It's not the time, it's the work...

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Sir Humpsalot

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I am beat! Another 6 hour batch.

This was my first batch at my new house. So, of course, there's a learning curve there. And it was snowing, so taking my shoes on and off took some time. And I was mashing inside, boiling wort outside, and chilling in the basement, so there's the transferring issue to contend with.

But I don't mind the time. It's the lugging the stuff back and forth. Carrying buckets full of wort to the turkey fryer. Carrying 7 gallons of boiling hot wort down a dozen steps to the basement. Dragging my MLT outside to dump the spent grains.

I am exhausted. I think I need a brew sculpture.

I also need better clamps. Those $0.25 dryer-hose clamps don't clamp down worth a damn.

I'm seriously tempted to go down to 3 gallon batches on the stove in the winter and 10 gallon batches in the summer. 5 gallons is just not enough when the weather's nice and just too much to lug around when the weather's cold.

Sorry to vent here. Hopefully I'll have a good Alt in a few months to show for my efforts... :mug:


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UPDATE: On page 3, I am building a brewstand to cut down on the less pleasurable work of cleaning and hooking up connections to carry hot wort around. I just decided against starting a whole new thread.
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
Carrying 7 gallons of boiling hot wort down a dozen steps to the basement.
That sounds like lots of fun...:(

It's physical work here too (back and forth, up and down, in and out), but I have too much fun with it to worry about it.
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
I am exhausted. I think I need a brew sculpture.
Ding, ding, ding!!! We have a winner!!!

Made all the difference in my brew days. The only thing I carry now is a full carboy into the house.
 
I do everything in the garage except ferment. I get water from the kitchen (which is just inside the garage), and have a ghetto quasi-sculpture consisting of the top of a patio bar for the MLT and a burner on cinder blocks. Gravity does all my work for me except carry the sealed ferementer to the basement.
 
A sculpture would indeed help a lot. It's on my to-do list, too. As for chilling, take a look at this. It could help you chill where you boil, thus elimination at least some of the lugging around.

I don't know how far your garage is from your house, but for hauling your heavy stuff, why not try to get it on wheels??? I recycled my kids' Radio Flyer that they no longer use and I use it to wheel my carboys back and forth to my house. I still have to carry them downstairs, but it helps.
 
I will say that I was actually envisioning 100+ foot long hoses... running from the kitchen down onto to driveway/garage and then from outside to the basement.

Ridiculous, I know, but I'd rather sanitize a length of hose than lug hot wort around...
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
I will say that I was actually envisioning 100+ foot long hoses... running from the kitchen down onto to driveway/garage and then from outside to the basement.

Ridiculous, I know, but I'd rather sanitize a length of hose than lug hot wort around...

Funny you mention that. The area in my basement where I ferment is actually directly behind my garage. I'm thinking about drilling a hole though the poured concrete wall and running tubing through it and the floor joists to my fermenting area. I haven't worked out all of the specifics of it yet, but I could do it fairly cheaply and it would save me some hauling on brewday.
 
You might talk to Brewtopia to get some insight on his process. He makes five gallon AG batches in his condo basically by boiling/combining 2.5 gal batches.
 
ohiobrewtus said:
Funny you mention that. The area in my basement where I ferment is actually directly behind my garage. I'm thinking about drilling a hole though the poured concrete wall and running tubing through it and the floor joists to my fermenting area. I haven't worked out all of the specifics of it yet, but I could do it fairly cheaply and it would save me some hauling on brewday.

Great minds think alike. I too was staring at the cinderblocks at the top of my basement wall and thinking, "just one hole... plug it up when I don't need it... and my problems are solved..."

On a positive note though, I mashed inside and swmbo didn't seem to mind the cooler/kettle/etc.

Keep the suggestions coming folks, I'm still thinking about them.... Trying to figure out which options are attainable in my situation with minimal cash outlay.
 
I know a guy that does 20 gallon batches. He keeps his grain on the top floor of his house and brews in the basement. He ran a pipe from the grain room to the basement. He weighs and mills the grain then shoots it down the pipe to the basement. Doesn't have to carry 40# of grain down the stairs. I think a pipe or hose down to the fermenters would be best. Or, find a way to brew closer to where you ferment.
 
I am probably going to 3 gallon batches for now also. It seems like chilling would be a bit easier considering I dont have a chiller yet. The biggest problem I see would be getting the correct amount of hops and grains weighed with out a scale. I might have to talk to the LHBS to see if theyll measure out some of my purchases in to smaller bags. Oh yeah and its like 11 degrees here.
 
Interesting as Im gonna do my first AG here in Anchorage. Its warmed up quite a bit to 20. But my garage keeps at a nice 50 so I think I will be fine.
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
...and chilling in the basement...

Did you say you have a basement? :D

IndoorBrew_1.JPG
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Me_Brewing.jpg
 
BierMuncher said:
Did you say you have a basement? :D

Yeah, but I'm renting... so a large brewing station is out of the question. Fermenting is fine and maybe even some lagering, but I don't think I can have it all in the basement at this point.
 
Lil' Sparky said:
Ding, ding, ding!!! We have a winner!!!

Made all the difference in my brew days. The only thing I carry now is a full carboy into the house.

10 or 15 gal batches on the back deck - I filter the water through an in-line filter with food grade hose attached to the outside faucet into the HLT. Gravity moves it through the MT to the kettle, gravity through the CFC, and gravity carries it thru tubing from the CFC thru a basement window and into my carboys in the Basement. No liquids carried anywhere.

Rack your brain a little and you may find you can improve your setup to help you out! :mug:
 
I only do 10 gallon AG batches and my plan is to turn two of my 15.5 gallon kegs into fermenters that will just stay in my fermenting room which is in the basment.
I brew outside and as of now I have been splitting my brews up in pails and carboys and lugging them down the stairs. So I think once I get the fermenters built I can just move my tower close to the house and run a hose from the CFC into the fermenter. Then the only lugging I will need to do is the 20 gallon MLT full of grains to dump on the garden.:rockin:
 
I hear ya I'm just the opposite for me it ain't the work it's the time. That's why I do 10 gal. Virtually the same work and time just 2x the beer.
 
I'm looking into a homebuilt kegging system now. I'm thinking about a 4 circuit cold plate in the tiniest fridge possible with 4 cornies underneath. Kind of a stand-alone beer tower. About 20 inches wide, 4.5 feet tall, made of wood, with 4 taps on top.

That'd be perfect for the drinking needs of myself and my close friends... and for parties, I could just stick the cornies in an ice bath to prechill them a bit.

As for the brewing aspect, I'm still thinking. First off, I am tired of fiddling with my homemade CFC chiller. Hose clamps suck. I'm looking at a Shirron chiller. I guess the main thing I need though, more than anything else, is just warmer weather...
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
I guess the main thing I need though, more than anything else, is just warmer weather...

Move to Texas! We've got plenty of it....It's currently 75*
 
ohiobrewtus said:
Funny you mention that. The area in my basement where I ferment is actually directly behind my garage. I'm thinking about drilling a hole though the poured concrete wall and running tubing through it and the floor joists to my fermenting area. I haven't worked out all of the specifics of it yet, but I could do it fairly cheaply and it would save me some hauling on brewday.

So....here I am at my local brew house. If you sit at the bar and look up to where the wall meets the ceiling you see a couple of tubes used to transfer wort from one side of the building to the other.

I have a set up similar to yours and am also considering getting my drill out. My patio has water, electricity so we can listen to the Packer Games and close proximity to our fermenting room. WE love gravity, right?
 
UPDATE:

I've only brewed one batch since this thread. The cold weather is one factor, the lack of convenient wort chilling is another. I've ordered some parts to start putting together a brew stand.

One idea I have is to have a BUILT-IN water supply. No, I'm not talking about hard plumbing here. I'm thinking about a PVC pipe with a threaded attachment for a hose and a valve on the brewstand to divert or shut off the water.

Once the hose is hooked up, the water will be always-on to a garden nozzle on a short hose which can be used for boil-over foam control and also for in-place cleaning of the MLT and kettle.

Then, with the turn of a knob, water will be diverted to the CFC. That will eliminate more than half of my plumbing issues.
 
Sir Humpsalot said:
Great minds think alike. I too was staring at the cinderblocks at the top of my basement wall and thinking, "just one hole... plug it up when I don't need it... and my problems are solved..."

On a positive note though, I mashed inside and swmbo didn't seem to mind the cooler/kettle/etc.

Keep the suggestions coming folks, I'm still thinking about them.... Trying to figure out which options are attainable in my situation with minimal cash outlay.


Garden hose and immersion chiller?
 
If you are going to plumb up the stand with water, you may want to go ahead and mount up a water filter to it as well. Removing chlorine from your water will make a vast improvement in the quality of your beer.
 
BuffaloSabresBrewer said:
The biggest problem I see would be getting the correct amount of hops and grains weighed with out a scale.

Well, since this thread has already been bumped, I just gotta chime in for you, Buffalo - Hit up your local friendly ... uh.... alternative goods store. The head shop. You can get a digital scale for 20 bucks, best investment towards hops measurement I've ever made, AND it works for grains and other things too!
 
I've now committed myself to building up a 2-tier brew tower to improve the speed of my brew days. While at the home-supply box store, I stumbled upon a 4 way manifold for splitting your garden hose into 4 separate connections, each controlled by a valve. Who cares?

Me!!! I'm psyched about this. I think this is REALLY going to make my brew days run more smoothly!!!

One of the outlets will be left bare so I can just dump water into a bucket or carboy whenever I wish without having to spray it through a nozzle or disconnect something else. The second valve will be permanently connected to my counterflow chiller. The third will be connected to a 25 foot coil-up hose with a sprayer attachment. The fourth may eventually be used to supply water to a hot water tank.

Each one is controlled by the twist of a knob. Hook up your hose at the start of your brew day and then you have all your water connections at the twist of a knob. Need to control a pending boil-over? Just grab the sprayer and spray. Turn the adjustable sprayer to "stream" and you can use it to clean out your MLT. Turn that off and turn on the knob for your CFC and just like that, your chiller is running. Need to sanitize a carboy? Dribble some StarSan in the bottom and put it under the 4-way manifold and open the third valve. Need to fill your water tank? Turn the 4th valve.

No more messing with the garden hose in the middle of the brew session!!! Woohoo!!!



The other little thing I'm going to put into my brew stand will be a (possibly-spring-assisted) dumper. Once you are done with the MLT, just move a lever to rotate the MLT and dump the entire contents into a bag to be taken to compost. Then just spray with the sprayer and it's clean. No more having to manually dump 20 dry pounds of now-soaking-wet grain
 
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