Originally Posted by Homercidal

Ok, grinding grain by hand and enjoying it is just sick.

Other than that, I also like to get stuff done the day before. It's amazing how fast and easy it is to do this stuff, and then how much smoother the brewday goes.

I also weigh my grains and crush them and put them in a bucket with a label indicating what the mix is and when I crushed it (in case my brewday gets canceled)

I like to measure out the water and add minerals and acid beforehand too.

Originally Posted by BOBTHEukBREWER

This post made me think. For my next brew I will treat 12 gals water with a crushed campden tablet, add my CRS or AMS or dil sulphuric acid, boil for 5 mins and leave to cool overnight. I will also sterilise my igloo and slotted copper tube filter, wash, dry, and add my pale malt and liquor salts. So next morning heat water to 78 deg C and add to grain then have breakfast....

Originally Posted by Nukesquad

I like to hear other with same methods. I always like to spend the night before assembling my valves, hop-spider, etc. I just got my barley crusher for my last batch, so I like the idea of crushing the grains the night before...one less thing to do the next morning, will def be doing that for my next batches this week.

Originally Posted by tre9er

My counterpoint to this is that I find I have plenty of time to prep things during various stages of the brew day itself. I can fill HLT with strike in about 2 minutes and fire it up. While that's going I weight and crush grain, then get MLT out and make sure it's clean, assembled, etc. The strike takes about 30 minutes to heat so I'm able to get all this done during that time.

I drain strike into cooler (hotter than strike actually) and cover to preheat. I can then add sparge water to HLT and anything else (for those 5-10 minutes). I dough-in and stir-down to temp, cover, throw blanket on MLT and fire up sparge water on one element usually...so it's not too fast to heat.

Now I go make/eat breakfast with the fam, etc, then weigh FWH or 60m hops. After sparging and adding first hops I measure other hops as boil get's going.

Really, there are plenty of times where waiting is required, so I find I can have everything prepped during those times. The only times it get's stressful is if I have issues crushing or hitting a temp. Crushing the night before would be about the only thing I might do to make sure if I have to double-crush or adjust it, I have time...but even that only takes me 5-10 minutes.

Originally Posted by DirtyOldDuck

I find I can drink more beer while weighing grains and hops if I am not worried about times or temperatures; therefore, I like to do the prep the day before I brew. Similarly, I find I can drink more beer while watching times and temperatures during the brew if I am not busy weighing out the next hop addition or doing something else I could have done the night before. It works for me.

Originally Posted by AZ_IPA

Ya know Dan, HBT has a multi-quote feature.

Originally Posted by Dan

Sorry, I need to learn how to use that one!

Originally Posted by Dan

I just enjoy the prep time the night before. For me, very relaxing.