Lutzen - Brew Ware: How to Find, Adapt & Build Homebrewing Equipment

excerpted fromBrew Ware
Karl F. Lutzen & Mark Stevens

Take one step into a homebrew store, or flip through the pages of any magazine about homebrewing, and its easy to see that home-brewing can be an expensive hobby. From the counterflow wort chiller to a refrigerated keg system to a complete brewery, a serious homebrewer can spend thousands of dollars on a homebrewery.

Most of the products offered by the many homebrewing equipment manufacturers and suppliers have been produced with the needs and wants of the consumer in mind. Companies in the brewing industry are constantly coming up with products that they hope will make the brewing process easier, yet also allow the homebrewer to make a better beer. Many of the best-selling homebrewing supplies and accessories were created by homebrewers like yourself who developed a product that greatly aided them in their quest for professional-quality ales and lagers.

Despite the dizzying number of gadgets on the market, there is one thing to take solace in brewing is a simple science. No matter if you are a beginner using strictly kits or a professional at a 30,000- gallon-a-year microbrewery, beer is still made using the same five basic steps: making wort, boiling, cooling, fermenting, and packaging (carbonating). You can make award-winning beer using a simple starter kit. Yet there is equipment that doesnt come with the beginners kit that will help you produce a higher-quality beer. Wort chillers, mashing and lauter tuns, and kegging systems are not required equipment for beginners, but most experienced homebrewers cannot produce their product without them.

All of the equipment described here can be purchased at your local brewing supply store or at one of the growing number of national homebrewing supply distributors. But building this equipment yourself offers two attractions: 1) You will save money; and 2) you can make changes to the equipment as is necessary to work in conjunction with your work or storage space, or existing equipment.

The projects here are designed for anyone from beginning to advanced brewers, kit brewers to all-grain masters. Most presuppose brewing experience (i.e., you will have a rough idea about how to use homemade equipment), and all require a working knowledge of and access to common tools found in a workshop (drills, saws, hardware, etc.). We hope you enjoy making these products and, with their help, succeed in achieving the ultimate goal excellent beer.

The best way to move carboys is with rolling carboy carriers. They can be made at a minimum cost (we were able to make the rolling carboy carrier with only scrap wood from our work shed), they can be assembled quickly, and they provide a much safer and easier way to handle glass carboys. You basically construct a platform with a lip to keep the carboy in place and then put caster wheels on the bottom so that it can be rolled from the brewery area to the fermenter area. This doesnt solve the problem of moving carboys up and down stairs, but if you brew and ferment on the same level, its a real back-saver.

The best way to move a carboy is with a rolling carboy carrier like this.