Over the last year or so, Tim and I have made quite a lot of upgrades to our brewing process. So I thought I’d go over the various gadgets we’ve acquired over the past couple years that have made homebrewing life easier.

First up — a grain mill. Absolutely essential for all-grain brewing. We’re able to get the crush just right, which helps to improve mash efficiency.

Recently, Tim built a heat stick. I have no idea how he built it without killing himself, but I am glad he succeeded. Here, he’s got it hooked up to a temperature controller, so we can keep our sparge water at a steady 170° F. Much easier than trying to monitor it manually.

Possibly even more exciting than the heat stick was the propane burner we purchased. Much more power than the regular ol’ stove. We can heat up water in a jiffy!

Gotta love our Blichmann BoilMaker. Forget about partial boils, this sucker can hold 10 gallons of wort. Plus, it’s got a handy thermometer built in, as well as a spigot.

This next one was a great little find. We got this pump at Home Depot, it attaches right to a power drill. Now we don’t have to wait for gravity to transport our wort from vessel to vessel. The pump can do it in about a minute!

One of my favorite gadgets that we’ve had for a while now is our refractometer. It’s much faster and easier to use than a hydrometer. Plus, you don’t have to waste much wort to take a reading with it, all you need is a few drops.

A more recent addition to our collection is the oxygenation system. Now we can pump pure oxygen into our wort before pitching.

I’ve already geeked out about this before, but a friend of ours made a conical fermenter for us. It can hold about 15 gallons. Also, it is bad ass.

Then there’s the kegerator. Tim turned a chest freezer into a lovely box that dispenses our homebrews. I wrote a post about it some time ago, you can check that bad boy out here.

Finally, the latest addition to our homebrewing equipment is this water filtration system. Up until now, we’ve been using a Brita faucet filter for all our brewing water. This takes forever and is a huge pain. So the next time we brew, we’re gonna get to test this guy out! I’m pretty sure it’ll be a major improvement.

That’s about it! It’s amazing how much brewing equipment we’ve accumulated. And I’m sure we’re not done yet…