Order of Operations

[bigmanbt]

Hey all. I was wondering if you all would like to give a description of your set up on brew day. Or even take a picture of what your flow of operations look like. For me, things seemed a bit confuddled. I had all my ingredients out and ready to go, spoon, thermometer, etc sanitized, bucket ready. But at the same time, i found that I had a pitcher of sanitizer here, a pot of boiled water there, and then ended up needing one or the other for something else. I just felt like I was doing extra steps that were unneccessary.

How do you all keep it flowing smoothly and organized?
Also on a side note, do you sanitize your spoon and thermometer after EACH time it touches the wort? Or is that overdoing it a bit?

 

[Evan!]

I've whittled my brewday to under 4 hours for a 5 gallon batch with single-infusion mash and 60 minute boil. The secret is to use your "down" time during the mash and the boil to clean up and do other tasks. Here ya go:

1. Wake up early
2. Heat water for coffee
3. Measure out my strike water, get it started heating up on the patio
4. Get some food in me, get my coffee.
5. Fill my MLT cooler with hot tap water for preheating
6. Measure and grind the grain
7. Mash in
8. Measure out sparge water and set it on the burner, ready for heating
9. Sanitize fermenters
10. Measure hops
11. Pour myself a beer when I'm done with coffee. Nothing like Hefeweizen in the morning!
12. Heat up sparge water
13. Get another beer
14. Lauter and drain to kettle---heat the kettle as soon as the first runnings are in it, to minimize the time 'til boiling
15. Batch sparge twice
16. Boil for 60-90 mins
17. During boiling, I clean up anything I'm done with and put stuff away that I won't be using again (brewing salts, etc.)
18. Add hops as required
19. Get another beer
20. Hook up the recirculating immersion chiller contraption, chill to pitching temps
21. Pump wort to sanitized fermenters
22. Get another beer
23. Dump hop crap from kettle into compost/debris pile, and clean up the rest of the stuff.
24. Get another beer
25. Pitch yeast
26. Get another beer
27. Smile at a job well-done
28. Get another beer

After that, things usually get fuzzy

 

[jkarp]

Hey all. I was wondering if you all would like to give a description of your set up on brew day. Or even take a picture of what your flow of operations look like. For me, things seemed a bit confuddled. I had all my ingredients out and ready to go, spoon, thermometer, etc sanitized, bucket ready. But at the same time, i found that I had a pitcher of sanitizer here, a pot of boiled water there, and then ended up needing one or the other for something else. I just felt like I was doing extra steps that were unneccessary.

How do you all keep it flowing smoothly and organized?
Also on a side note, do you sanitize your spoon and thermometer after EACH time it touches the wort? Or is that overdoing it a bit?

Process specifics will vary based on your system, but I'll answer your last bit as it's the easiest. You don't even need to think twice about sanitizing anything that touches wort prior to the chill. Once the wort cools below 140f, that's where you need to pay attention. For me, the only things that touch wort after this point are the fermenter and a single spoon for stirring in the yeast. That's it.

I promise it will get a lot smoother with experience. You'll find your own groove. I know my brewday has gone from 5+ hours to under 4.

 

[chumprock]

Search the forums. There are a lot of "Brewday" threads complete with steps and pics.

 

[bigmanbt]

thank you thank you thank you all