First double brew day this Sat. Any advice?

So I have been slacking on my brewing, between unexpected life issues and helping my fiancee plan our wedding, I am about to blow my last keg any pour now!

With that said to attempt to catch back up I plan on doing a double brew Saturday morning. What if anything should I be thinking of? I have my grain bills already and I have 3 full tanks of propane! I am hoping that this really won't take but 1.5hrs longer then a single batch? I know I will need to time my end of boil on the first batch with my mash, I no-chill my wort so I won't have to time that. I just want to try to make things go smooth!

Daves69 said:

So I have been slacking on my brewing, between unexpected life issues and helping my fiancee plan our wedding, I am about to blow my last keg any pour now!

With that said to attempt to catch back up I plan on doing a double brew Saturday morning. What if anything should I be thinking of? I have my grain bills already and I have 3 full tanks of propane! I am hoping that this really won't take but 1.5hrs longer then a single batch? I know I will need to time my end of boil on the first batch with my mash, I no-chill my wort so I won't have to time that. I just want to try to make things go smooth!

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Take your time, start early, keep the recipes and ingredients separated and invite some buddies over to help. Plan on taking more time than you think and most importantly have fun!

Pre-measure & label everything. It's a life saver!

Don't drink too much and it would help to have a partner to make sure everything is running smoothly.

inhousebrew said:

Don't drink too much and it would help to have a partner to make sure everything is running smoothly.

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I couldn't agree more with the don't drink too much statement.

When I do a double brew day I premeasure and crush all my grains. I then do all my water calculations (both volumes and water salt additions) and write everything down in my brew log. I do have all this data in my beer alchemy software on my iPhone but writing it down reinforces the info. Lastly I drink coffee all through my batch and I don't crack my first beer until I start running off the second one. Doubling on brew days every so often sure is a great way to restock the pipeline. Happy brewing.

Thanks for those suggestions! I did not think about starting early, so that I will do. Starting early will also help with not drinking to much as I will be drinking coffee lol. Cool deal, well I will post up some pics on the progress. Thanks again!

My double days are usualy starting by 10am. I plan ~ 4hrs a batch.

Takes a solid hr and half to two hrs minimum for me to get strike water up to temp, mash, sparge, and have it all in the boil kettle. Add another hr for the boil (not taking into account the time to bring the water up to boiling), and then bringing it down to RT to pitch yeast/measure OG.

For me and my process 4hrs is reasonable. Depending on the wt of my grain bill it definitely slows down my run off. 10-12lbs not to bad and everything flows good. 13-15lbs and I can be sitting there for an hour easy waiting for all my run offs.

I have had double days go from 10am until 6pm and others go from 10am until almost 1am due to just random things that happen in a day.

GL with it though, they are a great way to pick the pace back up!

Takes me around 5.5 hours for one batch, 8.0 hours for 2 batches, so I often do 2 batches. I do not drink a drop until I start cleaning the kettles. I pre-measure everything the night before, including water, and sanitize my carboys the day before (and keep them covered).

What overlaps (in my case): heating mash water while finishing the sparge, mash in while getting batch #1 to a boil, mash #2 while boiling batch #1, heating sparge water #2 while chilling batch #1.

MC

You cansave some time by overlapping it a little, like mashing batch 2 while batch 1 boils. But it's best to have an organized plan, as it's easy to get overwhelmed/distracted and forget something you'd never forget on a regular brewday. I sometimes fall in to the trap of thinking that since I'm mostly sitting around staring at a timer or watching a pot boil, brewday is a great time to do something else beer-related. But then before I know it I've had a huge boilover, misplaced by flavoring hops, burnt the grain I was toasting in the oven and left the gate open so my dog is aimlessly roaming the neighborhood. I'm not trying to talk you out of the double brew, just saying to be organized and to allow yourself almost as much time as two single brews.

I recently did double brew with a freind. We drank too much and I F'ed up hop aditions and at the end I realized I had not considered how I would cool two batches at once. Not a major problem and easily overcome but just something to think about

I love double brew days!

I cant brew outside- apt life- so everything is done on the stove. I use two BK's, a mash tun (pot), and a 3 gallon pot to heat sparge water to help things go faster. I also use a grain bag for the first batch in my mash tun with a fasle bottom, this way i can lift out the spent grain after sparge and get more water heating up while the first batch is coming to boil- this also helps space things out for cooling as i only have one immersion chiller. By the time the first batch is half way or so through the boiling process, the mash for the second is almost done. It gets batch sparged and the BK hits the stove. All said and done, two batches start to clean-up takes me 5 hours.

Well I figure if I start early then drinking too much should not be a problem, I already have everything measured out except my water. I brew outside on turkey fryers, I have two fryers and two keggles one is a HLT the other is my BK. so I won't have a issue getting water up to temp etc. I also no-chill my wort so there is not much time taken up there.....

I have a single tier, 3 keggle system with 2 march pumps. Here's a few tips on how I do it:
1) STAY ORGANIZED! A dry erase board is very helpful mounted in my garage where I brew
2) As mentioned previously, I don't crack the first home brew till my 2nd batch is mashing
3) I mash #2 while #1 is boiling...
4) Start early, it always takes more time than you think. It takes me about 4.5 hours start to finish (including cleanup) for a single batch, and about 8 hours for a double.
5) Did I mention to stay organized? Oh, and don't get into the brews too early ;-)

We also did our first 2 batch day on Saturday! I hope yours went well. Here are the obstacles we ran into:

One propane burner... We started boiling our wort from batch 1 before we stopped and realized, "Wait! We need to heat up the water for our mash for batch 2 first so we can mash batch 2 while batch 1 is boiling!"

Caught that within 10 minutes of starting the boil, so that was good. Second... having a good container to hold 20 gallons of dechlorinated water. We ended up scrubbing and sanitizing our swamp cooler and pouring all 20 gallons in that and we pulled from that as we went.

Having too much going on and forgetting irish moss for both batches!

All in all, nothing critical!

My first double brew day was a success! However those of you that said start early and that it takes longer then you might think are correct! I had everything measured except the water the night before and I started at 9am. Finally at 3:30pm I was done and exhausted lol. No issues really other then a miscalculation on my strike water for a pumpkin beer (forgot to take the 10 lbs of cool pumpkin into account). Other then that I have 10 gallons in the fermentation chamber bubbling away! Thanks for all the suggestions!

Daves69 said:

My first double brew day was a success! However those of you that said start early and that it takes longer then you might think are correct! I had everything measured except the water the night before and I started at 9am. Finally at 3:30pm I was done and exhausted lol. No issues really other then a miscalculation on my strike water for a pumpkin beer (forgot to take the 10 lbs of cool pumpkin into account). Other then that I have 10 gallons in the fermentation chamber bubbling away! Thanks for all the suggestions!

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10 lbs of pumpkin?!?!?!? HOLY COW! What batch size?

JordanThomas said:

10 lbs of pumpkin?!?!?!? HOLY COW! What batch size?

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It was a 5 gal. batch, however to be fair what I really meant was the pumpkin as a whole was about 10lbs. I only used the meat but still fee I put 7-8 lbs. in the mash! Hey it's my first attempt and I read it takes a lot of pumpkin for a little pumpkin taste, besides SWMBO absolutely loves pumpkin beers (she actually picked out the recipe)!

Daves69 said:

It was a 5 gal. batch, however to be fair what I really meant was the pumpkin as a whole was about 10lbs. I only used the meat but still fee I put 7-8 lbs. in the mash! Hey it's my first attempt and I read it takes a lot of pumpkin for a little pumpkin taste, besides SWMBO absolutely loves pumpkin beers (she actually picked out the recipe)!

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Ahhh. Well, just a tip: The pumpkin adds almost no flavor. It is actually extremely tasteless and low in sugar. It will add a tiny bit of flavor, but the spices give you the burst of flavor that most detect in a pumpkin beer. The pumpkin does add some mouthfeel and beautiful color, so it's not a bad thing!

JordanThomas said:

Ahhh. Well, just a tip: The pumpkin adds almost no flavor. It is actually extremely tasteless and low in sugar. It will add a tiny bit of flavor, but the spices give you the burst of flavor that most detect in a pumpkin beer. The pumpkin does add some mouthfeel and beautiful color, so it's not a bad thing!

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Yeah that's my understanding for sure, to be completely honest I just felt like I could call it a pumpkin beer with out the pumpkin. It might not do much but at least my brewer skill level is increasing!