A Rundown of My Brewery - Part 2

1. Once your wort has been chilled to the ideal temperature for the yeast being used, you will transfer it into a fermentation vessel.  I use both food grade plastic buckets and a glass carboy for fermenting.  If you are going to use plastic buckets, I highly recommend purchasing either a pail opening tool or the screw on Gamma lids for the buckets as prying the lid off can be quite a feat of strength and very painful if your fingers slip.  If using a glass carboy,  I would purchase a carboy sling because a 6.5 gallon carboy weighs close to 20 lbs empty and a carboy filled with 6 gallons of wort could weigh as much as 70+ lbs.  Having the sling makes moving the carboy safer and much more manageable.  If you don't believe me that this makes it safer and you have a strong stomach, just Google "carboy accidents" and see some of the carnage!
2. Once you've pitched your yeast, it is a good idea to maintain the fermentation temperature within the range suggested by the yeast manufacturer.  There are many ways to do this by either placing the fermenter in a cool part of the house, by using a swamp cooler or by using a refrigerator/ freezer with a temperature controller.  I was fortunate enough to receive an upright freezer from a family member that I now use as a fermentation/ lagering chamber.  I built a temperature controller using the STC-1000 unit that allows me to switch from cooling with the freezer itself to heating with a hot plate.  The freezer and hot plate simply plug into the controller and the STC-1000 switches between heating and cooling depending on the desired temperature of the beer (wort is beer once fermentation begins).  This is a great site to check out if you're interested in building an STC-1000 controller yourself.  I built mine and it really was quite simple and a fun project.  
3. Once your beer has completed the fermentation process as verified by steady gravity readings via a hydrometer, you'll move on to packaging your home brew.  Your options are to either bottle your beer or keg it.  Your typical 5 gallon batch of beer will yield between 50-55 12oz bottles worth of beer so if bottling is your option you'll need to make sure that you have at least this many clean bottles on hand.  I prefer amber colored commercial bottles as they feel thinker than bottles purchased from home brew suppliers.  I bottled for many years but made the move to kegs about a year ago.  I have 4 pin lock kegs and a converted chest freezer modified to store and dispense my beer.  It can be seen sitting to the left of my upright freezer in the picture above.  No matter which method you use, sanitation is of the utmost importance so be sure to deeply clean and sanitize your bottles or kegs prior to packaging.  I have tasted some really funky beers coming out of a bottle or keg that tasted great prior to bottling/ kegging so sanitation cannot be stressed enough.