About Wort & Keg

The author

Who writes this

Brijon M. — the hands-on owner behind madgrey llc. Every page on this site carries that byline. There is no rotating roster of freelancers and no “editorial team” standing in for one person.

You will not find a list of credentials on this page, and that is deliberate. Plenty of equipment sites assert certifications, judge qualifications and precise years-brewing figures that would be difficult to check. We state what is true and stop there -- the reasoning for that choice is set out in full on how we pick, which is the page we would rather be judged on.

The site

What this is for

Wort & Keg exists for one specific reader: a brewer who already owns a bucket, a kettle and a hydrometer, knows what a carboy is, and is deciding between a FermZilla and a stainless conical.

That focus is unusual, and it comes from a gap. Search for brewing equipment and you mostly find two kinds of page: beginner “best X” lists aimed at someone buying their first kit, or process-focused writing that covers technique rather than purchases. Very little is written for the brewer in between, who knows the vocabulary and wants to know whether the upgrade is worth the money.

So the site is organized around the weakness being upgraded rather than around beverage type or brand. Six categories, 90 guides and reviews, and a signature page -- the upgrade path -- that sequences the whole thing by return per dollar.

• 6 categories, each with roundups, head-to-head comparisons, single-product reviews and guides.
• Model-vs-model comparisons, keyed to the actual generation. BrewZilla Gen 3 and Gen 4.1 are different machines and most pages blur them.
• Honest limitations on every pick, including the top pick. A roundup where nothing has a downside is a list, not a recommendation.

The publisher

Who owns this

Wort & Keg is published by MadGrey LLC. The site is independent: no manufacturer, retailer or brand has any editorial input into what appears here or how products are ranked.

We are a publisher rather than a shop. There is no premises, no warehouse and no local branch, which is why you will not find store locations or “serving your area” copy anywhere on this site. If you want to know where to actually buy brewing equipment, that is a real question and we answer it honestly in where to buy homebrew supplies -- including the cases where a local shop is the better choice even though we earn nothing from it.

Funding

How this is paid for

Affiliate links. We earn a commission on qualifying purchases made through links on this site, at no extra cost to you. The full statement is on the affiliate disclosure page, and a disclosure appears on every page carrying a buy link rather than being buried in a footer.

Commission rate does not influence ranking. Several pages here recommend the cheaper product, and more than one tells you not to buy the category at all until something less expensive is sorted first -- the upgrade path opens by telling you to buy a temperature controller rather than a brewing system. Those pages earn us less and they are the honest answer.

Standards

What this site will never do

Stated as commitments, because they are the things the rest of this category does routinely:

• No invented prices. A price appears only from a live, dated feed. Otherwise you get a link and the retailer’s current price. No discounts, no savings, no “was” figures.
• No fabricated testing claims. We do not have a test lab. Where a verdict rests on published specifications and documented community consensus, the page says so.
• No star ratings, reviews or testimonials. No such data exists for this site, so none is displayed and none is emitted in the page schema.
• No invented credentials. The author facts above are exhaustive.
• No urgency or scarcity language. No countdown timers, no “limited time,” no stock counters. None of it would be real.

Contact

Corrections are welcome

If something here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed. A site that publishes its method should be willing to be held to it, and factual corrections are the most useful mail we get.

Email contact@wortandkeg.com, or use the form on the contact page.