Building a Home Brewery - Design Ideas

Thinking of designing a dedicated space for your homebrewing adventures, and looking for some inspiration or ideas? This was us a couple of years ago when we were designing a new house. We were able to include a few brewing related additions to our design, in particular in the garage where at least part of it was going to be used for brewing. These inclusions have been paying dividends for us since we moved in, so we thought we'd share our experience on this.

Hot & Cold Water

There's no disputing one of the biggest things you'll use in a home brewery is water. Whether it's for mashing, sparging, cleaning, mixing up sanitizing or pH meter calibration solutions, you'll inevitably need to use plenty of it on (and in between) brew days, so having a water source (ie. tap/faucet) in your home brewery is a major advantage. Bonus points for getting hot water connected as well which certainly works better when cleaning things with powdered brewery wash (PBW).

We had hot and cold water provisioned in our garage which makes every part of brewing infinitely faster and easier. Water can get pretty heavy, pretty quickly, even when dealing with "single batch" volumes of 19L so carting the kinds of volumes required is really not ideal, especially when your throw stairs, doors and other obstacles into the mix.

Water Filter

This one obviously ties in with the previous point, but we thought it deserved it's own separate spot on the list as well. We mentioned above that we had hot and cold water provisioned in our garage, but it took us several months before we got around to installing an in-line water filter. Prior to doing this we were using the filtered water from our fridge which meant carting water through the house for use on brew day. Time consuming, heavy and just generally inconvenient. Basic inline carbon water filters are cheap and easy to install, and are extremely effective at removing chlorine and chloramine, along with other contaminants from your source water which can taint the flavour of your brew.

You can even go the whole hog and get a reverse osmosis filter system to filter out essentially all mineral content from the water which can be particularly useful for being able to build just about any kind of water profile you like for the style of beer that you're making. Something we may look into in the future but for now we're happy with our simple inline-carbon filter setup.

Check out our previous article on our water filter installation.

Large Capacity Sink

Having a sink large enough to fit your pots, kettles and fermenters makes it much easier and convenient for cleaning. Prior to having this we used to drag everything out onto the lawn and spray everything down with a garden hose - which does the job, but you're really limited to using cold water for this. You could also use a kitchen sink or laundry tub, but we've found they're really not big enough to work comfortably in.

Large capacity pot washing sinks are perfect for this - and as you can see from the photo above, we've opted for a single one in our garage brewery. There are plenty of options available in different heights and sizes, you can even get some with a bench attached as well so you can have a small work area to leave things on to dry.

You will of course need a drain connection in order for your sink to work properly, so keep this in mind with your design as well.

Pre-Rinse Tap

To go along with your large capacity sink, a pre-rinse tap like you often see in commercial kitchens is another great idea. The high neck makes it easier to reach up into taller vessels like fermenters and all-in-one brewing systems like the BrewZilla (which we use), and the one-hand trigger operation makes using it fast and easy.

These taps can be expensive though, as most are made for heavy use in industrial/commercial environments - not necessarily what is needed in your home brewery. It's worth keeping an eye on second hand market places which often sell second hand commercial kitchen items from businesses that have shutdown, or alternatively there are significantly cheaper options available on eBay and Amazon like the one that we have opted for.

Another tip is to look for one that has a "regular" tap that can be turned and left on for filling, and a separate pre-rinse tap mechanism (water flow is switched between the two using a diversion valve) - otherwise you'll have to hold the pre-rinse tap open manually whilst filling.

ePoxy Flooring

An epoxy floor is a great home brewery idea, especially if you're looking at utilising a space like a garage that would otherwise be a regular concrete slab. We had our garage floor epoxy coated as part of our new home build and we think it's probably our best idea in our garage home brewery.

Firstly, an epoxy floor looks great and makes the garage feel almost like another room in the house. Concrete floors feel cold, and dusty, and tend to absorb stains and spills fairly easily, and are then nearly impossible to clean off - at least without resorting to using acid washes.

Depending on what colour(s) you opt for, they can hide dirt and dust a bit better as well, which is good and bad. We're often surprised at how much dirt and dust we find when we run a broom over, but because it's essentially a hard floor, you can even vacuum it (which we sometimes do also).

It's chemical resistant as well so you don't have to worry so much about the occasional acid spill, like from phosphoric acid/star san - fairly commonly used in home breweries. These will stain regular concrete, but ePoxy is much more chemical resistant so spills can generally just be wiped up without issue.

Since you're home brewery will inevitably be a "wet area" at times, it's a good idea to get a non-slip coating added as well, as they otherwise become very slippery when wet.

Storage

You'll inevitably end up with lots of "stuff" in your home brewery, so considering where you're going to store it all is definitely something to think about.

Shelving units are an obvious choice to fit out against a wall (or walls) to stack larger, bulkier items like fermenters and kettles when not in use. We keep our larger stuff in their original boxes which admittedly takes up a bit more space but is a bit neater and keeps them dust-free.

But what about for all the smaller things like clamps, seals, brushes, disconnects, hydrometers etc? We ended up getting a tool chest/trolley for ours and find it a really practical solution. Having the trolley on wheels makes it portable so it can be moved around very easily, and the drawers give an easy and logical way to separate/categorise the smaller items in your brewing inventory.

You can of course get these in all sorts of different sizes, but you'll be surprised how much you can fit in a small one like ours

Think we've missed anything? Let us know in the comments below!