OnTap Magazine

SPRAY BOTTLES A WINE THIEF OR SIMILAR SAMPLER EXTRA BITS AND BOBS H O M E B R E W G E A R 01 H O M E B R E W G E A R 05 H O M E B R E W G E A R 02 If you’re serious about sanitising your home brewery, invest in at least two (maybe six) spray bottles. Fill one with sanitiser on brew day (have another as backup) and keep it handy. I’m visibly anxious in breweries that don’t visibly have spray bottles. And for good reason: spray bottles filled with a no- rinse agent like peracetic acid are ideal for spot sanitisation of gear you’re not 100% sure about. Like that fermenter lid you dropped on the floor. Or the auto- siphon hose that bumped up against your arm (or the cat). If you want to brew awesome homebrewed beer, you’ve got to measure your gravity once the wort has started fermentation. To do that, you'll need some method to sample the wort. I find that purchasing either a wine thief or a turkey baster works wonders. If you’re not familiar with them, wine thieves are glass (sometimes copper) tubes with a small reservoir used to sample wine (or beer) from various vessels, like carboys. You simply dip the sample end into the beer, let it fill, then put your thumb on the opposite end and transfer the sample to your measurement receptacle of choice. Pretty nifty. I’m lucky - when I worked as an academic I had a glass artisan at the university’s chemistry glass shop make me one. But you can get one by scouring the internet or contacting your local lab supply shop. Otherwise, buy a plastic turkey baster from your kitchen supply store - it’ll do the trick. What I mean by “bits and bobs” are those tiny yet essential items of kit that you hardly think about, but when you don’t have extras of them, it can ruin a brew (or bottling) day. Here’s a (non- exhaustive) list to get you started: • O-rings for your corny keg (if kegging) • More crown caps than you think you’ll need (if bottling) • An extra airlock • An extra gasket for that airlock • Another extra gasket because you know that first extra one is totally going to break when you force it into the fermenter lid after you broke the original one. • An extra grain bag (if using BIAB or steeping grains). A broken grain bag can stop your brew day in its tracks faster than the unexpected arrival of the in-laws and their annoying pet Yorkie. So buy another one already. • Extra clean and sanitised plastic tubing for mash run-off, wort transfer, and general racking needs. Have more than you think you’ll need handy. A MULTI STEP TIMER H O M E B R E W G E A R 06 Much of brewing is all about timing. When to stop mashing in, when to stop steeping your specialty grains, when to add the kettle hops, and so on. Virtually every step of the brewing process is governed by time. So making sure you have your hands on a timer that can handle multi-step timing is truly a godsend. Generally, your average stop-watch or smartphone timer cannot handle multi-step timing (i.e. running an overall timer with steps along the way to alert you of hops additions needed and so on). If using your phone, you’ll have to purchase a custom app for this purpose (there are quite a few available on your typical app store), or use the multi- step timers found in brewing software packages like BeerSmith. GRAIN CERTIFIED FILTER MASK H O M E B R E W G E A R 03 Sold by 3M, these face masks prevent grain particulates from entering your incredibly fragile lungs. I’m routinely amazed and appalled at the lack of protective breathing apparatus brewers (including some pros) employ when milling grains or mashing in. And even though the volumes of grain processed by the average homebrewer are not always sufficient to be high risk, you don’t really want to be playing with your respiratory health, do you? Grain particles are really, really bad for your lungs. And if you’re a pro brewer reading this and you’re not using this kind of protection when milling or mashing, go stand in the corner right now. A GRAM SCALE H O M E B R E W G E A R 04 Most homebrewers know that it is a wise move to weigh out their ingredients before starting a brew. But if you’re going to be brewing small-batch experiments (e.g. 5-10 litre batches), or if you’re going to be working with ingredients like yeast nutrients or Irish Moss that, even in big batches, require very small additions, investing in an electronic gram scale is a must. By gram scale, I mean a scale that can measure fractions of a gram. These are incredibly precise little instruments that, strangely enough, can only occasionally be purchased in kitchen appliance stores but can almost always be found in shops that old-fashioned folks refer to as “that weird dagga store” and enlightened folk call “perfectly legal smoke shops”. Get one. You can always use it for post-brew celebratory G&Ts ontapmag.co.za | Winter 2021 | 59