My Equipment

My Current Setup (simulation):

This is setup in my laundry room. Since it is unfinished, installing a couple shelves and building a small cupboard wasn't an issue. I have a 25 watt light (covered to keep dark) in the cupboard. This will keep the cupboard at about 30°C (a 7 watt bulb keeps it at 20°C), so the brews have been fermenting in half the time.

Once I have added everything to the fermenter (bottle), I place it in our laundry tub, half fill the tub with hot water and leave it there over night before it goes into the cupboard. This will help kick start the yeast and if it happens to over flow, no problem.

Before racking into the bucket I usually place a small piece of cheese cloth and a rubber band over the inside part of the spigot. This acts as a basic filter before it goes into the bottles.

Beer Bottles: I started out with domestic amber beer bottles (twist-off), more work capping these. I had to cap 'em, then twist them on tighter, trashed many caps. Then I tried the Clear Imported Beer bottles and Cooler bottles (both non-twist off caps), they worked much better for capping and also when racking into them I could see what I was doing. If you don't have a capper, most brewery stores will rent them for a buck or two. As well, I have 40 plastic 500 ml pop bottles (with 2 milk style crates), I will likely continue with these since I don't need to buy more caps (remember its all about low cost and simplicity here). A couple of notes on pop bottles: they take a little longer to carbonate since the plastic expands (only day or two). They seem to pour better since the sediment doesn't stir up as much as in the glass bottles.

Wine Bottles: Using combination of 2L Pop bottles, 500 ml Pop bottles and Cooler bottles. I thought about old wine bottles, but some don't handle pressure well, so if they started to ferment in the bottle they may explode, and I actually like a little bubbly in some flavors of wine.

Here is a couple of pics of my setup, as you can see, its nothing to write home about. Just a box with a door and a make-shift heater. It was made from scrap left over from some home renovations:

My Home Made Carbon Filter for Sugar Wash:

Used these common items, Aquafina bottle, Brita type water jug filter, and a squeeze bottle.

I just cut the bottom off the Aquafina bottle, cut a couple of inches off the squeeze bottle and cut a little off the top spout as well. Inserted the filter into the squeeze bottle (upside down), attached the spout onto the tube of my bucket, placed the Aquafina bottle upside down into my water cooler bottle, then put the filter/squeeze bottle into it. Below is a pic of my carbon filter. Optional: place a coffee filter over the filter/squeeze bottle, secure with rubber band.

Instead of using a Brita Type Water Filter, pickup a bag of Activated Carbon from your local brewery store. Fill squeeze bottle with it, then secure a coffee filter with a rubber band to the squeeze bottle so the carbon can't get out.