National Home Brew Day

Ok, so I am going to be attempting to do 2 AG brews on sat at my LHBS. Does anyone have any pieces of advice for me to insure I get it done in a reasonable amount of time? I would try to start the second one while the first one is boiling, but I only have 1 pot and I won't be able to heat the water for the mash.

Shaneoco1981 said:

Ok, so I am going to be attempting to do 2 AG brews on sat at my LHBS. Does anyone have any pieces of advice for me to insure I get it done in a reasonable amount of time? I would try to start the second one while the first one is boiling, but I only have 1 pot and I won't be able to heat the water for the mash.

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do you have an extra bucket or something to temporarily hold the strike water?


what kind of chilling method are you using? If you have an immersion chiller, put it in the boil and run your tap water through it to use as your strike water for the next batch.

Even if you have a counter flow of some kind, you could still circulate the boiling wort while pumping ground water through to heat it up.

That's an awesome idea!

FireRescueFL said:

That's an awesome idea!

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work smarter, not harder

Also, don't go full blast on the ground water, just find the right GPM to get your strike temp. Going through 212 liquid you should easily hit any temp you want above 120 going from full blast to a trickle.

I would, except my counter flow chiller is made with a garden hose and you know the taste of the water coming out of a garden hose. It tastes like vinyl. I would think that off flavor would make it to my beer. Any thoughts?

I hope your beer doesn't come in contact with the vinyl hose. It should be in the copper inside the vinyl hose.

likwidbliss said:

I hope your beer doesn't come in contact with the vinyl hose. It should be in the copper inside the vinyl hose.

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It doesn't. I thought he was recommending I use the water from the counter flow chiller as my strike water for my second batch. Maybe I misunderstood.

It works for an immersion chiller, I have done it to collect my next batch of strike water.

I have done 2 AG batches in a day, it is a full day of work, but the payout is awesome. I might do this Sunday. I have mother issues!

Best advice I can think of is to bring your stuff to Cap N Cork, and brew with a bunch of HBT-ers. You'll pick up plenty of tips, and get to hang out with a bunch of us, and try a lot of different folk's beer, ciders and meads.

There's pics of previous years here.

National Homebrew Day...I am a new Brewer and this is the first I've heard of this. I was already planning on brewing on Saturday with friends but knowing that it's a holiday makes it that much better!

Sorry to thread Jack but does anyone have a good recipe suggestion for an new extract Brewer?

Rogue14 said:

National Homebrew Day...I am a new Brewer and this is the first I've heard of this. I was already planning on brewing on Saturday with friends but knowing that it's a holiday makes it that much better!

Sorry to thread Jack but does anyone have a good recipe suggestion for an new extract Brewer?

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There's actually two brewing holidays, the first weekend of may and the first weekend of november. You can read about the history of this one here- http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/events/national-homebrew-day/about

The other one used to be called Teach a friend to homebrew day, now it's learn to homebrew day http://www.homebrewersassociation.org/pages/events/learn-to-homebrew-day

There's even official recipes for the day- though I'm not doing them.

Revvy said:

Best advice I can think of is to bring your stuff to Cap N Cork, and brew with a bunch of HBT-ers. You'll pick up plenty of tips, and get to hang out with a bunch of us, and try a lot of different folk's beer, ciders and meads.

There's pics of previous years here.

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Damn, I would have loved to come if I knew about it before I called the recipe into my LHBS Hopman's in Waterford. They are doing the same thing there, and I am able to get my ingredients for 50% off.

Glad to see you got your wife involved. My Finance' hates the smell so she doesn't get too involved. She used to hate it when I brewed my extract brews inside.

Shaneoco1981 said:

It doesn't. I thought he was recommending I use the water from the counter flow chiller as my strike water for my second batch. Maybe I misunderstood.

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yep, wouldn't work well with a hose counterflow but if you had a plate chiller or immersion it would. Too bad