Psylocide
Ippons for Days
- Joined
- Nov 25, 2014
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I'm always looking for ways to save time brewing, because, as much as I love it... I don't love the amount of time it takes. I'm not really trying to find an easy button, but I'm trying to limit the amount of time that I'm tied up during the day, especially when I've got a wife/kid/dog to attend to.
Most hobbies do take time, but this is the first where I've really had to commit a full day to the activity on a regular basis.
I tried an overnight mash that was pretty successful in breaking the brew day up, but saved no real time.
Taking a tip from another member here, I decided to give a 30 min mash a shot. The real killer here for me (mentally) was that I did no iodine testing, so was strictly going off of taste to know that at least some conversion happened.
I crushed 8.75 lbs of grain in my blender a couple of days before brew day. Put the pail in a garbage bag and tied it up, sat it in my basement.
Treated tap water with 1 campden tablet then heated mash water (4.75 gal) to 168° and Sparge water (2.75 gal) to 170°, this took about 30 mins.
Mashed in, stirring like a mad man, hit mash temp of 152° pretty much dead on (thanks greenbayrackers calcs). Insulated and let sit for 30 mins.
Sparged by stretching bag over old bottling bucket, poured sparge water over while stirring. Dunked, then squeezed bag until it was dry.
I collected right around 6 gal of wort @ 1.042 pre-boil gravity. After the boil, I had around 4.75 gal of wort @ 1.052 gravity. Efficiency for this batch worked out to ~75%.
However, that was only half the battle. The wort was very sweet pre-boil, so I knew I got some conversion. But was unsure of how much... the only thing to do was to wait until the yeast got to work.
Well, 1 packet of re-hydrated US-05 took it down to 1.010 final gravity in 2 weeks. Success!
Tasted the sample today, big success!!!
Conclusion: 30 min mash experiment turned out better than I could've hoped, and between no-chill, crushing grains the night before, I'm able to knock out an all grain brew day within 3 hours.
Pics from the day (minus the post-boil OG, really the most important for this thread, which my phone apparently asploded or the taker was too drunk to save it). I mash indoors on the stovetop and boil outdoors on a propane burner.
Grain crush blender style.
My brew partner hard at work cleaning the kettle from the last brew day.
Heating water for mashing indoors.
Sparge time.
Pre-boil OG, 1.042.
As mentioned, no post boil OG pic, for shame... 1.052.
Boil stuffs. How a real brewery operates.
FG sample before kegging, tastes as good as it looks.
This batch is kegged and I'll sample it on Saturday.
Edit: It's amazing.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f244/30-min-mash-success-519602/index6.html#post6771314
***See link to Gavin C's awesome post including Iodine test and pretty pictures, Thanks for the contribution Gavin***
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=6820017&postcount=103
Most hobbies do take time, but this is the first where I've really had to commit a full day to the activity on a regular basis.
I tried an overnight mash that was pretty successful in breaking the brew day up, but saved no real time.
Taking a tip from another member here, I decided to give a 30 min mash a shot. The real killer here for me (mentally) was that I did no iodine testing, so was strictly going off of taste to know that at least some conversion happened.
I crushed 8.75 lbs of grain in my blender a couple of days before brew day. Put the pail in a garbage bag and tied it up, sat it in my basement.
Treated tap water with 1 campden tablet then heated mash water (4.75 gal) to 168° and Sparge water (2.75 gal) to 170°, this took about 30 mins.
Mashed in, stirring like a mad man, hit mash temp of 152° pretty much dead on (thanks greenbayrackers calcs). Insulated and let sit for 30 mins.
Sparged by stretching bag over old bottling bucket, poured sparge water over while stirring. Dunked, then squeezed bag until it was dry.
I collected right around 6 gal of wort @ 1.042 pre-boil gravity. After the boil, I had around 4.75 gal of wort @ 1.052 gravity. Efficiency for this batch worked out to ~75%.
However, that was only half the battle. The wort was very sweet pre-boil, so I knew I got some conversion. But was unsure of how much... the only thing to do was to wait until the yeast got to work.
Well, 1 packet of re-hydrated US-05 took it down to 1.010 final gravity in 2 weeks. Success!
Tasted the sample today, big success!!!
Conclusion: 30 min mash experiment turned out better than I could've hoped, and between no-chill, crushing grains the night before, I'm able to knock out an all grain brew day within 3 hours.
Pics from the day (minus the post-boil OG, really the most important for this thread, which my phone apparently asploded or the taker was too drunk to save it). I mash indoors on the stovetop and boil outdoors on a propane burner.
Grain crush blender style.
My brew partner hard at work cleaning the kettle from the last brew day.
Heating water for mashing indoors.
Sparge time.
Pre-boil OG, 1.042.
As mentioned, no post boil OG pic, for shame... 1.052.
Boil stuffs. How a real brewery operates.
FG sample before kegging, tastes as good as it looks.
This batch is kegged and I'll sample it on Saturday.
Edit: It's amazing.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f244/30-min-mash-success-519602/index6.html#post6771314
***See link to Gavin C's awesome post including Iodine test and pretty pictures, Thanks for the contribution Gavin***
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=6820017&postcount=103
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