Advice Needed: Equipment to get for AG

[fergus]

I do both. I have a 3 stage brew stand but during the long, cold Canadian winter I use my 8 gallon SS pot and do BIAB inside on the cooker. I actually started with BIAB and the 8 gallon pot. After getting a feel for it I picked up a Coleman cooler at Walmart and put together a copper manifold myself. I then picked up a 15 gallon SS pot for the boil. I also picked up a 20 gallon SS pot later on  to allow me do 10 gallon batches (though your really pushing the limits of the cooler with this). Anyway, I am rambling. Suffice to say that starting out with a single pot and doing BIAB is a good way to make quality beer while putting together the rest of your 3 vessel system.

Ferg

[molc]

Cheers lads. I think I've come down on the side of the 45L cooler to complement my kettle for now, so a 2 vessal setup. I'll also get another kettle element so I can get to a rolling boil faster. While I could try biab first, after some reading, batch sparge will be almost as fast and involves less lifting of molten hot grain, which I just know I'll manage to mess up at some point. Also I think the cooler can hold about 14kg of grain while mashing. If I go over that, I have no sympathy for myself

[Qs]

That stand looks great Fergus, I'd love to get something like that set up eventually.

[TheSumOfAllBeers]

Cut your teeth on AG using BIAB. It's one vessel and cheaper. Save up for your other 2 vessels while using that.
Biab is less complicated than using three vessels and is a good starting point to go from.

And the investment in BIAB gear is not a dead end. If you then fancy getting into 3V brewing, your BIAB kettle will become your HLT (or maybe kettle as well) and your voile sheet or brew bag can then line your mash tun.

[molc]

Yeah cheers for that. I've come down on the separate mash tun side for the lack of hassle in the end. It's much easier to batch sparge and then just empty the spent grain into a bag by tipping it over than lifting the grain bill out of the boiler and draining it.
I'm going to get a 45L Igloo cooler which gives plenty of capacity and can also be converted to RIMS in the future if I decide to complicate things.