Brewday To-Do List

I'm having my brother-in-law over on Saturday for brewday, and I'm paranoid I'm going to forget something. I'm going to write out my whole brew day, and I would like any helpful hints you can offer.

1. Assemble equipment, sanitizer, and ingredients. Set yeast on kitchen counter to come to room temp.
2. Heat 15qt water to 152°F. Place grain (12lbs) in MLT.
3. Begin mash; time: 1:00
4. Heat 8qt water to boil. Perform mashout, raising mash temp to 170°.
5. Vorlauf
6. Heat 4gal water to 170°
7. Begin sparge, draining into kettle. Use continuous sparge method as discussed by Palmer, ch. 17.
8. Once sparge is completed (runnings at 1.008 or volume = 6gal), begin boil
9. At rolling boil, begin timer. Add bittering hops.
10. Follow hop schedule in recipe, adding hops at directed times
11. Flameout and cool down, using IC
12. When temp hits 75°, pour into fermenter. Strain out trub. Aerate, pitch yeast, and install airlock.
13. Cleanup.

We're doing two batches, so I'd like to be mashing the second while we're boiling the first. Actually, I'll probably stagger it by about 30 minutes so that by the time I get ready to sparge the second batch the first batch will already have the yeast pitched (or be close).

Are my temps and times looking okay? Have I missed anything?

#2-If you want to mash at 152* I think you're gonna need to bring the water up at least 8* as it will cool down as the grain absorbes the water and heat. How much is something you're gonna have to work out on your own by brewing a lot and seeing what the temp loss is as the grain weight and mash water volume vary.

How are you gonna heat the water for the second mash while boiling the first? You have more than one burner?

+1 on temp

I need to hit about 160-162 to get a final temp of 152 after adding to grain.

Initial temp will obviously vary with equipment though.

I had actually calculated that, but somehow it slipped through my edit. Using Palmer's formula, I came up with 164° initial water temp. I'll check my numbers to be certain.

I have a burner and a stove top, and two kettles. I can heat the mashout water on the stove top, since it's only 2 gallons. I'm doing the mash in a cooler, so that leaves my burner open. I'll actually start the 4 gallons of sparge water in the smaller kettle somewhere between #3 and #4 so that it's ready when I am. I'll then sparge, draining into my boil kettle.

#12 I like to get my ales to 65°F before pitching yeast. I find if I pitch above 70°F it is difficult reach and maintain the 66-68°F tem that many for the strains like to ferment at.

Add an item for your Whirlflock/Irish moss. I occassionally forget that one.

Also any water treatments (Campden tablet, gypsum, etc.).

Okay, thanks for both of those. I made the pitch temp change on my notes.

I've never done Irish moss before. Does it go in at 15 minutes before flameout? Is that where the yeast fuel goes in?

I made up some spreadsheets to go along with my Beersmith printout. It has sections for estimated times and temps and I can write actuals down to compare with later.

They can really help my not just remember what to do on brewday, but to prepare with the day before. Then after, if everything goes wrong and the beer still turns out great, I can see what I did wrong and duplicate it on another batch.

Clean as you go...no rest time!