How long does does it take you to brew

I'm curious how long it takes other to brew AG. I just did my 5th and 6th batches over the weekend and I'm doing two more this weekend. I have found it consistently takes me between 5-6 hours from start to finish. It's becoming hard to find the time to brew. When I was doing extract I could do it under 3 hours easy. I'm trying to find ways to cut down on the time, one thing I'm going to try is boiling everything in my 7 gallon pot instead of the keggle. It seems to take much longer heating up that huge keggle.

I would say with prep, brewing, and cleanup, I take around 5 hours, start to finish.

5-6 hours is about average for AG....

Set-up to clean-up tends to run about 4-5 hours for me, but I'm taking advantage of downtime during the mash/boil/chilling phases to trim down the total length of the brew day. Be efficient with your time and multi-task so clean-up isn't such a bother at the end of the process.

A couple tips I can offer:

1) Crush your grain the day before.
2) Pre-measure all hops and other additions and have them laid out according to your brewsheet's schedule
3) Mix your sanitizer and sanitize your fermenter, airlocks, etc. during the mash.
3) During the boil, use this time to dump the spent grain and hose out the MLT and pack it away

The best way to cut your time down is to repeat the process time and time again, and refine it each time, trying to be as efficient as possible. That is, if time is an issue for that brewday. Me, while I like being efficient and managing my time well, there are some brewdays where I prefer to just soak it all in and relax. In that case, a medium-gravity AG brew will take maybe 4.5 hours. However, other days I am more worried about time, so I use every second wisely. If it's an ale that isn't made with pilsner malt, and it's a relatively medium to low OG (meaning only 60 minute boil), and I'm not doing a decoction or a stepped mash, and I'm being very efficient, then I can go from the first grain bag being opened up, to cleaned up well enough that you couldn't even tell I brewed, in 3.75 hrs. But it's rushed, that way.

A few tips...first off, get some fermcap/defoamer to help prevent boilovers, make sure your kettle is big enough to handle slight boilup, and most importantly, get a fan that has an adjustable up/down axis, and train the fan on the surface of the boiling wort. This will prevent boilovers and increase evap rate. All of these things allow you to do other things while the wort is boiling, and not have to sit there worrying about boilovers. What you need to do is use the down time during the mash and the boil to do other things. Heat up your sparge water, measure your hops, clean up equipment that you don't need to use anymore, sanitize your fermentation vessel. In essence, think ahead and don't sit around twiddling your thumbs. But still, just know that no matter how efficient you are, you're not gonna get down to extract batch time. The simple fact that you have to add about an hour and a half for heating up strike water, mashing, and sparging, means that it's going to take longer regardless.

flyangler18 said:

Set-up to clean-up tends to run about 4-5 hours for me, but I'm taking advantage of downtime during the mash/boil/chilling phases to trim down the total length of the brew day. Be efficient with your time and multi-task so clean-up isn't such a bother at the end of the process.

A couple tips I can offer:

1) Crush your grain the day before.
2) Pre-measure all hops and other additions and have them laid out according to your brewsheet's schedule
3) Mix your sanitizer and sanitize your fermenter, airlocks, etc. during the mash.
3) During the boil, use this time to dump the spent grain and hose out the MLT and pack it away

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I pretty much do these things already. I don't ever feel like I'm waiting around for the boil or mash to finish. I also notice that the next day I really feel like I had a good workout. I usually brew in the garage and I keep everything in the basement so I'm up and down the stairs alot. I guess my time is normal.

I use an immersion chiller to cool my wort, so during chilling I recover the hot h2o coming out of the chiller for clean-up, it saves a little more time and water.

4-5 hours or so. My last AG brew I started at 7:15pm and was showered up and in bed by 11:45pm. All the brewing gear was cleaned up and put away, too.

It takes me 4 hours and 40 minutes with a 90 minute boil and fly sparging. This includes cleanup as well. I pump cleaning solution through my system while I am boiling.

nyer said:

I'm curious how long it takes other to brew AG. I just did my 5th and 6th batches over the weekend and I'm doing two more this weekend. I have found it consistently takes me between 5-6 hours from start to finish. It's becoming hard to find the time to brew. When I was doing extract I could do it under 3 hours easy. I'm trying to find ways to cut down on the time, one thing I'm going to try is boiling everything in my 7 gallon pot instead of the keggle. It seems to take much longer heating up that huge keggle.

Click to expand...

I have my burner on low while I am sparging, when sparging is complete it takes minutes to get a rolling boil that way.

about 5 hours. I mash on my stove which takes about 30 min to reach strike temp, so then 1 hour to mash, 1 hour to sparge, 15 min to reach boil, 1 hour boil, 1/2 hour to cool, 15 minutes to aerate...Other time is spent getting the water, hooking up the tank/burner, etc;

About 5 - 5 1/2 hours... For my first and only (to date) lager, a pils, about 8 hours!

about 4.5 hours total for AG. Yeah, I could do extract batches in about 2 hours. Just cant go back though.

Damn. I must be doing something wrong. I've only done 3 AG batches so far and they've all taken 7-8 hours!

It takes me right at 4 hours to do a 5 gallon batch from crush to clean.

Over the weekend I did 15 gallons (one 10g batch and one 5g batch) in 7 hours and 10 minutes. Crushed at 12:30 pm and put away the last of the equipment at 7:40 pm.

My first few took me 6+ hours each. Like Evan said, the more you brew the more you will nail the whole process down. Do it 80 times or so and you actually start to become efficient at it!

5-6hrs generally in the 4 AG's that Ive' done.

I'm sure I could be more efficient if the family would leave me alone when i'm playin in the garage :rockin:

Usually 5 hours for me.

4.5 - 5 hours. As suggested earlier it helps to clean up while you're boiling to clean up. I find using hot water from the tap instead of cold helps a lot for speeding up my mashing water.

I take a really long time because I'm not trying to bang it out. I ended up saving a lot of the cleanup until afterwards when I could be doing things during the boil. I guess it really depends on whether I have something important to do later in the day. I average about 6 hours but can do 10g in 4.5 if necessary.

I was about 5 hours on my first AG session... that is not including the trip to the LBHS.

Once the strike water is warming up, I do quick wash of the mash tun and I'm off.

I really wish I had more time to brew, I enjoy it and wouldn't mind spending the whole day doing it. The problem I have is between work, work at home, hunting season, fishing season, boating season, birthday parties, holidays, etc........Damn my life is too hectic, work really does get in the way of the important stuff sometimes.

Assuming my mash and boil times are each 60 minutes, it takes me 4.5-5 hours from heating my strike water to pitching the yeast. It would be faster if my kitchen stove produced more BTUs and I weren't chilling full boils with ice baths. Its quick enough for me though...

+1 on cleaning out the mash tun during the boil. Another thing that saved me some time is to use my immersion chiller waste water, which is usually nice and warm/hot, to clean misc things while waiting for the wort to cool. Otherwise I'm just sitting there staring at the thermometer.

Otherwise I'm just sitting there staring at the thermometer.

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That's why I have a remote sensor thermometer, so I can do lots of other things while I'm mashing...usually surfing HBT. The base of the thermometer is reporting temps and sits right beside my laptop! :rockin:

I have noticed that I LOVE brewing with my HERMS... there is no second guessing, tweaking, stirring... I just set it and forget it! The temps take care of themselves, when I mash out, the temp controller does it and the pump recirculates it while I eat lunch. Fly sparging... heh, I have the water quantities worked out such that I can set the flow and let the HLT and the MLT both run dry and have the precise pre-boil volume... so that is pretty hands off too.

Depends on how drunk I get and if I filter the water the night before

6 hours is average

3 to 4 if I want to. (I have a thread or two documenting it)

4+ if I don't try and do other things.

20 minutes heat mash water, set up mash tun and weigh ingredients
40 minutes mash
20 minutes batch sparge (1st runnings to kettle and FWH)
20 to get to boil
60 minutes boil. Clean up mash tun etc. Sanitise fermenter etc.
20 Cool wort.
10 minutes drain to fermenter and pitch yeast
5 minutes clean keggle with hot IC water.

I can cut the mash and sparge a a little if I need to but don't normally.

I've been going retro/ghetto/old school on my last few beers. Now weighing or measuring so have maid it a little simpler/easier.

I can do it in just under 5 hours by myself. It's something I'm trying to work on, so I can brew on weekdays after work without being up later than normal. Last brew, I started at 5:45pm and I was in bed by 11ish. Continuously cleaning is key and I drink less. Actually, I don't really drink until I'm almost done with the boil.
When I used to brew with my old roommate, we'd drink a lot and make bonehead mistakes that resulted very late nights.

Do an overnight mash, it saves tons of time. Just mash before bed and rise early to start the sparge. Also measure out sparge water the night before and have everything laid out ready to go. If you do mash overnight, be sure to insulate your tun with a blanket or sleeping bag. I use both and lose about 7 degrees in 10 hours. Might want to do a mashout with this method if you don't already with batch sparging, although I haven't found the lower temp to be a problem. Just heat your sparge water up a little higher.
I'll be honest though, I am not a stickler for the details and getting everything just right. My pH meter broke months ago and haven't gotten a replacement is one example of this. I just eyeball half a tablespoon of gypsum and I throw in some acid blend in my mash and sparge water. (This is actually something I haven't seen on this site. Acid blend is used for winemaking and I find it to be excellent for pH adjustments. It's a blend of tartaric, citric and some other acid. I usually use about half a teaspoon in my mash, and 3/4s in my sparge water.) Hasn't hurt recipe repeatability yet though, and hey, I'm not brewing for public consumption. As long as the beer is good, I'm happy.

5-6 hours here, too. Longer if I try to brewcast. Even LONGER if SoperBrew brings over some big beer and I get before I'm finished.

Depends on how drunk I get while I'm standing around.

Evan! said:

then I can go from the first grain bag being opened up

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You'd be more efficient if you started heating your strike water first

A Sunday. A few hours at church, brew a batch or two and do some bottling.

I go by Norm time. "Oh, about 4 or 5 beers!"

mysteryberto said:

4.5 - 5 hours. As suggested earlier it helps to clean up while you're boiling to clean up. I find using hot water from the tap instead of cold helps a lot for speeding up my mashing water.

Click to expand...

I follow this approach also. Even in the summer my tap water is in the mid 50's, in the winter it hurts your teeth it's so cold. I save about a half hour using hot tap water.

4-5 hours for me.
My first few took more like 6-7 hours but over time I've found where I can do things in parallel or speed up tasks to where everything runs pretty efficiently. The only thing i do the evening before is print out my brew sheet and dechlorinate the water.

I measure and crush the grains while the mash water is heating.
I get everything I need for the beer out of the basement, set up the burner, and measure the hops during the mash.
Once I have the first runnings I put them on the burner to start the boil.
I sanitize the fermenter during the chill period and prepare my cleaning solution in the MLT using hot water from the chiller.
Then after the fermenter is in the basement, I finish my cleaning and sit everything out to dry.

I figure the best I could do is
1 hr mash
+ 1 hr boil
+ 20min chill
= 2hr 20min
The rest of the time is heating water or wort and sparging.

Craig

Craig

5-6 hours for me.

Not exactly really efficient on my timing....just enjoying the process.

Only good thing is, it used to take the same amount of time for a 10 gal batch as it does now for a 20-25 gal batch.

Usually 5.5-6. I brew with a friend so we hang out and don't rush too much. That is until right near the end when we realize that we have 10 minutes to get everything sanitized and stuff!! I am sure we could do it in 5, but oh well. It's fun!!!

I"m probably at 5-6 hours myself. figure I could cut it down if I had a propane burner (instead of the weak a** stovetop) and a wort chiller.

Wort chiller is my next purchase, so that'll probably trim about 30 min off my time.

for me, it's not how long it takes, it's HOW LATE i end up staying up. the earlier in the evening I can start heating water and mashing, the earlier I'm done. I'd rather start heating water while dinner is cooking, and mash in while wifey and I get the kid ready for bed...so than when kid is asleep I can start working on the boil and sparge. Then, I'm done at 11 or midnight instead of 1 or 2 am.

EDIT: timed myself today (11-16-2008) while doing an AG porter. It was 5 hours start to finish (all clean up done). During this 5 hours I also cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast, played a board game with my daughter, made my wife tea, made and ate lunch & cleaned up from it, and of course, made beer. I credit the "speedy" brew day to simply not drinking a drop until I was all done. Started at 9 am, done at 2pm. Can't wait to try the beer!!!!

Extracts were taking me under 3
Partial mashes have been running about 6 hours.
I'm doing my first AG saturday but I'm expecting it to be about the same amount of time.