An overview of the equipment and accessories you need for your first all grain brew day

Choose a brewing system

Traditional breweries use a multi-vessel system for the brewing process. But, because we’re brewing at home and through clever engineering, we can scale these into fewer vessel systems. The Grainfather G30 is an electric all grain brewing system that lets you mash, sparge and boil your wort before transferring it to your fermenter.

Select a fermentation vessel

Once you’ve chosen your brewing system, you’ll need to choose a vessel to ferment the beer. Many brewers start with a plastic fermenter as they are cost-effective and easy to use. These, however, can scratch and hold bacteria which can eventually ruin your beer so if you want a more robust solution, go for a Stainless Steel Fermenter.

Stainless steel fermenters are great, but it’s important to note that they rely on the ambient temperature of your room for fermentation. This can cause inconsistencies in your beer later down the line, that’s why we do what the pros do here at Grainfather and precisely control our fermentation temperatures with the Grainfather Conical Fermenter.

Pick either bottles or kegs for serving your beer

You have several options when it comes to packaging and serving your beer and most brewers choose to either bottle or keg their beer.

Bottling is relatively simple compared to kegging and is also the cheaper alternative for those just starting out. But, if you want to make serving fresh, cold homebrewed beer even easier, you can invest in a kegging setup.

Accessories

Finally, you’ll need a few accessories to get you through your all grain brew day. You’ll need a:

• Mash paddle to help you stir the grains
• Cleaner and sanitiser to clean your brewing system and fermentation vessel
• Hydrometer for measuring the gravity of your beer at the start and at the end of fermentation
• Bottling wand or syphon to transfer the beer into your fermentation vessel