Alright, now we’re getting somewhere! My relentless reloading of the Fed-Ex package tracking pages today clearly payed off. When I finally made it home this afternoon, I was greeted by five glorious cardboard shipping boxes full of brewing equipment. They were glowing like a stack of gold at Fort Knox, I tell ya. OK, so maybe the boxes were just reflecting the sunshine that was beaming forth from my ear-to-ear grin.

In any event, all of the beer-making goodies that I ordered from Northern Brewer were sitting there waiting to be cracked open. Incredibly fast order processing and delivery from these guys. As I mentioned in my previous post, I may have gone a bit overboard with the amount of research that I did before ordering, but I really think that I managed to strike a good balance between the overall cost, convenience, and future scalability of my rig.

I ended up going with NB’s “Deluxe Beer Starter Kit“, an immersion wort chiller, and an extract recipe. Now that I see the wort chiller up close and personal, I’m thinking I could have most likely built one myself for about half the cost, but… well, this one’s pain-free and ready to go, I suppose. The deluxe kit itself has everything that I could possibly need to get started, plus, it should end up saving me some cash when I eventually want to upgrade to all-grain.

Now, I’m just waiting for the 10 gallon Megapot brew kettle to arrive. This appears to be a fairly popular size, since the few places that carry it all have it listed on back-order. Austin Homebrew assures me that the wait should not be too painfully long, though. This just gives me a little more time to chill, read up, “make some more bottles”, and prep everything for my first brew experience.