Not to proselytize too much, but modern platforms prioritize brewers showing off electric brew systems with stainless, glycol-chilled fermenters and tri-clamp fittings sitting in a room devoted to brewing. Ironically, unless you’re a seasoned enough brewer to know where to look, it’s kind of hard to find information on how to start brewing and how to do it for cheap!
The Minimalist Brewery is a simple concept: what’s the bare minimum we need to start brewing? If we pick the cheapest effective option for every requirement and don’t get anything we do not absolutely need to brew, ferment, and package a quality 5-gallon bath of beer safely, what does that equipment list look like?
TL:DR
You’re about to read a whole lot of information. This is going to cover what equipment you need, why you need it, alternatives, things not to do… point is, it can be a lot to digest. If you want to skip that and just want a shopping list, here’s what you need to get started:
Brew Kettle: 2.5 gallon/10 quart stock pot, minimum.
Stirring Tool: Wooden spoons are OK. Make sure it can reach the bottom of your brew kettle.
Thermometer: Any probe-type kitchen thermometer.
Fermenter: 7 gallon food-grade bucket with drilled lid, grommet, and airlock.
Bottling Bucket: A different 7 gallon food-grade bucket, drilled and tapped for bottling.
Racking Cane: 3/8” racking cane (don’t buy the short models). Auto-siphon recommended.
Bottling Wand: 3/8” bottling wand
Transfer Tubing: 4-6 linear feet 5/16” inner diameter food-grade nylon tubing
Bottle Brush: Standard beer bottle brush.
Bottle Capper: Two-armed manual beer bottle capper.
Bottle Caps: Oxygen absorbing preferred. Get extras, it’s easy to screw up.
Bottles: 3 cases of pry-off (never twist-on) 12-oz beer bottles. Can be re-used and cleaned.
Sanitizer: Star San is the gold standard.
BONUS Not-Quite Essential Upgrades: a probe thermometer and either a hydrometer kit or refractometer.
Minimalist Brewing Process
Before you brew a beer, you need a slightly more-complex understanding of beer than “that fizzy, yellow stuff in the can.” Here are the basic steps to brewing:
Mash:
Soak crushed, malted barley (and potentially other starch sources) in temperature-controlled hot water to convert starches into sugars.
Sparge:
Run off sugary liquid, now called “wort” and pronounced “wert” for extra fun and rinse as much remaining sugar from the spent grain.
Boil:
Boil the wort for a set amount of time, usually adding hops at specific times for bittering, aroma, and flavor.
Chill:
Reduce the wort temperature to an appropriate temperature to add yeast.
Ferment:
Pitch yeast and ignore for days/weeks/months.
Package:
Transfer the fermented beer into a sealed container and carbonate.
If you do your own mash and sparge, you’re using a technique called “All-Grain” brewing. But this requires some spendy, specialized equipment. The biggest way to save on your initial brewery setup is to outsource the mash and sparge by buying pre-extracted malt sugars. This is called “Extract” brewing. And, for even bigger savings, since you now don’t need to worry about a volume of water needed to mash the grain, just a volume needed to dissolve the sugars, you can boil a much smaller volume and top it off when you go to pitch your yeast. This is called a “partial boil.”
Additionally, while chilling your hot wort as quickly as possible certainly has benefits, it isn’t strictly necessary. Many brewers are making great beers with a no-chill brewing method. Since we’re cutting as many corners as possible, we’re going to follow this trend as well. The only side effects are a slight increase in bitterness, which can be compensated for in recipe creation, and increased chill haze (this does not impact flavor).
For those who are looking to be a bit more advanced and combine your boil with your residual water immediately, we’ve built a calculator to estimate the final temperature of your boil when combined with your remaining water. Click the link below to check it out!
Brew Kettle
Basically, this is just a stock pot big enough to boil however much liquid you’re going to be boiling.
Since we’re going for partial-boil extract brewing, we don’t need a huge pot. Ideally, we would boil no less than 2 gallons of liquid. For that, we would need a minimum 2.5-gallon, preferably 3-gallon stock pot (that’s 10 and 12 quarts, respectively). That’s because we need some extra space to prevent boil-overs.
Now, let’s talk voiding the warranty on the Minimalist Brewery.
Technically, as long as you have enough liquid to boil without scorching, you will produce a decent beer. The less liquid in your boil and the more sugar, the more you will caramelize those sugars and the greater risk of scorching. In theory, one could brew a test batch of something simple, around 5% ABV or lower, in a 2-gallon pot, keeping about half a gallon of space at the top empty to prevent boil over. This is not recommended, but it would potentially mean not buying a dedicated brew kettle for your first batch. In theory.
Brew kettle: 2.5 gallon/10 quart stock pot, minimum.
Stirring Tool
You need something to stir your malt extract into your wort. Pretty much anything wood or metal designed for stirring hot food that reaches the bottom of your kettle will do. If you’ve got a wooden spoon, you’re probably good for now.
A word of warning, if you are using anything wooden, only use that while boiling. Wood can harbor bacteria very easily, so you don’t want to stir with that once things start cooling down.
Stirring Tool: Wooden spoons are OK for now, make sure it can reach the bottom of your brew kettle.
Thermometer
I thought a lot about this one. I kept going back and forth on whether it was actually necessary. I mean, technically you can brew a beer without it. But, in the end, I decided that the ethos of the minimalist brewery is every thing you need to brew a GOOD beer, and you need a thermometer to brew good beer.
This can be any boring probe-type kitchen thermometer. Buy cheap, find out how to calibrate it, and go go go!
Thermometer: Any probe-type kitchen thermometer.
Fermenter
A fermenter is pretty basic. You need a food safe container for your beer to ferment in. Room for liquid plus headspace again. However, you need to solve two conflicting problems: on the one hand, you don’t want anything getting into your beer while it ferments. Mold, wild yeast, and bacteria are everywhere. Get the wrong thing in your fermenter and you’ll be dumping your batch. However, fermenting beer produces CO2, so you can’t seal your fermenter completely or it will explode, spraying the surrounding area with a yeasty foam that dries rather like foam insulation.
For a 5 gallon batch, a 6.5-7 gallon food grade plastic bucket works well. Add a sealed lid and you’ve got the first problem solved. Drill out a hole, add a grommet, and pop a fermentation airlock on top and you’ve got the second solved. If you don’t want to DIY this, just search “fermenter bucket” online. Be aware that, if you buy used, there is a slightly increased chance of infection in your beer.
Now, fun fact, especially vigorous ferments can still foul up an airlock. Basically, a layer of yeasty foam called “krausen” (that’s that foam insulation-like stuff I mentioned) forms at the top in all ales. The more intense the fermentation, the higher the krausen can reach. If it reaches the airlock’s intake, that airlock can get plugged up completely. Then we’re back to that whole exploding-yeast-bomb thing. If you’ve got a beer that’s likely to do this, you can forgo the airlock in favor of a blowoff tube. That’s just some food-grade tubbing with an outer diameter that plugs the airlock hole and an inner diameter wider than the airlock. Run that from the bucket into an open container of water or sanitizer and you essentially have a high-capacity airlock.
Fermenter: lidded 6.5-7 gallon food safe bucket with drilled lid, grommet, and airlock
Bottling Bucket
While fermenting, a thick layer of yeast is going to form at the bottom of your fermenter. You don’t want to mix that in with the beer to be bottled. Unfortunately, you can’t bottle your beer without adding a little mixing beforehand. So, when we bottle, we transfer our beer to a dedicated bottling bucket.
There are special bottling buckets that have been drilled out on the side with a faucet added. With these, you hook your tubing up to the faucet and bottle from that. These special bottling buckets are about the same price as a plain bucket. They have been the standard for bottling since before I started brewing.
Also, I hate them.
Most people are very happy with bottling buckets, but I do not like adding another part that fails easily, is hard to clean, can harbor bacteria, and makes loss inevitable. There is a work-around that will mean your beer doesn’t come into contact with anything it would not otherwise come in contact with, but does require a little extra coordination and a slightly more expensive racking cane (more info in the Bottling Wand section). Stick with bottling buckets if you can’t walk and chew gum.
Bottling Bucket: a different 7 gallon food-grade bucket, drilled and tapped for bottling.
ALTERNATE TECHNIQUE: 6.5-7 gallon bucket, no lid, no nuthin’
Racking Cane
A Racking Cane is a device used to transfer (rack) liquid from one vessel to another. Basically, it’s a cane-shaped rigid tube. Long end goes into your beer, short end sticks out. Attach some flexible tubing to the short end, stick that in the container your transfering to, and use it to transfer your beer.
If you’re paying attention, you may be asking yourself “wait, how does that transfer anything?” You may also remember I was going to recommend a slightly more expensive choice for racking canes.
The dirt-cheap racking canes are just rigid tubes. In order to get them going, you need to fill your flexible tube with liquid, like sanitizer, and use that to start the gravity transfer. Alternatively, you can use an auto-siphon racking cane which uses a nested pumping mechanism to start the transfer.
Another advantage of an auto-siphon is that it makes it possible to bottle without a tapped bottling bucket (you still need a second bucket). More on that in the next section.
Auto-siphoning racking canes are, on average, about $10 more expensive if you buy new. If you choose not to get the auto-siphon, you will need to get a bottling bucket with a faucet.
Racking Cane: 3/8” OD
ALTERNATE TECHNIQUE: Just get an auto-siphon already.
Bottling Wand
Bottling wands are cool. They’re also super cheap. It’s a rigid tube that you attach to your bottling bucket with some flexible tubing. On the other end of the wand is a little button. Press the wand into the bottom of a bottle and the button opens up the wand and causes beer to flow into the bottle. Pick it up and the beer stops flowing. The wand itself displaces just enough liquid to leave exactly the right amount of empty space at the top of the bottle for carbonation when removed.
There are two types of bottling wand. One has a little spring that closes the wand when lifted, the other relies on gravity. The price difference is generally minimal or non-existent, and the spring is more reliable. The gravity models can get jammed open while bottling, which creates a mess, wastes beer, and scares the crap out of whoever’s bottling.
Even if you’re buying the bottling bucket with a tap, you’re still going to want the outer diameter of this to be 3/8″, just like your racking cane. Again, this is standard diameter. The reason for this is that you’re going to need to connect it to the same tubing as your racking cane (which is also the correct tubing for those god-awful bottling taps).
Now what you’ve all been waiting for, how do you bottle with a racking cane instead of a faucet? If you’re using a bottling bucket, you just hook some transfer tubing to your faucet, hook the bottling wand onto that, open the faucet and let gravity do the rest. Alternately, SUPER hard, are you ready for this? You put your first bottle NEXT to your bucket on the elevated surface, hook your racking cane to your transfer tubing to your bottle filler, put the racking cane in the bucket, then, hold on, PRESS THE WAND INTO THE BOTTLE AND PUMP THE RACKING CANE! Once the transfer tubing has beer in it, lift the bottling wand, lower the bottle to where the others are, and continue filling.
Bottling Wand: 3/8” OD bottling wand
Transfer Tubing
5/16” Inner Diameter food-grade nylon tubing. You can get away with about a 4-foot length, but splurge for a 6-foot length, please. In theory, you only need this to be longer than your racking cane, but in practice, more length is better. Ideally, it should be long enough that, when transferring, it is always in contact with the bottom of the vessel you’re transferring to.
This is also likely to be the most frequently-replaced piece of your kit. It’s cheap, so that’s good news, but just be aware that it’s hard to clean 6 feet of tubing well.
Transfer Tubing: 4-6 linear feet 5/16” inner diameter food-grade nylon tubing
Bottle Brush
So, if you’re a fancy person with your fancy things, this is going to bother you. You can not use the fancy bottle brushes for this. Sorry, those are for baby bottles. You need the cheapo, rinky-dink, wire bodied, nylon bristle, plastic-handle-if-anything, crapp-tastic beer bottle brush for this job.
Any bottle brush marketed specifically for beer bottles is going to work, though, so just get that. The point of this is just to be able to scrub out the crap in your beer bottles.
Bottle Brush: Standard beer bottle brush.
Bottle Capper
If you search for “manual bottle capper” you will find two basic designs. First, you’ll find a thing with two arms that’s just called “bottle capper” or “manual bottle capper” because it’s too cheap to afford a real name, then you will find the “bench capper.” You’ll also find that the generically-named cappers are a fraction of the cost of the bench models.
I’m not going to lie about this one, bench cappers are SO nice. Consider them as an upgrade some day. But, unless you find some amazing deal, just get the cheapo one for now.
Bottle Capper: Two-armed manual beer bottle capper.
Bottle Caps
Standard pry-off bottle caps can be purchased in bulk at any home brew supply store or countless places online. Unless you are using certain european bottles, you won’t have to look for specific sizes, in fact size won’t even be called out. You can get whatever color or design you like, you can even get some that change color when the beer is cold because how else would you know your beer is cold?
The one thing I do recommend is getting oxygen-absorbing caps. Look, this isn’t strictly necessary, but the price difference is essentially nothing and it can do a lot to reduce oxidation in your beer. Always make sure to have more on hand than you need.
Bottle Caps: Oxygen absorbing preferred.
Bottles
This is pretty basic. You can either buy a few cases of empty pry-off cap bottles or you can collect your pry-off empties and clean them out. While the latter isn’t quite as easy anymore since so many breweries use cans exclusively now, an industrious group of friends should be able to get a few cases of 12-oz bottles together in no time.
Do NOT use any container not specifically designed to hold pressure, though! Twist-off bottles of any kind are a no-go. Flip-top bottles may be OK, but only use them if they’re either sold specifically for bottling beer OR you bought them when they were filled with beer. If you’re not sure, just don’t, OK?
Bottles: 3 cases of pry-off (never twist-on) 12-oz beer bottles. Can be re-used and cleaned.
Sanitizer
Anything the beer comes in contact with after boiling needs to be sanitized to reduce exposure to unwanted bacteria. Buckets, transfer and bottling gear, bottles and caps, everything. We deal with that using chemical sanitizers, of which there are many to choose from!
Star San from 5-Star Chemical is where you’re going to end up.
Star San is great. Every brewer says it’s great, and none of them are getting paid to do so. You mix it with water, get it all over your gear, dump it out, and you don’t have to rinse anything. It’s not particularly expensive even compared to most brewing sanitizers, and there’s a trick to stretch it to make it cheaper.
Hard water can screw up Star San, though. Star San drops the pH of the water it’s added to in order to sanitize. If you have hard water, your tap water’s pH is going to be high. If the Star San goes cloudy before you get a chance to sanitize your gear, you haven’t sanitized your gear.
The stingy brewer trick, even if you don’t have hard water, is to mix 6 mL of Star San with a gallon of distilled water. This makes a shelf stable solution that I’ve never seen go cloudy. Keep it in a cool, dark place and pour it into a spray bottle as needed. Saturate your surfaces with the spray bottle and you’ll use less sanitizer without any ill effects.
Sanitizer: Star San is the gold standard.
BONUS: Not-quite essential upgrades.
With the gear listed above, you will be able to successfully brew a beer. That said, there is one major shortcoming to our minimalist brewery: you can’t measure sugar content.
So what? Why do we care about sugar content? Aside from some general beer-quality aspects, knowing the sugar content both before and after fermentation lets us calculate alcohol content. Additionally, the only way to be 100% sure your fermentation has completed is to measure sugar content and get the same results multiple days in a row. While it’s relatively safe to estimate fermentation time and then wait an extra week or two, that’s not a perfect solution and it doesn’t always work. If you’re not confident your beer is fully fermented, you could end up with bottles literally exploding on you.
There are two options for measuring sugar: a hydrometer and a refractometer. Th introductory models of each cost about the same, but they hydrometers are easier to use, so this is what I recommend. It’s a weighted glass float with a measuring guide. Get this as a kit so you have a hydrometer jar and something to take samples with (get a turkey baster if you can’t get that with the kit).
So, why isn’t this a mandatory part of the minimalist brewery? Because we are supposed to be talking about minimum requirements, and, well, a lot of people have still succeeded in making tasty beer without measuring sugar content. I don’t recommend it, but if you really can’t cover the extra cost, you can get away with it for now.
Next Steps
And that’s it! With that, you now have a fully-functional brewery of your very own. Check back soon for recipes, instructions, and building onto your brewery! Happy brewing!