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I don't make a hydrometer reading and do another one 3 days later. I just wait no less than 3 weeks and transfer to a bottling bucket.
 
At first I was overly picky about SG readings. At least once a week,maybe twice. Now,I wait a minimum of 2 weeks before even giving a ****e,since I now know on average,it'll take that long for even a cooper's os lager to finish & clean up.
But,when done on bottling day,I've been pretty lazy about cleaning the fermenter beyond just washing the spent cooper's yeast out of it.
Now that we have the cooper's micro brew fermenter,& a BB ale pale,I'm gunna change that. My wife is using US-05 in her ale pale,so I figured we'd learn yeast washing together. Besides the fact that the ale pale arrived in time to give it to her as a mother's day present to go with the BB summer ale kit she bought with some tax return money some 2 weeks ago.
Maybe things will get easier with a co-brewer? It's a lot of work from BK to bottle. Cleaning bottles the 1st time is the worst! I'm going to clean out my 5G fishin bucket to soak them in PBW for 2 days,then dobie & bottle brush real quick. If I use my BK at the same time,I can have her help knock them out. It'll be way easier after I collect enough bottles for 3-4 batches,plus the cooper's PET bottles.for,say,house brew...:mug:
 
Uhm, just WHAT exactly, are GRAVITY readings? Seriously, I don't usually bother with readings. Depends on how I feel at the time (grin). So far, it has worked out very well, and surprisingly consistent. I'm kind of afraid to change and actually start taking them -it may change the way I brew!
 
You're measuring the specific gravity of the wort,ie,fermentables. As the brew ferments,it looses "gravity",or weight,if you will,of said fermentables. Since alcohol is lighter than the fermentables,you can use it as a gauge to see when it's all done fermenting. These measurements are also useful if you're brewing to style,or at least trying to duplicate a brew as closely as possible.
 
ArtVandelay said:
I hot side aerate the sh*t out of my wort when I pour from a bucket to the boil kettle
Click to expand...

How does your wort end up with **** in it to begin with? Good to see you're removing it.
 
McMalty said:
i can understand you not feeling like taking gravity readings, but i don't understand why. It's incredibly simple and not difficult. It provides you insight as to if your brew is done fermenting or not and how much abv ur brew has. If you're just making your run of the mill brew, i guess you might not care that much, but if you're making something high abv like a barleywine or an imperial, without taking gravity readings, i can't imagine having to wait a few months to figure out whether or not something went wrong.
Click to expand...

I started brewing with a Mr. Beer Kit several years ago. Had a ton of fun doing it as someone gave it to me as a gift and I made a TON of beer. I never joined this forum until October when I realized you could make more beer with even better fermenting and bottling equipment and recipes.

The Mr. Beer instructions are extremely short and "close minded". They mention nothing about wort chillers, steeping grains, attenuation, refractometers, gravity, nothing. So I made ALOT of great beer without doing those things or even knowing what they were. I seriously never heard of any of those terms until 7 months ago.

I upgraded all my equipment to 5 gallon batches, I read books, and even started making better recipes, still haven't done the gravity readings to this day. Coming from me, I don't need to, but I won't exactly tell beginners that they don't need to as well. I still make great beer - ales, fruit wheat beers, stouts, porters, reds - no barleywine or imperial yet, someday maybe though.

It's not so much that I refuse to do so, it's more of "why start now?" I brew with extract, steeped grains, and pellet hops. You can make great beer without knowing the numbers. Eventually I'll start, who knows, just to find out what all the HOOPLA is about :D
 
o4_srt said:
None, as long as I haven't had too many on brew day. I'm a bit of a perfectionist, I usually take 3-4 pages of notes during a batch, with another 1-2 pages during fermentation, bottling and tasting.

I've been known to take pictures of each fermentation at set intervals for future reference if I ever brew a recipe again.
Click to expand...

Take notes, pictures, plan every detail ... start times, stop times, pre-boil gravity, original gravity, final gravities... fermentation times and videos. Heck I an preparing a full blown presentation with Power Point and spreadsheets with the calculations I use to get expected efficiency based on malting sheets.... so and so on .... maybe I been planning and running to many software projects .... need to retire and brew beer....
 
I do not take gravity readings, use airlock bubbling as a sign of fermentation, transfer to secondary even when I am not dry hopping, oaking, or adding fruit, sanitize exclusively with bleach, carry all my glass carboys without a crate or carboy carrier, start siphons with my mouth, expect my bottles to be carbed up in one week, and sprinkle dry yeast directly into the wort.

Boom.
 
I make starters just to watch mini fermentations...even if I'm not gonna use the yeast anytime soon. I store the fermented starters in the fridge for a month or more, and still use it to ferment beer.

I rigged up a hilarious looking contraption above my kitchen stove to support the BIAB bag when I need to drain the grain. With my fridge to the left of my stove and lowe's hardware store buckets stacked on a milk crate to the right, and a 8 ft long 2x4 spanning the two across the top. And I hang the bag from that with a rope.

Ghetto brewing...is fun.
 
PVH said:
I do not take gravity readings, use airlock bubbling as a sign of fermentation, transfer to secondary even when I am not dry hopping, oaking, or adding fruit, sanitize exclusively with bleach, carry all my glass carboys without a crate or carboy carrier, start siphons with my mouth, expect my bottles to be carbed up in one week, and sprinkle dry yeast directly into the wort.

Boom.
Click to expand...

Haha. Awesome!
 
PVH said:
I do not take gravity readings, use airlock bubbling as a sign of fermentation, transfer to secondary even when I am not dry hopping, oaking, or adding fruit, sanitize exclusively with bleach, carry all my glass carboys without a crate or carboy carrier, start siphons with my mouth, expect my bottles to be carbed up in one week, and sprinkle dry yeast directly into the wort.

Boom.
Click to expand...

That's great. Boom. Ha ha.
 
i cut wort cooling... haven't seen (personally) a correlation between that and clarity, taste, or any other benefit enough to change my practice.

personally i geek out on yeast and gravity readings (i think they "tell the tale" so to speak).

i do start every siphon with my mouth - but my mouth is usually sanitized with beer or gin beforehand.
 
unionrdr said:
You're measuring the specific gravity of the wort,ie,fermentables. As the brew ferments,it looses "gravity",or weight,if you will,of said fermentables. Since alcohol is lighter than the fermentables,you can use it as a gauge to see when it's all done fermenting. These measurements are also useful if you're brewing to style,or at least trying to duplicate a brew as closely as possible.
Click to expand...

Uhm, I wasn't serious. While I don't always measure my starting and finishing gravities, I DO understand what they are and why (grin).
 
StarSan feels like cheating...

I started brewing in '94 and used bleach for cleaning/soaking and sanitizing for several years. It was cheap, effective and I *thought* relatively painless. It worked great and infections weren't a problem.

I got back into the hobby about a 2 months ago and started reading here shortly afterwards. Well spoken of, I decided to give StarSan a try... Mixed it up, stuck some in a spray bottle and went to town.

Really, it's this easy? It's the best $9 HB item I ever bought and it feels like cheating. :mug:

Mals
 
McMalty said:
I would look into purchasing a Fermtech Wine Thief. It's about $10 and worth every penny. it has a float valve on the bottom, so you just dip it in ur carboy, drop the hydrometer in and take the reading. then you can either tap it on th1e side of the carboy to release the liquid back into your carboy or tap it on the side of a glass so you can have a nice sample. It's incredibly easy and inexpensive.

my 2 pesos
Click to expand...

+1 on the wine thief..I love mine!
 
jtakacs said:
i do start every siphon with my mouth - but my mouth is usually sanitized with beer or gin beforehand.
Click to expand...

......well, you're probably not completely serious, but in case you are......you cannot sanitize your mouth with beer.......beer is not a sanitizing agent.
 
I take poor notes and dont follow the directions. Used Dry yeast straight on top of the wort. Tried and failed controling temps, but I 've made drinkable beer. I will improve,
maybe I'll take notes next time or get just too busy cleaning and brewing to bother.
 
Since I got Beersmith, the quality and consistency of my notes has paradoxically declined. I just feel like, "Well, I've got the exact recipe, brew date, bottling date, and gravity readings recorded already, and a few short notes on anything unusual I did... why should I need more?" Of course, I know the answer to that question, but even still, I've gotten lazy.

I've been thinking of firing up a blog to take notes in. I think that's part of the problem, writing is too slow.
 
I throw the hydrometer right into the bucket to measure the gravity. Why bother pulling a sample out?
 
jessebymail said:
I had mice get into my grain bag, poop everywhere.... Still been using it...
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Are you serious? :confused:

In any case, for the last pilsner I made I had the bag break in the box and grain was spilled into the packaging peanuts. I just took out the peanuts, and used the grain. Hopefully I won't be poisioining anyone.
 
I don't make water adjustments. I don't make yeast starters. I take gravity readings, but only OG and FG. I don't care about brewhouse efficiency. I think temperature control is overrated. I long primary. I don't brew to style, because if everyone did we'd only have one style of beer. I think the BJCP can suck it, that secondaries are for pussies, and that anal retentive brewers need to RDWHAHB.

I make some damn fine beverages too, if I do say so myself.
 
badmajon said:
Are you serious? :confused:

In any case, for the last pilsner I made I had the bag break in the box and grain was spilled into the packaging peanuts. I just took out the peanuts, and used the grain. Hopefully I won't be poisioining anyone.
Click to expand...

No I worded that wrong there was nothing IN my grain bag some of it spilled and mice ate that. Droppings all over the table though. Confessions right, all is forgiven :drunk:
 
My dirty little secret:

Three weeks ago when I bottled my IPA I used all the bottles I had. I still had about 3/4 liter remaining in the bottling bucket - with priming sugar dissolved.

I still drank it. Warm. And sweet.
 
McMalty said:
i can understand you not feeling like taking gravity readings, but i don't understand why. It's incredibly simple and not difficult. It provides you insight as to if your brew is done fermenting or not and how much abv ur brew has. If you're just making your run of the mill brew, i guess you might not care that much, but if you're making something high abv like a barleywine or an imperial, without taking gravity readings, i can't imagine having to wait a few months to figure out whether or not something went wrong.
Click to expand...

I only occasionally take SG readings. I don't need them to know my beer is done and I have a pretty good idea what the ABV is. Maybe it's because I use rehydrated dry yeast and don't make any real high ABV beers plus go 3 weeks in the primary, but I think for me at least, having stuck fermentation is about as likely as meeting the boogy man. I just don't find SG readings add anything.

Other short cuts I like.

-I do BIAB partial mash
-I Cool wort in a water bath
-I add about a quart of Star San to my Carboy and keg after cleaning (with water and a brush only) then just pour it out and fill it up the next time.
-I always pitch my next batch on top of the prior batches yeast cake so I only have to clean the carboy every other batch.
-I buy in bulk and almost always by mail so I can avoid trips to the LHBS.
 
I don't follow receipts, I don't take notes, I don't take gravity readings, and I use the air lock as a sign of fermentation. :-D
 
My damned **** brown ale went to hell.Sorry I 'm just checking to see why sh*t always gets censored and if its is flagged somehow.
 

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