What's the hardest part of homebrewing?

What do you guys think it the hardest part of the job?

I picked "Priming" because this is where I always seem to fail. I've had too many inconsistant carbonations. Some are volcanoes, some are 5 year old girls.

after one round, I would say Bottling... not the most time consuming, but definitely the biggest pain in the ass, imo

Maybe I'm just too new to beer brewing but the wait is hell. I started my Scottish export over 6 weeks ago and it's just now getting ready to drink.

I see others complaining about hating bottling, hating siphoning, hating their equipment, hating the hellish brewing secessions......

Damn, why do you homebrew if you hate it so much?

I still enjoy it except for the waiting.

I have to say the waiting, closely followed by sanitation, I don't mind sanitizing I just worry that I haven't done a good enough job.

I voted for bottling - more of a nuisance than "hard," but I find it tedious.

The only reason I don't say bottling is I went straight to kegging. I doubt I would still be brewing if I was forced to hassle with bottles. Sometimes I'll bottle to share, but generally I'll take a growler or blow part of a keg to another keg for a meeting.

Bottling is probably the most PITA part, but I put down "Waiting" as the hardest. Bottling may be a pain, but waiting requires the most will-power

The boil is the Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

ScottT said:

Maybe I'm just too new to beer brewing but the wait is hell. I started my Scottish export over 6 weeks ago and it's just now getting ready to drink.

I see others complaining about hating bottling, hating siphoning, hating their equipment, hating the hellish brewing secessions......

Damn, why do you homebrew if you hate it so much?

I still enjoy it except for the waiting.

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I like everything else, but bottling is a bit tedious. I need to find a better method.

I don't mind waiting. I don't get into the waiting thing. I've got 3 batches I'm drinking at the time and two aging - so the waiting game isn't that hard.

I love the mash, boil, sparge... My weakness is waiting to taste the finished beer. That's followed by cleanup. I don't really enjoy that part of the process. Racking is kinda a pain as well, but hey, God has provided us with gravity to help us out, that and pumps for those more sophisticated brewers... (I'm NOT sophisticated)

All in all, I enjoy all-grain brewing the beer as much as I do drinking it. That's probably why I've brewed more in the last 14 months than the previous 5 years combined.

Im with the rest of you impatient folks out there. I find that the hardest thing about brewing, especially after creating your own recipe, searching and putting together all the ingredients, and brewin it up.

As far as the rest of the process, I have a set pattern I follow, and keep to it every time, usually with no variations. From the time the first piece of equipment taken out, to the last one put away clean...its the same process.

Witing by far is the worst, that is why I keg mine. Alough I go through it fast in the keg....hehe hard to tell how much is left. Bottling does suck as well but it isn't as bad as having a stuck mash.

I like every part of it except cleaning up the mess. Waiting for the results is like waiting on Christmas. To me it's difficult, but I like it.

The waiting is what gets me the most. The other parts run the spectrum between fun and necessary evils. I usually start in on a batch two or three days in the bottle. By the time I get to the end of them, I've noticed the taste has changed and smoothed out. If I start brewing more, I'd drink less green beer. Anybody got a little spare self restraint they could send my way ?

Please see "Wind" in the "Drunken Ramblings and Mindless Mumbling" section of this forum. It spells out the hazards of drinking green beer.

Yeah, ain't it great ? How do you spell relief ?

Cooling the wort has gotten to be the biggest PITA to me. I haven't landed a technique that I'm happy with. Plus, it seems to take so much time, right there at the end of a long brewday, and you still have cleanup to look forward to.

For some reason I love fly sparging, though.

By the time I pitch, I have had a good six pack or more. The cleanup is a dreaded step at this point due to my current state of mind! I'm ready to go relax with a few more home brews but instead it is getting late and dark and I have to drag my equipment to the curb to hose it all down and then get to the sanitizing...

ScottT said:

Maybe I'm just too new to beer brewing but the wait is hell. I started my Scottish export over 6 weeks ago and it's just now getting ready to drink.

I see others complaining about hating bottling, hating siphoning, hating their equipment, hating the hellish brewing secessions......

Damn, why do you homebrew if you hate it so much?

I still enjoy it except for the waiting.

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I completely agree with ScottT, Whenever I have a new brew boiling, or get to siphon, bottle, or even clean, It's like Christmas and the Randall residence.

I don't understand the whole "waiting is the hardest part" thing... if you have a problem waiting then just brew more, brew more often. If you do it enough wouldn't that eventually yield enough that you couldn't drink it in time, at which point it would be easier to wait for it just because you have to go through so much other stuff to get to it?

And as for bottling... do people really use those tiny little beer bottles? I figure it won't be that bad for me only because I will be using wine bottles for what I have been making... and that way there are only 5 per gallon. But if I ever did a beer (and I do want to), I would use 1 pint bottles at the least, only to make sure that I don't have 150 little bottles to figure out per batch. That would suck.

Windaria said:

And as for bottling... do people really use those tiny little beer bottles? I figure it won't be that bad for me only because I will be using wine bottles for what I have been making... and that way there are only 5 per gallon. But if I ever did a beer (and I do want to), I would use 1 pint bottles at the least, only to make sure that I don't have 150 little bottles to figure out per batch. That would suck.

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Sure.. people use them all the time. They are the easiest to come by if you are in the business of re-using bottles from commercial beer.

As for using wine bottles.... I don't have a corker, so capping recycled beer and champagne bottles works best for me.

As for organizing; you can use different colored caps for each batch, or put a sharpie mark on the cap or (what I do) keep them in big boxes to prevent them from getting mixed up.

However, right now I have three distinct shades of beer bottled, and I can tell which is which by holding them up to the light; lots of light through = IPA, some red-tinted light through = porter, utter blackness = stout.

-walker

Hrm... I've just been figuring that by the time I finally get my stuff into a secondary, then actually bottle it I should be working again, at which point I'll probably be buying $100 or so of bottles. I'd use reused ones, but I am not sure where to get them for cheap, and you can buy them for nearly $1 a bottle.

Windaria said:

and you can buy them for nearly $1 a bottle.

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what size/type are you talking about here?

-walker

Standard 750 ml wine bottles. I mean it isn't quite $1 a bottle, the guy at the local hbs sells a case of 12 for $14, but you also get the box to pack them in. <shrugs>

The guy at the other hbs sells them for about $13.50 or so, so either way, it isn't too bad. Unless there is a way to get bottles for less.

I'm doing my best to drink all the beer I can to get the bottles, I gave up after 12 Grolsch, it sucks! It's not worth it even for the bottle!
I've bought 12 750ml Amber flippies Today for £13.

When I bottle I'm doing 1 plastic so I can check on carbonation with out opening. 4 12oz bottles for checking at weekly intervals (wich I get from drinking Leffe)and then the rest in 500ml and 750ml.

Windaria said:

And as for bottling... do people really use those tiny little beer bottles? I figure it won't be that bad for me only because I will be using wine bottles for what I have been making... and that way there are only 5 per gallon. But if I ever did a beer (and I do want to), I would use 1 pint bottles at the least, only to make sure that I don't have 150 little bottles to figure out per batch. That would suck.

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Standard wine bottle glass is VERY thin compared to either beer or champagne bottles. BE CAREFUL. A little bit of excess carbonation (i know you didn't mention priming but it can happen on it's own) and you could have a problem with glass bombs!

i put sanitizing. but i put that because i used to use bleach to sanitize every thing and doing bottles really sucked!!! i did 2 batches of beer in one day and i'm tellin ya, it took 8 hours to do all the bottles!!!

I voted waiting, but as someone else said if you have a big enough stock that's not that big of a deal anymore but if you let the stock slip this goes high on the list again. I'd recant that vote if I could. I'd also say bottling but after just starting to keg (one thus far) I can't say bottles anymore. Wait, yea I can; it sucks! 10-15 minutes to get it in a keg is now my favorite thing to do! I may have to go with clean-up now...

Sam75 said:

... For some reason I love fly sparging, though.

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Thats because its easy and fun!

what is fly sparging?? forgive my ignorance

and my spelling! LOL

Definitely the wait!!!!!!!!!!!

The waiting is the hardest part.That's what i voted for.. :cross:

cleaning up............i love the whole brewing experience, that's just my least favorite part of the brew day.

I voted for waiting. Only because I hadn't brewed in quite a while so my supply consists on my first batch in ages. Tha's why I brewd 10 Gallons though. I figure I should still have plenty left by thetime my next beer is ready.

What I find the biggest pain to be is sanitizing bottles. Though FINDING bottles is becoming a hassle. I like the 500ml (pint) glass bottle chechvar and Baron are bottled in, but they are hard to find used here. In BC, liqour is sold through Govt stores (cheaper) and private liqour stores. The Govt ones do the most business sine the price is cheaper but they don't tend to have cold sections. Anyways, they used to sell you used bottles of whatever type was on the palettes, for the cost of the deposit (10cents) each. Then they started crushing the bottles to save space. For some reason they no longer crush them and they have them in the back on palettes, awaiting pick up from the recycler. But some idiot in govt has decided that they can no longer sell used bottles due to "health concerns". If you go to the recycler he will sell them but for $3 for 12 dirty 12 ouncers! Rip off. And no big bottles.
I can find 12 ounce easy enough form friends. But I do like the big bottles.

I was desparate and resorted to using 500ml water bottles for 5 gallons. The other 5 is in glass. I figure the first 5 won't last to long anyway. Of course I ahd to make a strong ale for my first bacth in ages. Takes for ever to age!
Even at a 9 days old it's tasty. That other bacth better be done soon. I need to put away half of this 10G batch for a year. All this talk calls for a strong Ale!

that's wild. i didn't realize that's how booze was sold in Canada.

waiting is tuff, but it's cool to see the beer mature and progress through fermentation. i check mine every morning and night to see activity and record the differences. after brewing yesterday, it confirmed my vote again.....clean-up!

Tony said:

Thats because its easy and fun!

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True, plus I don't have to have my loud-ass burner going, so I can enjoy some tunes. Not to mention playing with my little whirly-gig sparger.

justbrewit: Fly sparging is basically rinsing your grain bed of the extracted sugar by sprinking hot water over it. What comes out the bottom is your sweet wort.....then you boil.

DyerNeedOfBeer said:

By the time I pitch, I have had a good six pack or more. The cleanup is a dreaded step at this point due to my current state of mind! I'm ready to go relax with a few more home brews but instead it is getting late and dark and I have to drag my equipment to the curb to hose it all down and then get to the sanitizing...

Click to expand...

This is my predicament exactly. I love everything about brewing... The smell, the careful temperature control, the weighing of ingredients, the formulation of a recipe, even to a certain extent the waiting. There's stuff in my closet turning into beer, and while I wait I drink old homebrew or good storebought stuff. The druken cleanup seems to sneak up on you just when you think you've finished and everything is hunky-dory.

I hate sanitizing. Everything is too bulky to fit in the sink and I think I spill more sanitizer on me than I do in the carboys. And those damn raking hoses are always unraveling or falling on something that might contaminate. I think by the time I'm done w/ sanitizing I need a 6 pack just to calm my nerves.

try a wallpaper tray for racking canes and long tubes. i use a 5 gallon bucket, fill it with sanitizer, and keep it all day while i brew. anything already cleaned, gets put into the bucket until i need it, or when i'm done cleaning up.