Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

So a couple of us are interested in going together on some all grain equipment from Midwest. Question came up about getting started. Do you all order kits still and choose the all-grain or are you mostly creating your own and if you do - who do you go through?

We were thinking if we got a 15 or 20 gallon capacity all grain kit that we would also have to purchase 3 or 4 of the brewing kits each time we brewed. Is that correct?

If you are considering batch sizes that large I think you'll find kits too expensive and not very convenient. One thing you'll definitely want to be doing with large batches is making yeast starters.

I'm fairly certain that everyone in the club doing batch sizes other than the standard 5 gallon are brewing from recipes. It's more economical to buy your grain in bulk for the grains you use the most.

One think I would really recommend before you take the plunge on big batches is spend as much time as you can seeing other people's systems in action. You can learn a lot that way. Everyone has different setups with different pros/cons. Many of our members have spent 10+ years perfecting their setups. You not only learn a ton about the process but also what type of system will most likely work for you. Then you can decide how best to spend your resources.

Also, are you kegging? If not you might want to get started with that as bottling 20 gallon batches is a major undertaking.

On Monday 26 September 2011 10:37:29 am you wrote:

So a couple of us are interested in going together on some all grain
equipment from Midwest. Question came up about getting started. Do you
all order kits still and choose the all-grain or are you mostly creating
your own and if you do - who do you go through?

We were thinking if we got a 15 or 20 gallon capacity all grain kit that we
would also have to purchase 3 or 4 of the brewing kits each time we
brewed. Is that correct?

Post generated using Mail2Forum (http://www.mail2forum.com)

Like Randy said, you save a lot of money buying your base grain in bulk. We do a group buy once or twice a year through Millstream that saves a ton of money. You pay about $0.50/lbs with the 50 lbs. sacks we get. If you need recipes, Northern brewer has the recipes for their kits on their website. Just click on their inventory sheets for each one. BYO, Zymurgy and books are where most of my recipes begin.

Jeremy is looking to bump up to 20 gallon batches so you may want to talk to him about reasonably priced kettles. I have two keggles and a 14 gallon Italian kettle for my system.

Matt F wrote:Jeremy is looking to bump up to 20 gallon batches so you may want to talk to him about reasonably priced kettles.

I don't know if Jeremy is the best example. He is the only home brewer I know that "shotguns" his fermenters...