Dual Brew Days Success Of Failure?

Hey everyone, just thought I'd ask how your Piggy Back brew days have gone, Do you feel like its to much to handle, what are some things you've learned...and will you do it again?

My friend and I just brewed up Yuri's Thunderstruck Pumpkin Ale, and a House Amber of mine...It was more work than i had planned taking all day! I am convinced it was due to the 3 sparges It took me to collect the volume of 13.5 gallons from my pumpkin MLT, and the Pumpkin drastically slowing down my Wort Runnings...(trickle)

What I did was While I was collecting my MT runnings I Pre-heated My HLT previously used in my batch before...Then when the last drop was collected from my cooler I quickly rinsed it and added my strike water and grains to it...before my boil started on my Pumpkin!

I am waiting for my false bottom to arrive so I will not have to dual sparge to collect from my 48qt cooler.

Then again 20+ pounds of grain is more than im use to...

Here are some pics from the brew day (feel free to comment and post pics of your own)

Baking Pumpkin

Set Up

Dough In

Collect Runnings

Pre-Heat HLT for Amber

Start Pumpkin Boil

Finished Product




I know theres allot of pictures...Be happy I didn't Post all of them.

I have done 2 brew sessions in one day before. Took me like 7 hours total. You save a bit of time mashing the 2nd beer while the 1st one boils.

I chronicled my adventures making 2 beers and 5 1-gallon batches of mead (including a 15th century burnt mead that took hours of stirring) here;

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/he...emorial-5-year-aged-barleywine-recipe-195096/

It was fun, but having help is a must. It is also physicallly taxing as well.

I've done 2 separate batches before. Even with just a single vessel shared between my HLT and BK, It still only added an hour, maybe an hour and a half to my brew day. Definitely worth it.

Revvy said:

I chronicled my adventures making 2 beers and 5 1-gallon batches of mead (including a 15th century burnt mead that took hours of stirring) here;

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/he...emorial-5-year-aged-barleywine-recipe-195096/

It was fun, but having help is a must. It is also physicallly taxing as well.

Click to expand...

I was exhausted and sore the next day from all the lifting and what not...But it looks like my yeast is happy vigorously fermenting away...smelling like Eggs. (WLP023) Is the culprit!

We brewed 10 gallons of SNPA clone ans 5 gallons of IPA back to back about a month ago.
Long day indeed, but a fun day with friends.

I did a triple brew a couple weeks ago. 10 gallons of Belgian Dark Strong, 5 gallons of Belgian Dubbel, and 10 gallons of Wit. You guessed it, the BDS and the Dubbel were a parti-guile brew.

GillandCo said it right: " I was exhausted and sore the next day..."

Was quite fun though. I plan on doing another Imperial / Foreign Extra Stout sudo-Parti Guile in the next few weeks.

Just brewed 11 gallons of my Honey Blonde Recipe...Pitched over the pumpkin ale yeast cake WLP026 Burton Ale...Bubbling within 30 minutes and took off within an hour! I put a Blow off to contain the beast...

I did two 5 gallon batches solo. It was a long day. It would have been shorter but the second batch ended up with a stuck sparge twice. That slowed things down significantly. Had it not gotten stuck it wouldn't have been such a big deal but at that point I was very tired, it was 90*+.

If I were to do it again I would only do it with someone who knew what they were doing. I prolly wouldn't do it with any unless I had brewed with them before and they understood my system.

I've done two 5 gallon batches by myself twice. It's really no fun by the time you're cooling the second batch and have all the clean up ahead of you. If I had a partner it'd be a lot easier as cleaning would be a continual process. The second time both beers turned out very good, though, and I made possibly the best beer I've brewed yet. Maybe it's like pitching, where the movement on their fastball gets better the more fatigued they get.