Hey all, I searched for a thread like this and couldn't find anything, but please point me in the right direction if necessary.
I thought it would be really interesting to see details of how everybody's system/proecss works for brewing an average batch of beer (something like a 1.055/25 IBU pale). Ideally, you go step by step from "Hmmm, I should brew something" to "Ahhhhh".
Please discuss any pros/cons with it and any upgrades/changes you are considering.
Finally, no need to try and impress anybody here, talk about how you actually brew beer on an average basis.
Let's see your process!
-------------------------
Ok, so here goes mine:
Recipe Formulation and Ingredients:
I have a spreadsheet of all the BJCP styles in a priority ranked grouping of my interest level. I'll take a spin though that and see if I feel inspired...or I'll decide to brew another version of the house pale if I am running low. I'll work it out with my brew buddies to see if they have any other ideas and we'll pick the style starting point.
From here, we'll look around for recipes in some of our books as a starting point and then either tweak it if we are trying to get something different or go ahead and brew to syle or a specific recipe depending on the mood.
I'll then mock up the recipe in Beer Tools and get our shopping list together. A few days before hand ill drop by the LHBS to get ingredients (5 min away).
Pre-Brew:
If I am using liquid yeast, ill make a starter the night before. I don't have a flask right now, so I boil up the starter wort in a pot, cool it, and put it in a huge sanitized a glass jar covered with foil and pitch once the temp is right.
Brew:
1. Toss the Starter in the fridge to settle out some yeast so I can pour off the top before pitching.
2. Turn on the turkey fryer on the porch and put my Brew Kettle (7.5 gal stainless pot, no valve) with the strike water (w/ PH 5.2) on to heat.
3. Pour a quart or two of boiling water into my Cooler MLT (42qt rectangular w/ cpvc manifold) and heat it up.
4. Pour in my strike water once it has reached temp. I use a crappy digital probe thermometer for all these measurements.
5. Check the strike water temp and adjust if necessary, if not, pour in my grain and stir it up. Check temp, adjust w/ hot water addition if necessary.
6. Wait. Clean other stuff. Make up bucket of sanitizer for spoons, thermometer, airlock, etc... Get Mash-out Water heating in my Boil Kettle.
7. Mash out by running water through sparge system (bottling bucket sitting on top of cooler plugged into sparge manifold in lid)
8. Heat up Sparge Water in Boil Kettle. Pour into Bottling Bucket for sparge.
9. Hook up tubing to MLT outlet valve and into boil kettle.
9. Fly Sparge over the course of about 30-50 min. Match input flow to output flow as much as possible.
10. Near end of sparge, check gravity of runnings, stop when boil kettle is at desired fill or when runnings get below 1.010. Remember to adjust for temp. Return sample to boil kettle.
11. Bring wort to boil, cover with screen to keep out random stuff dropping from trees.
12. Clean MLT; sanitize plastic fermenting bucket w/ Star San.
13. Whole hops added in muslin bags; pellets direct to wort. Irish moss added here too.
14. Put immersion chiller (basic 25' chiller hooked to hose water) in boil 15 min before finish.
15. Flame out and turn on chiller water. Stir gently.
16. Take sample w/ sanitized wine thief and measure OG. Adjust for temp. Record in Beer Tools.
17. Once chiller gets wort to 80 deg or so (depending on weather), transfer to Plastic Bucket Fermenter. We have tried siphoning off the top and pouring through a strainer, no common practice here. If the wort is cool enough, we'll also pour the starter or dry yeast in while transferring.
Ferment:
1. If ferment fridge doesn't have lager in it, move to fridge. Temp probe checks ambient air for to match it to desired temp. Set temp in mid 60s depending on beer. If fridge is unavailable, bucket goes in boil kettle filled with cool water/ice in guest bathroom tub...adjust ice as necessary to keep roughly in temp range.
2. Check on it like a sleeping newborn. Enjoy bubbling action.
3. When bubbling subsides, take sample with sanitized wine thief and check FG. Rejoice or Fret.
4. Sit a few more days.
Delivery:
1. Rack off to sanitized Corny Keg.
2. Force Carb to proper level. I normally keep it hooked up to the tank for a few days then remove and
occasionally reattach to bring back up to pressure.
3. Sample...
4. Sample...
5. Yay!
Thoughts on system/process:
I am at a point where I am pretty happy with the beer, but need to improve consistency of our process.
We are a bit rough on hitting temps when mashing and our ferm temp is not always controlled as accurately as it could be. It also seems that taking samples throughout the process is unwieldy.
I would like to make the following equipment changes in rough priority order:
I thought it would be really interesting to see details of how everybody's system/proecss works for brewing an average batch of beer (something like a 1.055/25 IBU pale). Ideally, you go step by step from "Hmmm, I should brew something" to "Ahhhhh".
Please discuss any pros/cons with it and any upgrades/changes you are considering.
Finally, no need to try and impress anybody here, talk about how you actually brew beer on an average basis.
Let's see your process!
-------------------------
Ok, so here goes mine:
Recipe Formulation and Ingredients:
I have a spreadsheet of all the BJCP styles in a priority ranked grouping of my interest level. I'll take a spin though that and see if I feel inspired...or I'll decide to brew another version of the house pale if I am running low. I'll work it out with my brew buddies to see if they have any other ideas and we'll pick the style starting point.
From here, we'll look around for recipes in some of our books as a starting point and then either tweak it if we are trying to get something different or go ahead and brew to syle or a specific recipe depending on the mood.
I'll then mock up the recipe in Beer Tools and get our shopping list together. A few days before hand ill drop by the LHBS to get ingredients (5 min away).
Pre-Brew:
If I am using liquid yeast, ill make a starter the night before. I don't have a flask right now, so I boil up the starter wort in a pot, cool it, and put it in a huge sanitized a glass jar covered with foil and pitch once the temp is right.
Brew:
1. Toss the Starter in the fridge to settle out some yeast so I can pour off the top before pitching.
2. Turn on the turkey fryer on the porch and put my Brew Kettle (7.5 gal stainless pot, no valve) with the strike water (w/ PH 5.2) on to heat.
3. Pour a quart or two of boiling water into my Cooler MLT (42qt rectangular w/ cpvc manifold) and heat it up.
4. Pour in my strike water once it has reached temp. I use a crappy digital probe thermometer for all these measurements.
5. Check the strike water temp and adjust if necessary, if not, pour in my grain and stir it up. Check temp, adjust w/ hot water addition if necessary.
6. Wait. Clean other stuff. Make up bucket of sanitizer for spoons, thermometer, airlock, etc... Get Mash-out Water heating in my Boil Kettle.
7. Mash out by running water through sparge system (bottling bucket sitting on top of cooler plugged into sparge manifold in lid)
8. Heat up Sparge Water in Boil Kettle. Pour into Bottling Bucket for sparge.
9. Hook up tubing to MLT outlet valve and into boil kettle.
9. Fly Sparge over the course of about 30-50 min. Match input flow to output flow as much as possible.
10. Near end of sparge, check gravity of runnings, stop when boil kettle is at desired fill or when runnings get below 1.010. Remember to adjust for temp. Return sample to boil kettle.
11. Bring wort to boil, cover with screen to keep out random stuff dropping from trees.
12. Clean MLT; sanitize plastic fermenting bucket w/ Star San.
13. Whole hops added in muslin bags; pellets direct to wort. Irish moss added here too.
14. Put immersion chiller (basic 25' chiller hooked to hose water) in boil 15 min before finish.
15. Flame out and turn on chiller water. Stir gently.
16. Take sample w/ sanitized wine thief and measure OG. Adjust for temp. Record in Beer Tools.
17. Once chiller gets wort to 80 deg or so (depending on weather), transfer to Plastic Bucket Fermenter. We have tried siphoning off the top and pouring through a strainer, no common practice here. If the wort is cool enough, we'll also pour the starter or dry yeast in while transferring.
Ferment:
1. If ferment fridge doesn't have lager in it, move to fridge. Temp probe checks ambient air for to match it to desired temp. Set temp in mid 60s depending on beer. If fridge is unavailable, bucket goes in boil kettle filled with cool water/ice in guest bathroom tub...adjust ice as necessary to keep roughly in temp range.
2. Check on it like a sleeping newborn. Enjoy bubbling action.
3. When bubbling subsides, take sample with sanitized wine thief and check FG. Rejoice or Fret.
4. Sit a few more days.
Delivery:
1. Rack off to sanitized Corny Keg.
2. Force Carb to proper level. I normally keep it hooked up to the tank for a few days then remove and
occasionally reattach to bring back up to pressure.
3. Sample...
4. Sample...
5. Yay!
Thoughts on system/process:
I am at a point where I am pretty happy with the beer, but need to improve consistency of our process.
We are a bit rough on hitting temps when mashing and our ferm temp is not always controlled as accurately as it could be. It also seems that taking samples throughout the process is unwieldy.
I would like to make the following equipment changes in rough priority order:
- Get a Flask and Stir place to improve my starters
- Get a better thermometer, I don't trust this one and can't calibrate it.
- Move up to a bigger boil kettle or keggle with an outlet valve.
- Buy hops in bulk
- Get a Malt Mill so I can buy base malt in bulk
- Change over to a 50' immersion chiller and perhaps hook it up to our old one that would sit in an ice bath to pre-chill the water.
- Brew stand w/ 2 burners.
