First Brew Day (weekend) as a daddy

[mgregg]

edit-title should have said brew day, not brewery. Damn auto-correct
My wife gave birth to our first son on Jan 6th. Right after I received my new catalyst fermentor and dark star2 burner in the mail. Raising a newborn has been tougher and more time consuming then I expected, and since I'm working while my wife stays home I haven't been able to tell her to watch Robby for 5 hours so I can brew on a weekend. Until now...

Here's my plan- Doing a no-sparge english mild spread out over 2 days. Saturday night. Wife and baby went to bed at 8. Fired up the new burner and started heating 8.75 gallons of water to mash with. This went a lot faster with a 55,000 btu burner instead of my old method of using the 19,000 btu stove top burner. Right now I'm halfway through my full volume mash. As soon as that's done I'll drain it off into my boil pot and let it sit until morning.
Tomorrow morning I'll boil it and chill it if I have time to. If not, I'll let it sit and cool all day until wife and kid go to bed then rack it into the fermentor and pitch my yeast. I'm figuring on 1.5 hours tonight and 2 hours tomorrow.
I hope it works. I've always batch sparged and I haven't tried no chill cooling since I made the leap to AG a couple years ago. I've never made my wort and boiled the next day either. Lots of new variables so I stuck with a NB kit(added a pound of base malt to make up for an expected loss of efficiency with the no sparge). 3+ months without a brew day, I hope I've found a method that works with my much busier schedule these days.

 

[AkTom]

I'm glad you're back at it. Good job on the baby and helping your wife.

 

[bkboiler]

nice! congrats!!
my wife gave birth last april (a year ago) and it was a a solid 6 months before i brewed again just due to constantly being busy and exhausted.
jumped back in with no-sparge, 30-45 min mash and 30 min boil. my efficiency is crap, but it makes decent beer and i can actually brew again.
i usually brew on the one night a week my wife works (a night shift), just after i put my daughter down to sleep. takes me 3 hours start to finish.

 

[Sammy86]

My first was born in August...got my first brew day post-birth at 5 months...he helped chill the wort and by help I mean I held him and watch the wort cool

 

[dryboroughbrewing]

Good luck man, I truly do not remember the first six months after the birth of my child so I can't tell you when I first brewed with any certainty.

 

[wilserbrewer]

Fwiw, I feel it is a bit more time efficient to overnight mash, and collect wort and boil the following morning.

Have fun and congratulations.

 

[Griffin495]

Congrats on the kid!! It's a game changer.

My son is now 2 years and 4 months. I'll agree with the above poster that I don't remember the first 6 months, life was that busy. Didn't brew that much. I know that I went back to extract for a few brews. I wish I had heard about the overnight mashes back then. Just now getting back into the swing of things. I have to work a weekend every 5 weeks and we get comp time for that. I use that and take a day off and brew while he's at daycare.

Another thing I've done is to get all my water together and pre-heated while he eats lunch and start my mash. Then when he gets done and goes down for his nap, I drain and start my boil. Finish that up and get it chilling and usually get all the clean up done before he wakes up.

 

[btcost]

With kids (mine are 2 and 4) I just brew at night. I start around 7 and am done between 12-1 am.

I do final clean the next day.
Keep brewing, welcome to the night shift!

 

[mgregg]

Got it done. I was able to get my boil in this morning before he woke up at 8. I knew taking the time to chill it would be pushing it so I put the lid on with about 5 minutes left in the boil then just shut the burner off when it was done. I put a fan blowing on it all day. I just put the little guy down, the wort was at 72 degrees so I dumped it into the fermentor, pitched a smack pack and got everything soaking in pbw for the night.

I'm not expecting this to be the best beer I've ever brewed, but hopefully it will turn out decent and I can continue to do these "quick" brews.
Total time spent: 1.5 hours last night. 1.5 hours this morning. .5 hours tonight and probably another .5 tomorrow rinsing and putting things away. 4ish hours total, an hour less then my previous brew times(most of this difference came from finally having a real burner). The best part of it is that I got a batch of beer brewed without cutting into my time with the little man and without getting my wife pissed off at me for ditching her to brew a batch!

 

[BrunDog]

Congrats! Welcome to a new (better) life!

 

[Redtab78]

Congrats on the newborn! Look into getting this:
https://babytula.com/products/coast...18E0xJ-sy8oC39gIPaGZ4fsRuovIYIii4caAhm-8P8HAQ

To help with your brew day while getting some bonding time with the youngin

 

[jcav]

Congrats on your new baby! Way to go getting creative with the brew time!

John

 

[juskojj]

lol, i'm sorry i just had to laugh with kids of my own. i have a 3.5yr old and a 1yr old. my oldest was a horrible sleeper and was up every 2hrs and didn't sleep through the night till he was 18 months old.....we were exhausted and i took a LONG break. it's a whole new world having kids and despite what everyone says it's never what you expect but totally worth it!!

congrats on the kid and great idea on splitting up the process! i never thought of that and might have to try it!

 

[SGTSparty]

My son turns 2 next weekend and my daughter is inbound mid August so congrats, its awesome. I didn't brew (for a bunch of reasons not just kid related) until my son was like 8 months old and I was doing the night shift thing. He was going down very early at that point (like 6pm) and i'd typically wrap up about midnight ish. Now typically my wife and I take turns getting up with him on weekend mornings. What I've found works best for me is to do all my prep the day before, (grain crushed, mash and sparge water measured into their respective pots, grain in cooler etc.) and then I set the burner on my back patio where I can see my thermometer from the back door window, and use a remote/wireless BBQ thermometer in my mash tun. Those things all allow me to be in the house and with the family whenever I don't need to be actively doing something. Also I do my brewing on the days when SWMBO is due to get up with him. I get up like I would for work (545) and I'm typically done now about 10am, including a quick, non-pbw clean up.

Prepping the night before and starting my sparge water about 30 min into the 60 min mash have both helped me cut time. Also I use a plastic tote for moving all my gear, it doubles as an ice bath/reservoir for my sump pump powered IC, faster cooling saves a lot of time too.

 

[Warthaug]

Evening brew "days" work well for me. Start at 7 (or whenever the little one decides its bed time), wrap up around midnight or 1AM. In the summer SWIMBO often joins me, and we have a small fire and watch a movie on the laptop while I brew.

Bryan

 

[mgregg]

A long overdue update about this beer. Bottom line is I forgot about it. It has been sitting in it's primary fermentor tucked away in a corner of my basement for almost 4 months now. I would think about it at various times and say"I've got to get that into a keg" and then forget about it for 2 weeks. Tonight the little guy went down early, I saw the wrapped fermentor in the corner and I acted. It might be ok. I had it in a catalyst plastic conical and the pint mason jar was nearly full of sediment and yeast(I did change the jar once a week after pitching so it was probably mostly sediment). The beer is really clear, and from the small sample I tasted it actually tastes pretty good. We'll see next weekend once it has a chance to carb up. If this beer actually turns out decent after a 3 part brew day and sitting for 4 months in a 68-72 degree basement I'll one very happy camper.

 

[mgregg]

2 days later and slightly carbed, disgusting. Dumping this batch. Guess I should have remembered it sooner.

 

[BrunDog]

I wonder why it went from taste ok to disgusting. Maybe autolysis was the culprit and now u are dragging that flavor up. Maybe let it sit cold for a few weeks to clear up. Pour off a good few pints then taste again?