[THC] all grain first try - need advice

[Linda Swihart]

> so, phil and i have so far only made beer with extracts, and when we bottled some beer last night we sorta broke our bottler...LOL...and need to order a new one soon so we can get this rasp wheat bottled, anyways, we thought we would at the same time order ingredients to make our next batch or two and thought this would be a good time to try something all grain.  our current equipment is extremely basic...we have a propane burner and an approx 10 gallon pot, a 5 gal carboy and 5 gal better bottle, both with burpers/stoppers, etc...and a hydrometer, etc....and many 5 gallon buckets.....anyways, we know we will need more equipment to do all grain, any suggestions on the bare basics?
>    
>   thanks
>    
>   ps linda, meant to mention that the cascade is growing nicely and we bought an arbor for it to grow around...*smiles*...thanks again

Nice to know that it's growing.  My Cascades are well established and of 
course growing faster than I can keep trimmed, but the first year is 
always the one that is tricky.

I bought three new varieties from "Fresh Hops" (I think that's the name 
of the outfit) and planted them, and for a while I thought one of them 
wasn't going to come up, but it did.  They're on the alley side of the 
back fence and I'm hoping to simply get them to grow on that, with the 
help of some string I guess.

Wort chiller -- an immersion chiller is pretty easy to make although the 
copper tubing price is going to hurt.  A counter-flow chiller is less 
wasteful of water but more important to keep clean (and you can't see 
the part that has to be kept clean.)

I totally recommend splurging on the "Super-Agata" bench capper.  It is 
a wonderful device and worth the little extra cost.