Quote Originally Posted by Cowher View Post
I was thinking of getting every thing piece by piece. Do you know any cost effective brew kettles? What do you think about the copper coils used to cool the wort? Is that useless?

So should I skip the airlock and use this set up?
Is this to vent the foam that builds up?

I use a 42qt stock pot. Just find the biggest one you can afford. Some guys use a turkey frying setup (with burner) as a dedicated brew kettle. For a wort chiller, they really can't be beat. You get your wort chilled in minutes rather than hours, which helps prevent contamination. But do NOT buy one! You can spend less than half on parts. Go to the hardware store and get a box of 12 to 20 foot, 3/8" coiled copper tubing, some vinyl hose, a couple of hose clamps, and an adapter that will go onto your faucet and attach to the hose. The tubing is pre-coiled and if you have to bend the tubing, carefully do it around a bottle if you don't have a bender. Here is a pic of one of the ones I've made.



The hoses that mule uses are called blow-off tubes. It is basically a very large airlock, and yes, if you get a wild primary fermentation, things can get real messy, real fast. This setup doesn't allow that. For secondary fermenting, I use a standard airlock.