so what's the worst part of brewing for you
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HawksBrewer
Well-Known Member
Patience is a virtue you and I do not possess.
Definitely this, I'm not a fan of cleaning anything.
This.
high5apparatus
Well-Known Member
When we got a new dishwasher is was the perfect opportunity to buy one with a stainless steel tub with high-temp/steam/sanitizing cycle. As long as there isn't a science project going on in the bottle, they come out ready for beer.
Pfffft! Bottle Trees....I just stick my bottles upside down on my dishwasher racks for an hour, then put them on the high temp dry setting to sanitize or stick them in the oven at 200F for 25 min, bottle as soon as they are cool enough to handle. I've bottled around 150 gallons of beer this way, never had an infection or other issue.
Pfffft! Bottle Trees....I just stick my bottles upside down on my dishwasher racks for an hour, then put them on the high temp dry setting to sanitize or stick them in the oven at 200F for 25 min, bottle as soon as they are cool enough to handle. I've bottled around 150 gallons of beer this way, never had an infection or other issue.
I do the same...
Just make sure the labels are all off first...
southtownbrewer
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Finding the time to brew, and worse than that is bottling...
UnDeadPresident
Junior Member
That it isn't my day job. Other than that, finding the time to brew as often as I'd like. I actually like all the other parts, including cleaning. Gives me an odd sense of accomplishment.
Echoloc8
Acolyte of Fermentalism
Used to be cleanup, until I heard the Gospel of clean-as-you-go.
Used to be bottling, until I started kegging, now bottling doesn't seem as bad because I've got kegged brew to dull the pain.
Used to be waiting, until I established a pipeline.
Now it's mainly space and money: Not enough of either.
-Rich
Used to be bottling, until I started kegging, now bottling doesn't seem as bad because I've got kegged brew to dull the pain.
Used to be waiting, until I established a pipeline.
Now it's mainly space and money: Not enough of either.
-Rich
TriggerFingers
Well-Known Member
Bottling.....but its getting better for me since I started using the siphon only and ditched the bottling bucket.
Echoloc8
Acolyte of Fermentalism
I started doing this (bottling via autosiphon) too, because my bot-bucket was occupied one bottling day. Was surprisingly easy to do!
-Rich
Worst part?
Bull****, fluff, post-count-padding threads on my favorite interwebs beer forum...
Bull****, fluff, post-count-padding threads on my favorite interwebs beer forum...
petey_c
Senior Member
Cleaning was more of a PITA, but I got a "hand shower" (shower head and hose) that allows me to direct the water where I want and change the spray force. I can blast the gunk off sides of the fermenter. Other than that there's the whole paying for my supplies thing....
kinison_fan
Well-Known Member
Boilovers.
winterc
Well-Known Member
Cleaning out the mash tun is my least favorite part, but it gives me something to do while waiting for the boil.
Echoloc8
Acolyte of Fermentalism
No kidding, but then I haven't had one in years. Between Fermcap and a big enough pot, it just hasn't been an issue.
-Rich
twd000
Well-Known Member
Bottling is way nicer once you have a kegging system.
I rack straight into the keg with a ball lock liquid fitting on the end of my autosiphon. Works great. Don't have to worry about the hose curling up and spraying beer everywhere or introducing oxygen because you raised it out of the bucket a bit. Can even be a pure CO2 environment if you want it to be.
Have all 8 of my kegs full (well 7 full, 1 with bad poppets on order), so I wasn't able to rack into them for bottling. Racked into two bottling buckets instead. Really dreading having to use them again. I had hoped they'd be left to collect dust or mill into.
Normally, I put 2-4 psi behind it, then attach a bottle filling wand or picnic tap assembly. Easy instant filling. Or, if you prefer to use the keezer faucet to bottle bulk primed off the keg, a growler filler. Or, to bottle your serving brews, a counterpressure filler or poor man's beer gun.
But anyway. Yeah, bottling gets nicer once kegs and CO2 get involved. Washing bottles still sucks until you get a dishwasher, or a power drill and bottle blaster, or build one of [thread=98932]these bottlew washers[/thread].
can you post a picture of your transfer setup? I'm having trouble envisioning how you use an autosiphon with a ball-lock keg fitting. Sounds like something I'm interested in
Certainly. Let me go find that one.
Top-left is a keg-to-keg transfer. This is great for moving StarSan around from keg to keg to hands-free sanitize, or transferring from a secondary keg to a serving keg.
Top-right is a keg-to-bottle transfer. The picnic tap is in there because the bottle filler doesn't shut off the flow completely unless you have a good amount of pressure behind it. That's not a problem for bottling still (flat) with priming sugar, but it's a problem when bottling a few carbonated ones off the serving kegs "for the road". Too much pressure behind the carbonated beer kegs results in a huge amount of foam in the bottle, or too little pressure causes it to leak all over. This is my weapon of choice for bottling from carbonated serving kegs.
Bottom-center is an autosiphon-to-keg transfer. Pretty straight-forward. Wish mine had a longer length of tubing, as I like to siphon from as high as possible to get good transfer speed. Counter-top to floor isn't fast enough and I get bored. I might splice on another 5' on with a barb-to-barb fitting, or just buy a longer piece of tubing.
Bottom-left is a standard growler filler. You can use it in place of the keg-to-bottle transfer, instead using your keezer's serving lines and the Perlick as the stop/go control. Works beautifully for bottling from a still, cold-crashed keg. Just serve off the first bottle worth of trub and cake, then open the keg, dump in priming sugar mixture, shake a bit, and put 2-4 PSI on the keg to get the flow rate you want into the bottles. This is my weapon of choice for bottling from still secondary or serving kegs.
Edit: A smart person would use John Guest fittings to make a modular system. Make one liquid fitting to male John Guest piece that you'll always use, then make a female John Guest to autosiphon or female John Guest to liquid post or female John Guest to beer can helmet or whatever setup you like. Cuts down on the number of liquid fittings you need to buy.
tgmartin000
Well-Known Member
So you go from autosiphon to liquid ball lock fitting to the beer out of your corny? Intriguing. I might have to do that.
twd000
Well-Known Member
thanks for the picture - that is a great idea. I see you use CO2 pressure for the growler-filling rig. Do you use CO2 to push the other transfers, or are they all gravity-powered?
Yep. Going down the liquid dip tube prevents splashing, keeps it solidly in place, fillings from the bottom (trub goes in last, comes out first) and practically eliminates any chance of oxidizing.
All transfers are pushed by CO2 in my system, except the autosiphon. 2-4 PSI is usually plenty and conserves gas.
I'm moving towards secondaries in cornys and going to attempt a primary in a bottling bucket, so I might be able to lose the autosiphon contraption entirely if the bottle spigot doesn't get covered by yeast cake.
Primary out of the bottling spigot into corny secondary, corny secondary out of the liquid dip tube into a serving keg. Would be pretty sweet, and could be CO2-buffered all the way.
fermentinginpa
Well-Known Member
Cleaning is the worst part for me. I don't mind the initial cleaning, sanitizing and prep because I am still excited for what is about to come but by the end of the brew day, I have had a few beers, am getting tired and unmotivated to clean all my gear. I try to clean most of it while I go but that's still the worst part for me. I don't mind the waiting at all, gives me time to smoke a cigar and grab a beer!
Komodo
Well-Known Member
Next time, cool your wort covered and pull off about 1 gallon of it. Pitch directly into that and let it go for about 24-36 hours and then pitch that into the rest of your volume.
BAM!
stratslinger
Well-Known Member
Worst part for me is the cleanup and breakdown at the end of the day, especially this time of year.
I brew out in my detached garage, which is probably about 40 feet away from my house. So I wind up having to walk everything, a piece or two at a time, from the garage down to my basement. I scrub out my kettle out in the garage and cycle Oxiclean through the kettle, pump, and CFC while I'm putting everything else away, then cycle rinse water through them, then finally can put those things away. All told, breakdown and cleanup takes at least as long as mashing or boiling when I'm alone... One of these days I'll get around to building out a brewing rig, and that should simplify things quite a bit.
I brew out in my detached garage, which is probably about 40 feet away from my house. So I wind up having to walk everything, a piece or two at a time, from the garage down to my basement. I scrub out my kettle out in the garage and cycle Oxiclean through the kettle, pump, and CFC while I'm putting everything else away, then cycle rinse water through them, then finally can put those things away. All told, breakdown and cleanup takes at least as long as mashing or boiling when I'm alone... One of these days I'll get around to building out a brewing rig, and that should simplify things quite a bit.
OmegaFunk
Active Member
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SWMBO wants a new dishwasher when we redo the kitchen, I'll have to sneak that onto the list of requirement!
billy915
Well-Known Member
not having a homebrew shop in town and having to order my stuff online. Leaves very little room to experiment on the fly.
The worst part is the waiting. Waiting for an empty carboy so I can brew another batch. Waiting for my 1st batch (a lager) to be ready to drink (I'm going to open a bottle on St. Patty's Day and try it.
isleofman said:
This is the main reason I bought a grain mill. A sack if base malt and a few pounds of specialty grains, a few hops in the freezer, and some dry yeast in the fridge allows me to brew when the opportunity arises.
TANSTAAFB
Well-Known Member
^^^^^^^THIS...cleaning SUCKS^^^^^^^
Agreed. Especially when the brew session gets close to bedtime.
Especially when you have the ingredients for another PM brew waiting in the wings,because you have to bottle one of the two batches fermenting to wash the yeast for the next batch. But I do have a bunch in the fridge from the last batch waiting for St Patty's day.
Always a sticky point for me,going on 57 with a bad L2 disc & hip joints. This aging thing def works...
Means you just need to stock up more. Mines only 45 minutes away, but I still have 200# of base malts, 150# of specialty malts, 22# of hops and 15+ packets of yeast on hand.
That cleaning part everybody's talking about... cleaned 6 cases of bottles yesterday and bottled 4 of em. Gotta clean another 2 more, bottle 4 more, transfer two primaries, scrub that all plus two bottling buckets... gonna be a long soapy day.
