How many square feet for home brewing ...

[OWC Jamie]

would be practical ?
10x12x7 too small ?


I've never made wine, but I have all the equipment (inherited).
Stored in boxes.
10 and 25 gallon fermenter.

Want to try pear wine.
No really big batches.

Seems like 10x12 should be plenty of room, but I'm sure I've overlooked something, having only helped with mashing (and tasting) in the past.

It's part of a shed/root cellar project .
(shed with basement)
House's cellar is too warm.

Maybe some day try grapes, but these vines have been neglected and I'm just getting the hang of proper pruning trying to 'revitalize' them. Or just buy grapes.

[vicrock]

We have been making wine in our basement and garage for 4 years now - we started with "box wine" - kits that are 5 or six gallons of juice.

Those require a VERY small space - just enough for a couple of carboys.

If you are going to do processing on a small scale, I think an 10 x 12 space would be fine - we are using about that in the garage and have several aging barrels and several fermenters.

We just bottled 24 cases of Syrah - last year was Merlot - and we have a Sangiovese in the barrel right now.

[davemchine]

I don't make wine but I do brew beer. For a truly nice setup you'd need several items that take "wall space." A deluxe brew setup would take as much as 4-5' of space. I use a refridgerator to ferment in, so add another 3' for that. I have a shelf to hold all my carboys so another 3' there. I have three huge drawers that hold all my misc equipment, they are spread out so I won't guess at the space for that. Lastly I have quite a bit of grain that I store in small buckets. I'd say a minimum of 3' of wall space for that. I think that adds up to about 17' of wallspace. I suspect your room would be plenty big, but if you fire with propane you'd need to make sure it was well ventilated.

Your header says "home brewing" but your message talks about wine. While I'm no wine expert I believe you need far less equipment for this type of project. You'd just need room for carboys, a grinder, and a press, and some misc chemicals. I don't think temperature is as important when making wine so you probably don't need to worry about a fridge. I suppose you would need storage though for all those wine bottles.

Dave