The worst part of brewing for me is the waiting. Waiting for the right temp to steep, waiting for the boil, waiting for the hop or other ingredient additions, waiting for the wort to cool, waiting for the fermentation to complete, waiting for the beer to carb up, waiting to start the whole process all over again... second worst is bottling.
Cleaning, I saw a quote once that summed it up for me.
"If you like washing dishes, you will love homebrewing".
It's not so much a part of brewing. But, I hate not having a lot of time to brew. I have to plan pretty far in advance to find time to brew once a month.
Washing bottles is the worst part for me.
The bottle tree & vinator def make bottling day easier & faster. not to mention,the bottles now only take up a 2 square foot area. I soak the fermenters in PBW & use a dobie brand scrubber with some PBW on my polished SS BK/MT.
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.
Bottling.....but its getting better for me since I started using the siphon only and ditched the bottling bucket.
Boilovers.
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].
So you go from autosiphon to liquid ball lock fitting to the beer out of your corny? Intriguing. I might have to do that.
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?
worst part for me is when i read this forum while brewing and people keep talking about starters. i fkng hate starters
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.
isleofman said:Having to order all my ingredients. It means that I can't just say "I want to brew right now or tomorrow." I have to order them and wait and then align that with a day I can brew...
cleaning cleaning cleaning
^^^^^^^THIS...cleaning SUCKS^^^^^^^
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.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.
Agreed. Especially when the brew session gets close to bedtime.
not having a homebrew shop in town and having to order my stuff online. Leaves very little room to experiment on the fly.
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