I got a Mr. Beer kit for V-Day 2011, and i love making beer! Though 2-gallons at a time with a plastic fermenter is a little week. What is the next step? I want to upgrade to a 5 gallon carboy but i don’t know what else i need or really what to do with it… Where do i start?
Congratulations! Welcome to the AHA forum. Try this.
Thats exactly what i was looking for thank you!
i recommend you start all grain 2 gallon batches and get the process down with that fermenter. then start stepping up the scale if you still want to go to 5 gallons. at first you could mash on stove top with grain bags it works okay for me. then you can step up the scale by getting a BLUE cooler as a mash tun, a bigger kettle - turkey fryer- and bigger fermenter. i still recommend avoiding large glass carboys. use plastic buckets or better bottles. i am shrinking to 1 gallon batches but i may cut back up to 2. there are as many processes as there are brewers. read, practice, read.
… Ok i am a real rookie here, what is meant by an all grain? I have only used the condensed HME’s and UME’s bought on the Mr. Beer site, mixed with sugar and water
All-grain is the traditional type of brewing, with just the malted barley (grain), hops, water and yeast. Tends to eschew the use of extracts for the most part- which is what you’ve been using. Not so hard you can’t start immediately.
As a Mr. Beer starter like you a couple of thoughts
You want a 5 gallon batch, not a 5 gallon carboy, that requires headspace beyond the 5 gallons.
I use wine & beer buckets for my fermenter now.
To start you can buy a kit beer such as brewers best kits, that have 2 cans of extract, but an extra pack of yeast, and split the kit. Two cans make it easy to split.
Don’t worry about the difference in size (Mr. Beer being smaller than 2.5 gallons, it’s close enough for now)
Your cost should be close to half the cost of using Mr. Beer kits for the same strength beer.
A ROT on equipment, ALWAYS try and buy bigger than you think you need.
A turkey fryer works well as a brew kettle. and you need a chiller, a coil of copper will work fine.
Read this!
What he said.
Try to find a local home brew club. Plan on attending a few home brew sessions and see all the different methods and tools used. That way you can learn from others experiences and try to avoid the mistakes we have all made along the way.