I also would like to hear your opinion about the Tilt, i am even considering building a DIY one.
Best:
High Gravity Electric Brewing Controller - Worked very well, and even though BIAB was a pain for me I still kinda miss it. But the garage was needed for car maintenance, so the brewery had to move outside. (Moisture and tools do not mix.)
Thermapen - If you are serious about brewing and cooking, buy one. You won’t regret it.
Blichmann Therminator - I currently can’t use it, since we’ve lost our outdoor running water at our condo. (long story.) But when I can, it’s great for chilling wort quickly, which means less water wasted.
Worst
5.2 pH buffer-don’t even bother.
Kegco-brand new-manufacture pin lock kegs - I’ve had nothing but trouble with these. The poppet springs are a universal sort that is to stiff, and other varieties of poppets are hit or miss if they’re work consistently or not. One dip tube had some rust inside as well, ruined a few batches trying to figure out where this awful metallic taste was coming from.
Kegco 1/4" MFL to sankey adapters - Little metal adapters that let you use commercial taps on hoses fitted with 1/4" MFL fitting for homebrew taps. Utter waste of money, they will not seal at all. I’ve lost several bottles of CO2 to these lousy things. I’ve found a way to make them work, but they’re still a pain. I’m afraid of snapping them off, I have to torque the fitting on them so tightly.
Top 3:
This Forum
Cheap and Easy AG (thanks Denny!)
BruNWater
Bottom 3
Stirplate: rounded up supplies to make one, then bought one anyways. Used it for one batch and then “Shaken not stirred” came around and got me away from it (been happy ever since, thanks Mark!)
5L ehrlenmeyer flask: again, shaken not stirred has really kept me from using(needing) this anymore.
7.5 Gallon kettle. Worked fine for extract, partial boil; but I only did that for 3 batches before I went AG and then bought a bigger BK
Have you used them with a 1/4 inch nylon flare washer? You’ll never got them to seal without it. I don’t know if I have Kegco brand adapters, but mine work great as long as there’s a flare washer in the mix.
Bad
Glass carboys, nothing wrong with them but I bought a lot initially and now they collect dust, I prefer buckets
Not getting a 15 gallon kettle, I bought a cheap 10 gallon one that’s actually less than 10 gallons
Bottling too long/ Avoiding the start up cost of kegging for 4 years
Good
Chest freezer with stc1000 controller. I spent close 100 on a Johnson that can only heat or cool.
Starting all grain after a few extract batches. Another thanks to Denny for batch sparging/making all grain approachable while also saving me money
Bru’n water and ward labs water report
Where can I find these? I’ll I’ve been able to find locally are copper ones, they come in a MFL to compression adapter fitting…at $4 a pop…now I need to check Amazon…
I bought them from Williams or Northern Brewer or some place. They all ought to have them. Any all metal flare fitting is useless without them.
Best:
1. Kegging system. I never realized how much I hate bottling until I got my first keg. By the following year I owned a dozen.
2. Propane burner. That doesn’t seem like much, but I went the first few years brewing on the stove, and going outside was a Godsend (and helped save my marriage.) :))
3. Little chest freezer dedicated as a primary fermentation chamber for lagers. For 20 years, I was constrained to brew lagers only in the winter time, when my basement temperature was cool enough. Brewing lagers year round is the only way to fly.
Worst:
1. Cheap Chinese ripoff of a Corona mail. Never could get a good crush out of it.
2. Counterflow chiller. This otherwise fine piece of brewing equipment is pretty sucky if you don’t own a pump. I went immersion chiller to counterflow, then bought a Hydra immersion chiller (which probably would be No. 4 on the best list).
3. Racking cane. I never use it. I’ve tried it a couple of times, but it just seems like an extra step compared to just lowering in the siphoning hose without it.
Best:
-
Bru’n Water: for reasons explained above
-
Temperature controlled fermentation chamber: for reasons explained above
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My two gallon cooler mash tun: I brew a lot of small batches and getting better control on mash temperatures greatly improved my smaller brews. I’m also using it as a coolship, allowing me to start spontaneously fermenting smaller batches.
Worst:
-
10 gallon cooler: This really isn’t a bad piece of equipment but I rarely brew even five gallons and have maybe halfway filled the cooler. I was convinced by people who told me I would want to brew larger and larger batches. That never happened. It’s only a bad piece of equipment because I don’t need something this large and I fight temperature loss more than I would with a smaller cooler.
-
8 gallon kettle: My first kettle was a cheap eight gallon tamale steamer. It does what it’s supposed to but it’s too thin to want to use on a propane burner but too big to use easily on my electric stove. It’s too big for one burner but slightly too small for two. It takes forever to hit boil and has really high evaporation. I officially quit using it when I bought a turkey fryer for larger batches after I broke one of the stove coils with too much weight in the kettle. Now it’s storage for homebrewing equipment. If my next house has a gas stove it will probably get use as a hot liquor tank during turbid mashes. Maybe.
-
Hop rhizomes: I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into growing hops. I didn’t realize how poorly suited they were for my home here in Texas. I started growing them right as we hit several years of drought and we would get actual hordes of locusts that would strip the bines of leaves in days. Even without the drought it is still too hot and too much sun for them. Due to the HOA (and for a time, my wife) I can’t grow them as high as they need so I only get about eight feet of bines. In five growing seasons I have net about six dried ounces out of four plants. Not worth it. When we move to Denver I plan on keeping the plants but expect better yields.
I try to be economical with my brewing equipment. I have several pieces that I use and use well enough but neither fit in the top or bottom three. I have a couple party pigs which are a good example. I use them as faux casks (without the CO2 inserts) and they work well for that purpose until the internal pressure runs out and the beer pours at a crawl. Worth $30 and I don’t have space for a cask (or tap) set up right now. Same for my corona mill. Works okay and I still use it for unmalted grains (which I use a lot). The roller mill I recently bought has improved my mash efficiency and lautering enough that the corona mill is relegated to limited use. I have very little that never gets use.
Regarding the tilt… CO2 bubbles and kreusen stuck to the housing and caused wildly varying readings. IMO the only useful information was the temperature data making it an expensive thermometer who’s batteries will die more often then you like.
Top 3:
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Joining forums was the first/best thing I did. I started on Realbeer,com, then the BN, and now this forum are where I go for my daily fix of great Brewing info. Along with this were the BN podcasts. All that info coming from the likes of Jamil, Tasty, Palmer, Nate, and the forum stars like Denny and Martin, all made me a much better brewer.
-
Becoming a BJCP judge. I thought I brewed pretty good beer. All my neighbors loved it. So, I figured I’d enter some competitions. All I kept getting were high 20’s and low 30s. What are those guys tasting that I am missing? So, I studied and became a judge myself. Sure enough, I figured out what I was doing wrong and my beers got better and better. This was around the time that JZ and Plise were doing the Style shows.
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Co-Founding my homebrew club and becoming involved in WAHA. All of the online stuff was great, but getting in with other brewers in person was so much better. We have a thriving homebrew scene up here in WA largely because of WAHA and the personal connections we formed through it. I’ve made friends with so many homebrewers across the region as a result of our statewide events that only came about because of WAHA.
Bad:
1) 5.2. Enough said
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I way overdid it on gadgets like sparge arms, etc. Ultimately, I simplified everything back down, and am much happier for it. Thanks, Denny!
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The whole “more has to be better” movement. I tend to like smaller, simpler and cleaner, over bigger and over-the-top now. I think we are seeing the second peak (like a double-top in a stock chart) with these NE IPAs on the heels of the prior Black IPA craze or the IIIIII-IPA craze. They can keep it. i’ll stick with my Helles, Vienna, Kolsch, or hoppy Blonde.
SO… I gather I shouldn’t go out and buy a bunch of 5.2 PH stabilizer??? 
It’s the snake oil of homebrewing.
I’ll give you the container I bought over 10 years ago. Still full. 
unfortunately its not the only one.
What is this indoor/outdoor carpet you speak of?
-Josh Peanasky
Top 3:
- Mark II Keg Washer, I use this all of the time.
- Small freezer for fermentation chamber/keezer
- Blichmann 10 Gallon G2 BoilerMaker
Bottom 3:
*2.5 gallon keg to fit the keezer, ended up getting a low profile 5 gallon ball lock keg.
*HopBlocker, not having much luck with it.
*BrewVint Alcohol Boost