I saw the "Who likes beer?" thread and thought it might be nice to have a place for us home brewers to chat, I'm sure there's plenty of you out there.
I know there are great forums for this hobby specifically but I thought it would be interesting to see the different equipment setups and approaches to our home brewing rigs.

I'll start us off. I had only made a few extract beers years ago and always wanted to get further into brewing. A friend just so happened to have a bunch of equipment just taking up space that he wanted to get rid of, so I had a good start to work with.

The first photo is the main mechanical portion of my brewing setup. I tried to mostly use what I had on hand for this, its purpose is to maintain temperature in the mash tun during the conversion (mashing) process. It consists of a sous vide device, a float switch, a small 12v pump, and some valves. The mash is gravity fed to the plastic bin, then heated/maintained by the sous vide, then pumped back into the top of the mash tun by the 12v pump. The float switch is to turn off the pump when the level is low so to not burn out the sous vide heater. 1 (resized).jpg

A sparge arm I built in order to prevent disturbance to the grain bed.
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A mash paddle I made from some scrap cherry and maple.
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Using a bunch scrap plywood, a piece of metal from an old computer desk, and a random drawer, I built a rolling shelf to hold everything. The casters and the burner/stand were the most expensive parts of this build. 8 (resized).jpg
Here's the setup ready to go.9 (resized).jpg
Next up I used 12v peltier device/solid state heat pump that I pulled from a car cooler bag in order to maintain my fermentation temperature. This was pretty simple, I just bought a 12v temperature controller and wired it up. I bought a laptop 4a 12v power supply in order to power both. The box is just insulation foam board, I've since lined the box with a mylar emergency blanket.11 (resized).jpg
Here it is doing it's job during "high krausen". 12 (resized).jpg
My friend even gave us some corney kegs, a 120v temperature controller, and a c02 system. That means I needed a keezer or kegerator, I went with a keezer. That construction grade lumber can look pretty good with proper selection, seasoning, jointing, and planing. 31 (resized).jpg
I cut a rebate into the rim of the collar and used some more scrap cherry in order to make a lip to hide the foam insulation.20190802_132625 (resized).jpg
Keezer finished. 32 (resized).jpg
A side by side of a saison dupont next to our clone attempt. 44 (resized).jpg

I'm sure my setup will evolve as funds allow, next will probably be to get a bigger pump and plumb it in solidly. Although I've done about 70 gallons with this setup so far and all is well with only minor malfunctions.

That's funny because it's an easy and forgiving style, you'd think there would be more out there. I'm doing another saison tomorrow because I want another quick beer to fill up the keezer.

Have you seen or had any beers from Jester King west of Austin? They have some fantastic farmhouse beers, although pretty pricey.