Equipment You Will Need

Mar
23

2007

If you want to make your own homebrew beer and liqueurs, you’ll need some basic equipment. Following is a description of some of the equipment and utensils I have found to be necessary along with others that, although may not be necessary, nevertheless make the job a lot easier.

Liqueur Making:

Measuring Cup – used for measuring ingredients

Measuring Cups

Measuring Spoons

Set of Wooden Spoons – for mixing ingredients and for making sugar syrup on the stove.

Set of Metal Strainers – used for straining liqueurs.

Mesh Colander – used for general purpose straining

Rubber Spatulas

Funnel – used for bottling

Lemon Zester – for making lemon zest.

Coffee Maker Funnel (available from Bunn-O-Matic). This is a necessity for filtering liqueur.

Metal Coffee Filter – one of the basics … needed for straining liqueur.

Chopper – perfect for chopping nuts and seeds

Coffee Grinder – works fast for chopping almonds, apricot pits and cinnamon sticks

Mortar and Pestle – For manual grinding of seeds and herbs

Citrus Juicer

Cherry Pitter – a necessity for pitting raw cherries

Scale – sometimes the recipe calls for amounts by weight.

Eyedropper – For precise measurement for adding extracts to your homemade liqueurs. Some extracts (like chocolate extract) are very potent and can ruin your work if overdone. Sometimes you have to measure these by a number of drops. There are approximately 32 drops of water per 1/4 teaspoon. Sometimes a recipe will call for less than 1/4 teaspoon. This is where the eyedropper comes in handy.

Viscosimeter – shown here with a stopwatch … this is for checking the viscosity of your home made liqueurs. This is a Dupont M50 cup … (equivalent to a Zahn #2 viscosity cup) … available from distributors of automotive refinishing supplies. Sold to the body shop trade for checking paint viscosity. Look in the yellow pages under "Automobile Body Shop Equipment & Supplies".