The Cat's Studio

Benchtop Capper

The capper that comes in most kits is a “hand capper”. Means you put the crown seal on the bottle and try somehow to force it down with the capper by bashing or hammering on it. This turns out to be fairly unsafe as the setup is unstable and can at the worst break the bottle. I never worked out how to use these cappers successfully. I prefer a proper bench mounted capper. Mine looks pretty ugly now after ten years use but still works as expected.

Bottle Tree

This is a very neat solution to store your empty bottles until their next fill. It really shines when it comes to streamlining the process of sterilizing, rinsing and draining a batch of bottles. I love the functionality and how it joins together with the bottle rinser.

Bottle rinser

A great piece of equipment and it is almost essential. It is filled with steriliser solution and then the bottle goes on upside down. By pressing down the liquid is squirted inside the bottle and runs down its walls back into the rinser. The same procedure is used to rinse the bottles with clear water. I usually give every bottle three squirts.

Sugar Dispenser

Very handy indeed. It dispenses a given amount of sugar which is adjustable from 2-6 gram. The construction is pretty simple and easy to clean. Just hot water is sufficient. Only negative point is that when in use a small amount of sugar powder comes out at the sides. I use cling-wrap to prevent powder contaminating the outside of the bottles when dispensing. A 50cm piece folded once across and the nozzle pierced through the centre of the sheet, then loosely wrapped around the moving parts.
Note: It has been brought to my attention that manufacture of this device has ceased.

Heating

The brew has to be kept at a fairly constant temperature which depends on the kind of beer. There are various types of heaters but the most common are the belt heater around the drum and the heating pad under it.
As I started doing homebrews I used to switch the heater manually on and off as needed. That led to some brews dying because I forgot to switch the heater off on a couple of occasions. Then I used an electronic control box but this one allowed only two range settings. 20-25 and 25-30 degrees. Means it started heating below the lower limit and kept going until the temperature reached the upper limit, then it turned off. This is not ideal. Brewers yeast likes constant temperatures.
Some weeks ago I started experimenting using a cheap timer you can pick up in the supermarket or hardware store for a few dollars. Depending on the ambient temperature you will need to adjust the on and off times. At the moment I let it heat for 15 minutes every hour and for 30 minutes every third hour. You still need to check the temperature of the brew, but this is a fairly foolproof temperature control and much cheaper than an specialised device that might cost hundred dollars or more.

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