be so happy.

But before that., I want to start. Massive Brewery made some kits a while back but are no longer selling.

Recommendations for starter kits of this nature that let me build up?

Ta.

Jimmy of the farm demonstrated how to make craft beer using a Burco boiler and a modified coolbox. The cool box was used to steep the mash. He put a copper loop in the base to allow for draining without bringing out any solids (slots cut in the underside of the tubing), plumbed through the side of the box. He boiled up the wort in the Burco and added the hops, other ingredients. Rapid cooling of the wort was with a homemade coil made of micro-bore copper attached to the cold tap. The tap on the Burco allowed for easy transfer of the finished wort into the brew bucket.
The programme was one of the cooking ones with Jamie Oliver, and Paloma Faith was the guest if you want to see for yourself on 4OD.

I put together a list a while back that is a bit more useful than the Massive Brewery kit and is the same price.

Linky

Also…this one has an electric boiler if you’d prefer to not use your stove. The price of this always surprises me!

I have done a few kits since Christmas and the whole thing has escalted quite quickly.I just did my first all grain brew yesterday.

I got my kit off ebay, full set up, boiler, mash tub,chiller, FV, barrel and bottles, with some malt as well for £70. Very happy, in excellent condition only used a couple of times.

However, if you have any half decent DIY skills you can make up a lot of the stuff yourself. The mash tub is just a 30l coolbox fitted with a plastic tap and a strainer, they sell them for about £75, way overpriced.

The best thing I have done is make a brewfridge from an old fridge, heater and temperature controller.

I did find all grain very hard work and quite messy, hopefully it will get better as I get used to it.

I recommend looking into BIAB (Brew in a Bag) for a simple way of doing this with less outlay on equipment. If you get into it you may want to upgrade but I have successfully done 20+ brews using this technique.

BIAB is definitely the easiest way into all grain in my opinion, and to be honest i don’t really feel the need to go into a three vessel set up, i’m getting efficiencies as good as that with BIAB. the kit that Peterfile linked to is what i have and has 99% of all you’ll need, the exceptions being some tubing for the chiller and a decent thermometer.

That is a brilliant price for all that kit.

I’m a 3 vessel man but if I were recommending kit for someone starting out on all grain then BIAB would be it.

Check out jimsbeerkit.co.uk for lots of brewing info (the forum specifically)

Disclaimer: I am a moderator on JBK 😉

Try the “Brewers of STW” thread too

Brilliant, thanks guys. I’m a bit hectic right now but will have a proper look nearer the weekend, I quite like the idea of a boil in the bag set up to make things a bit easier to start. I’ve booked markde your links Peterfile, very helpful, thanks a lot.

Disclaimer: I am a moderator on JBK

*Waves* I spend more time their than I do here these days, saw that gobuchul posts their as well, do you use the same user name?

Check out jimsbeerkit.co.uk

I read this site a lot (although I haven’t posted there yet!) and it’s probably my favourite homebrew forum although there are lots of good ones!

I personally started with the Massive kit this time last year but have upgraded everything in the kit (although still doing 10L batches). Looking to upgrade to 19L soon with a longer term goal to start kegging. Smaller batches are great IMO if you want to do loads of brews and experiment a lot. If you have less time and just want to make cheap decent beer to drink then I think going bigger is better in the long run!

I’ve only been doing BIAB and have no plans to go full-on 3 vessel (haven’t got the space for one thing). As far as I can see there are no real disadvantages to the BIAB method unless you are doing brews so big that physically lifting the bag becomes a challenge!

try this. part 1 of 3 (IIRC)

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfi86yzhPvw[/video]