Things you’ll need to brew beer and wine at home
If you are interested in brewing your own beer or wine you will need a variety of hardware items. To begin of course, you will not need every device available to the homebrew market but there are certainly some essentials.
Lee and I needed to make a choice between brewing beer in bottles or cask. The decision was based on time and efficiency. We have busy lives, so we need to keep our brewing activities as simple as possible. Although many people love to bottle their beer I’m afraid the extra effort we would have needed to make was daunting. We simply don’t have the space for cleaning and storing a multitude of bottles particularly as we will be making wine as well. Keeping forty pints in a single container was quite doable, so we chose this as our way forward. We chose to buy ‘King Keg’ poly propylene casks. They are available with taps positioned either at the bottom or at the top of the barrel. I recommend the top tap variety when the barrel is located near to the floor. In all other instances where your barrels are placed on a raised surface and there’s room to place a glass beneath the tap, choose the bottom fitted tap. The downside to polypropylene casks is where to keep them when not in use. They can’t be stacked like buckets so you’ll need a loft, spare room or garden shed.
