One brew day, 3 brews

So my wife cut me down to one brew day a month. (and I'm itching for my fix) my brew buddies and I decided to do 3 brews in one day. That way we can all get a batch for ourselves.

Any thoughts or tips on 3 batches at once?

I am the one with all the brewing equipment, so they have to brew when I brew.

1 brew kettle
1 mash tun
5 gallon pot for strike and sparge water
Miscellaneous equipment.
Lot of ingredients and 3 happy brewers.

Oh and some homebrew.

Your wife gets to decide how often you brew?

Sounds like you need to step up to 10 gallon batches!

In the meantime, assuming your mash tun can handle a large grain bill - I'd try partigyling. It's fun and you can get a strong and a weak beer from one mash (in theory more than 2 beers, but I think on the homebrew scale 2 beers is as far as I'd go). You can cap the mash to add color, flavor, etc to the second runnings.

Happy wife, happy life

Kmcogar said:

Happy wife, happy life

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I always think of it as "Right wife, happy life."

Hang in there bro. I hope she can suck a golf ball through a garden hose.

Partygyle is the way to go, I did a 3 beer gyle last summer. 1st runnings made a belgian quad(added cherries to it), second runnings made a dubbel, third runnings I added some wheat dme and made a 3.5 abv blueberry wit. Problem is you only have 1 brew kettle. Any friends with a turkey fryer you can borrow for the day?

I do two batches in a row every time. You need a second burner. You will need to heat the water for the next batch while boiling the first, or else it will take a lot longer.

It's actually not that bad. All you do is start mashing the second batch as soon as the first is out of the tun. It took me a few times to get the timing down. It really helps if you know how long it takes you to heat up strike water, heat up sparge water, get the wort to a boil, cool the wort. I started with a detailed checklist like mash beer 1, heat sparge water for beer 1, runoff beer 1, etc.

I mash for 45 minutes and boil for 60. I can do a single batch in 4 hours, and two in 6. So I guess if you're efficient and focused you could do three in 8. But three brewers plus homebrew probably means more like 10-12 hours.

Then when you're really good you can keg last month's brews while making this month's brews. It's actually a pretty convenient cycle. But kegging and brewing at the same time leaves little down time.

osagedr said:

I always think of it as "Right wife, happy life."

Hang in there bro. I hope she can suck a golf ball through a garden hose.

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Lol. Let's just say, she's a good wife.

I actually do have a turkey frying pot but I just friend a turkey in it and I am a little worried about putting my brew in that pot. I would also need another burner and propane tank too.

Slowly work your way toward 10g. Propane tanks are cheap; burners are relatively cheap; carboys for fermenting are cheap; coolers to mod into mash tuns are cheap. The big ticket item is the 20g kettle you will eventually need (probably could go smaller unless you occasionally need 18 or so gallons pre-boil for a giant beer with a 90 minute boil). So that needs to be a birthday or Christmas gift. Then you can do monster brew days with 2 x 10 gallon (or even 15 gallon) batches. All of a sudden one brew day per month is enough!

In the summer I do two or three 5 gallon batches at a time. Makes for a long day, but I'd rather do that than stretch it out into 2 or 3 brew days. Making as much preparation the night before helps a lot. Get your grain crushed, hops weighed out and ready, fermenters sanitized, assemble any equipment that needs it, and get your water ready. If you do three seperate mashes, timing is important. You want to be sparged and ready to boil as soon as the first batch is cooled and pitched. If you time everyting right, you should be able to crank out 3 brews in 12-15 hours. YRMV.

If you can swing it, 2 kettles will reduce your brewing time significantly since bringing the wort to a boil, the boil itself, chilling, and whirlpooling/settling all happen in the kettle. If you mash in on the second batch right after cleaning out the first mash, that second mash will have to wait longer than 1 hr to make it into the kettle. For most setups, it's more like 2 hrs total time in the kettle.

That said, I don't have two kettles, so I just wait awhile to mash in on the second batch. It's still more efficient than breaking everything down and bringing it back out again for another brewing session. I managed 3 10-gal batches on St. Patrick's Day without too much trouble.

Gonna try to do our first one-barrel brew day soon--two 15.5g batches.

osagedr said:

I always think of it as "Right wife, happy life."

Hang in there bro. I hope she can suck a golf ball through a garden hose.

Click to expand...

i like this ^ guy

I've purposely limited my brewing to once a month to spend more time with family. That said, I try to only drink what I brew, so I've upped it to ten gallon batches. I want to get a rims and a 20 gallon pot to do a one barrel finished batch but its not in the cards unfortunately.

Your wife determines how often you brew. That's awesome.

Kmcogar said:

Lol. Let's just say, she's a good wife.

I actually do have a turkey frying pot but I just friend a turkey in it and I am a little worried about putting my brew in that pot. I would also need another burner and propane tank too.

Click to expand...

My pot I use for strike water is a former turkey fryer. Soak it in oxi clean overnight and rinse really well. I also used some dish soap. Then boil some water in it to build up an oxidize layer and you're good to go.

ya Partygyle it up.

I don't have a second burner, but I do have a stove that can get 4.5 gallons to boil. So I've always wanted to do three brews this way:

1) Mash in on first brew (beer #1). Big beer. Thin mash.
2) During mash, make this 15-min boil brew (beer #2): https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/15-minute-cascade-pale-ale-210253/. 1 hour should be just enough time to boil, chill, and drain into fermenter. Done! Plus if the process takes more than an hour, beer #1 is a big beer anyway, so extra time in the mash is probably good for it.
3) Collect first runnings, sparge, etc., on beer #1.
4) Once all runnings are collected, start boil.
5) Partigyle the mash. Put runnings into a smaller pot, which gets boiled on the stove. So - 2 boils going at the same time.
5) Chill, drain and pitch beer #1. By the time that's done, beer #3 should be just about hitting the 60 min boil mark.
6) Chill, drain and pitch beer #3.
7) Take a nap.

That gets you 2 5-gallon beers and one 3-3.5 gallon beer, with maybe an hour added to your brew day. Not bad.

The only problem for me would be fermenting them. My ferm fridge only fits one bucket. So maybe rig up a swamp cooler for the other 2?

Either way, one of these days I'm going to make this work.