Tips to speed up a brew day?

My brew days are just that. Days.

Yesterday I did a double batch of Ed's pale ale as a PM. I figure, nominally, it's 1/2 hr to heat the water, 1 hr to mash, 10 min to "sparge", 20 min to heat to boiling, 90 min boil, 20 min cooldown, 30 min transfer to carboys.

That's 4 hrs, 20 minutes total, in a perfect world. It took me over 7 hrs.

Now, I had little problems. Realized after the mash that my digital thermometer was bunked, (apparently after its third swim in wort, it got a little wonky). I had to run out and grab iodine to test my conversion...(still got it converted....even though it was probably around 145-150, not 155 where I wanted it).

Other than that though, I still wasted 2 hours in gathering all my stuff, getting ready to go, sanitizing, washing, cleaning up, organizing, etc.

My thoughts to speed things up are:
*get rid of the hop bag....it's a PITA to juggle this and the IC, and a PITA to clean.
*renovate the garage so that everything is ready to go, (instead of squirreled away), and install a sink/tap.

So, who out there has tips for accelerating a brew day?? There's got to be a way to do this without spending an entire day every week....that's 1/7th of my life! Even pure extract brewing takes me like 5 hours...PM takes 7, so god help me when I go all grain! I need some time to drink it still.

I just try to do all the various odds and ends (organizing, measuring, etc.) during all the "dead time" IE, mashing etc.

Can you think of any parts of the process where you know that you're adding time?

Sorry, I don't see the problem. Some things in life are meant to be a process and that is a large part of the experience or the joy. Maybe you should add a beer or three to you list of tasks to do while brewing.

If that doesn't work, install a TV in the garage and watch you favorite sporting event while brewing.

Toby

I brew AG, usually in 4.5 hours.

So, let's see. One thing is length of boil. I never do a 90 minute boil, unless I'm using a ton of pilsner malt. So, it's a 60 minute boil. You only have to mash until conversion, but I usually do a 60 minute mash. Heating the water takes about 20 minutes. I combine tasks. So, my typical brew day:

8 AM- start mash water on to heat. Gather the MLT and HLT, and crush the grain.

8:20- mash in. Start heating sparge water, and find hoses for the IC. Gather the rest of the stuff out of the basement that I missed the first time during the mash.

9:20ish: Drain first runnings. Add first round of batch sparge. Put first runnings on to heat. Drain second runnings, and then add the second round of sparge water. Drain those and add to the boil kettle.

9:45- all wort added. Wait for boil. Measure out hops, and mix up sanitizer.

10:15- wort boiling and hot break over. Add first hops. and set the timer for 60 minutes. Add hops when needed. Clean MLT and put things away.

11:15- start the chilling. Sanitize fermenter, hydrometer, siphon tubing, thermometer and airlock. Make sure yeast starter is about 65 degrees.

11:45ish- Transfer to the fermenter, and start the aerator (aquarium pump). Clean up everything and put away.

12:15- Pitch yeast, cover, and airlock. Wash the yeast starter jug, and put that away. Everything else should already be put away, but might need to mop up a bit.

That's my day, in a nutshell.

Heres some stuff that might help.

-Preheat MLT with hot tap water. Pour in 170*F water, then let cool down to strike temp before doughing in.
-Crush grains the night before
-Measure all water the night before
-Spend the first part of your brew day getting all of the everything in order
-If you use StarSan, always keep some pre mixed with distilled water. I like to keep a keg and a squirt bottle handy.
-Heat your sparge water during the mash.
-Clean as you go!!!!!
-Run the numbers in beersmith the night/day before. Make sure you have -everything set correctly so you arent trying to do on the spot recipe adjustments.
-Use silicone or heat reisistant tubing to drain the runnings from your MLT into the BK so you can heat the wort while you sparge.
-Do you need to boil for 90 min? The recipe called for it, but if there is no pislner malt, you can always adjust it in Beersmith for a 60 min boil.
-Use Fermcap in the boil. This eliminates chances of boilovers so you can accomplish other tasks (like cleaning) while the boil is going.

Fill your stike water & sparge water pots the night before. Have someone else turn the stove on 15 minutes before you get home.

All of my hoses, autosiphon, airlocks are stored in a cooler filled with bleach water (from cooling). I don't have to sanatize. I just have to rinse. I usually have an extra bucket filled with bleach water. When I empty one, I just pour the bleach water form that bucket into the dirty one and splash a little more bleach in.

Mobile mashing. On days when I am buying and brewing I put my cooler filled with strike water (add 3 degrees) in the back of my truck and head to the LHBS. I stir in in the parking lot & mash on the way home.

I brew all grain and do 90 minute boils. It takes me 5 hours. Saturday I did two batches in about 7 hours. The second batch mashed for about two hours because I only have brew pot.

mrk305 said:

Mobile mashing. On days when I am buying and brewing I put my cooler filled with strike water (add 3 degrees) in the back of my truck and head to the LHBS. I stir in in the parking lot & mash on the way home.

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That there is hardcore

I recently got my process down to 3.5 hours. The key things that changed for me where a better burner (hurricane from NB), a March Pump, and Shirron Plate chiller. I only do 60 min boils since I normally don't use pils malt and I clean as I go/prep next step while I am waiting. Measuring out water the night before also helps immensely. If I have some extra better bottles lying around (only happened once) I fill them with my strike and sparge volumes so they are already on hand. Also since my HLT is electric I can have the water in it heating while I am setting everything else up. Also be sure to keep a bucket of sanitizer handy you never know when you will need it.

If you drink a few more beers while you brew, you'd be surprised how fast the day goes..

clean/set things up while heating water or mashing, and be organized. organization is the best way to save some time

Thanks guys, great advice so far....I think my biggest problem is set-up and clean-up. I do multitask -- heat sparge water while mashing, (kinda, since I'm only PMing right now with an outdoor version of Deathbrewer's PM tutorial), pull cooled wort into a flask to rehydrate yeast while transferring/aearating....measuring hops while coming to a boil...etc....

It's just the startup and cleanup that kills me...I think I just need to be a bit more organized here....

My thing with 90 minute boils is so far it's been extract/grains or PM batches so far, so I'm using extra light LME...the light LME Northern Brewer and Midwest sells are called "Pilsen Malt"....Which says it's made with pilsner....so I don't want DMS and boil boil boil...

I definitely drink when I brew...my kegorator is only 10 feet away from my BK...best believe it's getting some use....

Next week I'm giving a variation of Orfy's Mild a shot, my first all grain, BIAB....no pilsner in that, and no worrying about scorching the LME, so no need to shut down the BK and then bring back to a boil again....maybe that will help my speed. I think my biggest change is going to come from an equipment rack I can store stuff on though, so I'm not always digging through my "grab bucket" to get the next thing.

That, and my wife is getting pissed off that our garage is full of beer stuff so we can't park in it! (turkey fryer, propane tank, sleeping bag to wrap the "mash tun" in, bricks to raise up the turkey fryer, buckets, kegs, etc.

YooperBrew said:

I brew AG, usually in 4.5 hours.

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~Jealous... I can't even do extract in less than 5!~


Not sure how much planning you do but 'm finding the more prep I do, the faster everything goes. Write out a schedule and double check all your ingredients the day before. I like to get an early start on the brew day and my LHBS doesn't open until 11am. So if I forget something, I'm stuck for a couple hours. Also- the biggest time suck with my PM brews is waiting for water to heat up on my turkey-fryer burner. That and chilling, which usually consists of a wort chiller and gallon ziplock full of ice under the desert sun.

+1 for drinking more homebrews!

Pilsner LME has already been processed, and probably doesn't need to boil at all (unless you want to boil it to sanitize it), let alone for 90 minutes. You can definitely go to a 60 minute boil.

YooperBrew said:

Pilsner LME has already been processed, and probably doesn't need to boil at all (unless you want to boil it to sanitize it), let alone for 90 minutes. You can definitely go to a 60 minute boil.

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Oh! I suppose they have to boil it to concentrate it, eh? Well, I guess I can waste less propane now! Thanks Yooper

I had planned on a 6 hour brew day, but once this summer I did a centennial blonde in just over 4 hours. I was amazed, but after thinking about it, the reason it went so well was because I prepared ahead of time and had a plan and multitasked.

This batch was brewed next to the RV at a campground and I had only what I needed to do the brew, and had everything organized and a brew sheet with specifics all set. I just went through the motions and everything went smoothly. That is until fermentation started and I realized that I had no way of countering the 80 degree plus weather. Partial victory.

So my best advice is to plan out the brew, and have a brew sheet with said plans ready. Get all of your ingredients prepped and measured ahead of time if possible. Pulling the hops out of the fridge the night before is not going to kill them.

Simple solution: Brew mead. Much less mess but longer time. All you need to do is heat up the honey and water, not really to boiling but enough to melt the honey and then cool it down to blood temp and pitch yeast. The tough part is waiting the time until it ages properly, yes 6 months to a year.

Just kidding. The only suggestion I would have is to organize things better and prep stuff in advanced as others have guided you already. I am not sure how much you can do in advance and let sit but if you can, then great. I may be scoffed at for this but don't they also sell the malt syrup that is from an already completed mash and sparge? I am not sure how well it keeps but could you just do mash and sparge on one day, save it and then use it like the syrup stuff. You would break your brewing day in two parts.

Just an idea. Sounds like you have some storage space.

Matrix4b said:

I am not sure how well it keeps but could you just do mash and sparge on one day, save it and then use it like the syrup stuff. You would break your brewing day in two parts.

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There are a lot of threads about mashing/sparging one day and boiling the next. The biggest problem here is that grain has a lot of lactobacillus in it. If you don't boil, the bacteria will sour the wort. I got lazy and didn't clean out my mash tun. I learned my lesson the next day! This is ok for some beer, but is a generally unacceptable off flavor in most styles.

Why the need for speed? Efficiencies I can see but this is a hobby not a job relax and enjoy the day.

The need for speed is because I'm brewing every week right now to try and build a pipeline....and I'm not one of you super efficient people who is actually up and functioning by 8 am. So by the time I get around to brewing, (after running weekend errands, drinking coffee, eating breakfast, etc.) it's like 2 pm. When I don't finish until 9 or 9:30 at night, it gets rather draining.

I guess what kills me is that it's only a 60-90 minute boil, and yet the whole process takes 7-8 hours....for me, the "efficiency" isn't brewhouse efficiency, it's not putzing and taking twice as long to brew the beer as I actually need...

Especially now that its getting cold and rainy....that's probably another thing that prompted my post....previous brewdays have been sunny and gorgeous, and I've been perfectly happy to sit in a lawn chair in my garage, smell hops and drink beer....yesterday was cold and gross though, and it wasn't quite as romantic.

I do AG in 4.5 to 5 hours . I measure out my water a few days before I do this specially in the summer when its warm so the water warms to 80° + my groundwater is never over 60. And I drop some Potassium Metabisuphite to get rid of any chlorine. During the mash I clean and sanitize the equipment during the boil I clean up everything that wont be used. By the time I do the chill most everything is put away and then I transfer to primary and clean the boil pot.

shortyjacobs I read that you use cooled wort to rehydrate ? Why . Dry yeast should be rehydrated in warm water they say to because the water is better able to saturate the cell than wort because wort has sugar in it.

YooperBrew said:

8 AM- start mash water on to heat.

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Yooper you're crazy. At 8am on a weekend I'm not even thinking about getting up yet.

springer said:

shortyjacobs I read that you use cooled wort to rehydrate ? Why . Dry yeast should be rehydrated in warm water they say to because the water is better able to saturate the cell than wort because wort has sugar in it.

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Yeah, I wasn't sure on that, but Palmer talked about "proofing" with sugar, so I figured it couldn't be TOO bad, (I know you aren't supposed to proof Notty, but whatever).

Really it was cuz I was lazy last night. It takes 10-15 minutes to transfer 5.5 gallons to a carboy via my ball valve, (I use my own version of the cheap and easy aeration gadget, which goes slow, but aerates the shizz out of it). I was using Notty yeast, and I know a lot of people just sprinkle the yeast directly onto the wort. But I have carboys, not buckets, so I can't really "sprinkle" so much as "dump". I didn't feel like boiling water, then cooling it separately to rehydrate the yeast in, so at the start of my carboy transfer I dumped cool wort into a (sterilized) pyrex, and put the yeast in there. Stirred to suspend after 15 min, then dumped into the carboy.

I figure, at worst, it's no different than just dumping the dry yeast directly into the carboy, except this way it doesn't go into the carboy as one "clump".

I sometimes just dump it in dry its not hard even with a carboy . You really can even skip the aeration if you want because yeast use O2 to reproduce and a 11.5 g sachet of Notty is more than enough for a 5 gallon batch.Danstar even states its unnecessary to aerate wort. When I use dry I dont go out of my way to aerate I just let wort free fall into the carboy and pitch. And I do the same with liquid now that I have the stir plate. To rehydrate I just use a glass bowl and microwave it then let it cool down on its own in the microwave. it usually at the right temp by the end of the boil. I let it rehydrate as the wort is chilling.

this is how I aerate now. I have since added a piece of silicone tubing

You might try purchasing a large storage bin where you can put all of your (smaller) brewing equipment (sanitizer, airlocks, thermometer, hydrom, hop bags, tubing, etc. etc.)

I think that would save you lots of time in preperation.

phatuna said:

You might try purchasing a large storage bin where you can put all of your (smaller) brewing equipment (sanitizer, airlocks, thermometer, hydrom, hop bags, tubing, etc. etc.)

I think that would save you lots of time in preperation.

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Oooh, I like that....I'm thinking dividers inside it too, to keep everything neat....my storage "bin" right now is an ale pail, which sucks for actual "organization"

I was given this propane burner that is more like an inverted missile. I can bring 5 gallons to boil in 7 minutes. If I set the mash water on the burner, I barely have time to crush the grains. I have to be really careful with sparge water, because I heat that in my aluminum 5 gallon pot, and this burner will melt a hole in it.

What I really need is a better IC, that's next on my list.

A big time saver on brew day is to have everything ready the night before- I pull out the burners and gather all brewday equip into crate ready to take up, weigh the hops and put them into some cheapy 'tupperware' containers. It goes much smoother that way. I can knock out an AG brew including cleanup in under 5 hours.

You also don't 'need' to mash for 60 min- conversion is usually done in the first 20 min. I mash for 25, recirc w/ pump for 15-20 and runoff (this has also greatly boosted my eff.) Also heat the first runnings during the sparge. A whirlpool IC (or whirlpooling w/ a spoon) speeds up the chilling dramatically. During the winter I can be chilled in 15-20 min.

shortyjacobs said:

Oooh, I like that....I'm thinking dividers inside it too, to keep everything neat....my storage "bin" right now is an ale pail, which sucks for actual "organization"

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I use a Rubbermaid bin for storage. Use an empty 6 pack holder for dividers.

Yep, if setup is par of your problem, you just need to do a little more preparation. The night before a brewday, I have the the HLT, brewkettle, and MLT all out and ready to go. The grains are right there with them, as is the water I will use that day. Everything else I need to get mashed in is there and ready to go.

When I start heating the strike water, I crush my grains. During the mash, I measure out my hops (at least the first addition, but it's usually no problem to get all additions measured out) and heat my sparge water (usually enough for the whole sparge). During the boil, I clean up my MLT, mash paddle, vorlaufing pitchers, and clean or put away everything else I am done with. I also I sanitize the fermenter during the boil, get the immersion chiller all set up and ready to go. By the time I have the beer chilled and in the fermenter, I have very little cleanup left. I normally put some things away at a later time, so that they have time to dry.

Typically, I only mash to conversion, and that may take as little as 30 minutes, but I always allocate an hour (one never knows).

During all the other free time, I'm making notes or checking gravities or doing something. My total time varies somewhere between 3.5-5 hours for an all-grain brew with an infusion mash, depending on how the mash goes and how many steps I have. Decoction adds more time, depending on how many steps I decoct.

If you batch sparge, you also can start heating your first runnings during the sparge.

I do not know why you allocate 30 minutes to transfer your wort to the carboy. It shouldn't take that long.

Frankly, I also drink very little (if at all) during my brew session. I'm a busy bee, so there just isn't much time to do it. Besides, I'm having fun while staying busy, and I would rather relax with a beer after the baby is in the nursery, rather than while we're still in the middle of labor. It also isn't exacly appetizing to drink most beers over a few hours.


TL

Yea I dont know why it would talk 30 minutes to transfer to carboy. I transfer to a bucket which is much easier but still just get someone to hold a strainer/funnel and pour the pot into the bucket/carboy. Should take 5 minutes tops if you are transferring to a carboy less if its a bucket.

My 5-6g AG brewday is never more than 4 or 4.5 hours. The night before, I crush all the grain and leave it all mixed together in a big home depot bucket, and run through all the equipment I'll need in my head, looking around to make sure it's all clean and where I expect it to be (occasionally a carboy will need an overnight soak).

Having a corner of the garage for brewing equipment only helps keep me organized, the 60K BTU campchef burner I got off Craigslist speeds up the boil, and the two-tier gravity stand I built out of 2x4's means I don't spend any time doing heavy lifting. I make sure to use the downtime during mashing to do any cleanup or prep the carboy/etc. Though I still have plenty of time to rdwhahb. The big ribcage IC I made and the cold groundwater here in Portland means getting the wort down to 80 takes about 10 minutes, and I go ahead and transfer it there, figuring it'll be cool enough after the transfer for the yeast. I don't worry too much about any of it.

I'll be buying a march pump and plate chiller soon, which I'm hoping will shave another half hour off, but I enjoy the process either way. Seems like a great way to spend half a day.

corvax13 said:

If you drink a few more beers while you brew, you'd be surprised how fast the day goes..

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Yeah but your wife won't.

Procreate.

Child slave labor is a GREAT time saver!

bgburdman9 said:

Yea I dont know why it would talk 30 minutes to transfer to carboy. I transfer to a bucket which is much easier but still just get someone to hold a strainer/funnel and pour the pot into the bucket/carboy. Should take 5 minutes tops if you are transferring to a carboy less if its a bucket.

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Misprint, sorry. It takes 15 minutes....30 was for my 10 gal batch last night.

It takes 15 minutes cuz I transfer using 3/8" tubing hooked up to my ball valve on my BK. I have 1' of tubing, then a T, then another few inches of tubing into the carboy. This aerates as I transfer, but the short span of tubing before the T means slow siphoning....but great aeration. Picture siphoning out of your primary, but with one quarter of the tubing. (Height from top of siphoning liquid to bottom of tube/height of bottom liquid is directly proportional to transfer rate)

ChshreCat said:

Procreate.

Child slave labor is a GREAT time saver!

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You sound like my wife.....when we can afford them, we'll have them. This will probably be a short while after I stop spending money on this hobby :rockin:



I have a big plan to erase a lot of the headaches. It'll allow me to go all grain for about $100, (including materials for the sculpture, heat sources for HLT, MLT (if needed), and BK, bulkheads, braid, etc.), but I need to wait for the $100. The plan will get rid of all of the lifting and the BIAB problems....then another $40-60 will get me in-garage hot/cold water and a drain/tub....so maybe I just have to be patient .

Thanks again for all the great replies gals and guys....lots of good tips!