In an effort to steer this back on topic, a mate and I did his first AG brew the other day. He reads here, but I dunno if he contributes (stick your head in if you're around, Ed). I dunno how much he spent on equipment, but it wasn't a lot by any stretch. Probably the most expensive bit was the 4m of silicone hose. He heated the liquor in a 14L pot that he already had, then mashed into that. We did temperature adjustments on the stove as needed (this is frowned upon because people think you can scorch the grist, but since we were stirring the whole time there's no way it scorched). We then did a decoction with about 4L of the mash - boiled it for about 10 min, then poured it back into the mash to hit mashout temp. Was a bit low, but high enough to stop most of the enzyme activity. We then used a saucepan to transfer the whole mash to the lauter tun he made up the day before - a plastic bucket with a slotted copper pickup/manifold siliconed into the outlet, and a metre or so of silicon tube. We used another couple of smaller saucepans to heat the sparge water - it was too hot, but again, who cares? We put some foil with holes punched in it on top of the grain bed to act as a return manifold to stop the sparge from drilling holes in the bed. We ran the first few litres into a saucepan, and recirced it through the top, at which point it started running crystal clear. We kept running out the bottom, and added sparge water with another saucepan to keep about 2cm of liquid on top of the grain bed - yep, we fly sparged and decocted first time at bat. We didn't have a tap on the outlet, we just pinched the hose with pegs to control the runoff rate. When we had the kettle up to 2in from the top, we stopped running. Boiled that for an hour with a single addition of saaz - it was a hefeweizen brew. Just before he added the hops I said "hang on, you'll get a boilover, let's get some cold water handy". He chucked it in anyway, and had that most sacred rite of passage - cleaning a few cups of wort off his stove and floor, to peals of laughter from all present. No further dramas in the boil, then we used the immersion chiller which he also made yesterday, using rainwater from his garden tap. Chilled down in about 20 mins, then we racked to the fermenter. Pitched a white labs hefeweizen, and 16 hours later he had 1cm krausen and bready aromas, at 24 hours he had 12cm krausen and bready, spicy fruit aromas, he's now up to 22cm of krausen and I think a permanent liquid yeast convert. Only real disappointment is the volume - about 12L. Next time we'll use one of my keg-like vessels for HLT and kettle on his BBQ wok burner, the lauter tun he made has more than enough volume to act as MLT for a full size brew. The hose is pretty small (3/8 if I'm not mistaken), but that can be upgraded or not as he sees fit.
The point of the story is you don't need to spend a fortune and get everything you need up front to start brewing magnificent all-grain beer. I've been planning and replanning for about 18 months to develop my AG rig, and he got it done in a weekend with, I think, less than $100. He can easily add bits to his setup to improve it, make it easier to control and use, but the barebones are there, and he's already making beer. I'm a do it once, do it right kinda guy, but the speed and success of this brew has me seriously regretting all that lost time when I could have been drinking the good stuff.
