Brewing purchase, price, and priority list

I’m not far into my brewing journey, but I am already hooked on the process. It’s a terrible hobby for me to get involved in, given the endless minutiae that can change the essence or the entire character of a brew. I can lose hours and days reading about the steps in the process, thinking about the optimizations of the mash temperature rests to optimize alpha and beta amylase (which others have doubtless already optimized far better than I am likely to be able to do, since they have a significant monetary incentive to do so!), and re wording countless measurements and statistics for each batch. I’m definitely not retaining everything I read, hear, or talk about yet, and I’ll probably never achieve a perfect retention, but I certainly find it interesting.

Along with that, there seems to come a natural tendency among most of the homebrewers with whom I am acquainted towards process optimization and efficiency and consistency improvements – which naturally lead to fabrication. This is a hobby which it is incredibly easy to spend an enormous amount of money very easily; on more than one occasion I have found myself contemplating the purchase of a TIG welder in order to “repurpose” old restaurant fixtures into brewing sculptures of innumerate purposes. It’s an ongoing effort of the will to remind myself that I can accomplish a perfectly adequate extract or partial mash with just the 22 quart pressure cooker I use as a kettle and the Darkstar burner I got with my starter kit from Midwest Supplies. Though I will need to get a funnel at some point to support easier transfer into a carboy if my plastic pail primary is full, and a large sieve would prove helpful if I end up doing a partial mash oatmeal stout again, and if I’m ordering those things I should go ahead and get the parts to make a dip tube for my bottling bucket, and… well, it keeps going along those lines.  And that doesn’t even take into consideration the desire to have a kit on hand if I have the time and motivation to brew!

Taking into consideration the equipment I already possess, improvements in my processes that could be achieved with small purchases, a promising opportunity to be able to keg my batches with minimal upfront expense through an offer to borrow/barter, and charges for shipping, I have come to the realization that it’s time to establish a plan, or at least an outline, so I’m better prepared and more focused in the face of inevitable future purchases.  Otherwise it’s simply too easy to look at the daily deals on homebrewfinds.com and find myself building a cart that I ultimately won’t purchase because I have no realistic plan or goal established for the purchases.

My goal with this post is fourfold:  To establish a list of purchases I can foresee making, and a potentially dynamic order for making those purchases based on a combination of need, funds availability, and maximal value; to centralize a list of products I have seen that provide potential improvements in efficiency, quality, or experience, and what purpose or return would be achieved through the purchase (potentially in comparison to similar products and establishing a reference for the superiority of a selection to a similar product); to establish a price history for use in determination of optimal valuation; and to facilitate the reduction of value loss to shipping charges by consolidating multiple items when feasible.

I checked out a few table and spreadsheet plugins that would facilitate this, but none seemed to be the fit I was looking for (all of them left me thinking about simple tie-ins to Google Docs or much more complex builds using Xataface).  Instead I think what I’ll do is just maintain a list here, perhaps tied into a spreadsheet at some point in the future, with links to pages that house the details.

To Purchase

1. Funnel
2. Brew kettles
3. Beer line and picnic valve
4. 10 gallon water cooler mash tun with ball valve and false bottom
5. Sensory training kit
6. Test tubes for yeast slants

Already Acquired

1. Bottling Bucket Dip Tube – made in December 2013, a VERY worthwhile upgrade!
2. Kegerator/Chest Freezer – purchased on best price match December 2013