My bucket list

In the past 2 weeks I have brewed 90 gallons of beer shown in the 18 buckets below. Curious to know if other brewers ever have an output larger than this at one time. With the brewing I did in the winter I am now just 10 gallons short of my goal to reach 200 gallons for the year and become a brewing outlaw.

 

Daaaaaamn! Nope... can't say that I've brewed anywhere near that much output at once. Especially in 2 weeks. Brew on my man!!

 

Did you brew with a specific purpose outside general consumption? That's a whole lot of beer to brew in 2 weeks. I don't think I could do it.

 

DAMN SON! Block party anyone?

 

So is that like one per day plus a couple double brew days?

 

Also... what kind of beers are we looking at here? All 5 gallon batches or did you do 10 gallons a split them up?

 

Nope, I've never brewed anywhere near that amount in such a short time! Crazy! After checking out your profile, I see why you are doing it like that. Once the baby comes, you will have plenty of other stuff to do, and being a teacher, you probably need the supply!

 

Wait until you see the stack of bottles he's got to fill and cap...

 

And here I thought I was being ambitious by planning to brew three batches between now and Labor Day.

 

I'm more of a slow and steady wins the race brewer. I like to brew a couple or three times a month. Most years I exceed 200 gallons, wait, I mean I stop at 199.9 gallons. Props to you for matching half my yearly output in 2 weeks.

 

you win.

or we should have an intervention?

I can't decide.

Hope there are not IPAs that are going south in the bottom of the pile.

 

Nice

 

Holy crap that's a lot of beer... Most I've brewed at once was 49 gallons and that was for my wedding. I promised myself I'd never do that again unless it was in a brewery. I don't think I can do 90 the wife would kill me. Good luck bottling

 

Thats a lot of beer.... Whens the party?

Ive never even come close to brewing that much in 2 weeks.

 

Yeah... I'm guessing he's kegging.

I'd just dump it all now if I had to bottle all that.

 

Woof. 90 gallons x 10 bottles/gallon. That's a lot of bottles.

 

I can't even imagine bottling 5 gal any more haha.

 

I've bottled 2 5 gallon batches in a day, but I would definitely have to hire an army of minions to get through that much. You could always serve it 'cask style' and just drink out of the bucket, I guess.

 

I drunkenly pulled no less than 3 pints of mild straight out of the primary.

Was good.

 

Yeah I'm interested in batch sizes and styles here, and what kind of packaging you're gonna use.

 

Agreed.

Also, maybe it's time to look into some larger fermenters (conicals maybe?).

And what about temp control?

 

I brew 4 beers at the same time with a 20 min start between each beer. This takes me about a total of 8 hours to get 4 beers done. We keg the beer and give away 70% of it to friends and daycare provider every Friday. This will carry us well into the winter at which point I will do this again. I have 10 more gallons to go and I hope to use hops I have raised this fall to make a fall harvest fresh hop ale, (if anyone has a recipe using cascade, centennial and/or chinook I would love to hear about it). My keezer has 8 taps because my wife and I like very different styles of beer. She gets to pick out 8 beers for her 4 taps and that keeps her happy so I can brew more. Currently I am all out of base grains to do anymore brewing right now.

 

Of course by posting this you do know you will now be visited by the Feds..... Got your licensing in order??????

Or proof that you will not exceed the legal limit before Dec. 31.

 

The IPAs are the first ones to get tapped. The stouts are the last. One is a clones of Ten-Fiddy and the other is a RIS.

Truth to be told I enjoy brewing and sharing my beer a bit more than drinking it. It helps me unwind and feel like I have accomplished something tangible. Both of our kids are autistic so there are very few weekdays I get off during the year where we don't have appointments to attend to. Thus, the number of days open are limited while the kids are still under 5 years old.

 

I keg the beer and distribute in 32 or 64 oz growlers. If I had to bottle then there is no way I would do this much at one time.

 

Every individual batch is 5 gallons except for one 10 gallon batch of a clone of Ballast Point Sculpin which is my wife's favorite clone. The styles range from two lagers (which are not shown in the picture), lawn mower beers, wheats, 2 wits, 2 stouts, 2 ambers, 1 porter and the rest are pale ales and IPAs. We give away about 2 kegs of beer each month to our friends that help us out by watching our kids. The kids are on the autism spectrum and thus need someone very familiar to them for any kind of baby sitting. Our friends are happy to leave the house with a growler or two after watching the kids for 2 hours.

 

Wow, I don't know how you do it. Kudos.

 

Unless I am doing a higher gravity beer I use a no sparge method with a voile cloth liner in my mashtun to do a hybrid BIAB. I use an extra lb of base malt to compensate for s slightly lower efficiency but the liner eliminates the vorlauf stage of batch sparging. Thus, my 5 gallon batch takes 4.5 hours to do instead of the typical 6 hours I would spend with sparging. I use two wort chillers I built to cool the batches and run the chill water runoff into the garden or rainbarrels. I doubt I will be able to keep this up as the kids get older and have more scheduled activities. Having toddlers at age 50 is a blessing but life changing.

 

Given that I mostly do 5.5 gallon batches, and only the sporadic 10 gallon batch, my maximum has been 25.5 gallons in a week (two 10 gallons one Sunday and a 5.5 gallon batch the following Friday). I've done a few group brews though where we've brewed 60 gallons in one day on multiple systems.

 

Most of my brews these past 2 weeks have been using a no sparge method so I only need one kettle and one burner per brew. I have four 10 gallon kettles and 4 used propane burners. I build my own mashtuns from used coolers so the setup was not too much money to setup. There is no way I could have done all of this with batch sparging. I get a few % lower efficiency but compensate with slightly more base grain.

This is probably the favorite recipe that most of my friends like. I always try to keep it on tap. I have changed it slightly for the new brew method dropping the crystal malt to 1.0 lbs and increasing the basemalt by 1.5 lbs.

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=342322

 

Impressive! Last summer my eldest son got married and I brewed 6 five gallon kegs and bottled 320 for favors. I was doing 10 gallon batches, which made it more 'manageable'. Second son just got engaged, thank goodness it is a smaller affair with no bottling! October 31 is the date. My nephew is getting married Oct 17, and I'm brewing for him too. I feel like I'm behind schedule already. 15 Gallons done, probably another 25 to go on top of normal consumption.

Sorry I missed my last local group buy.

 

You sir are my hero, i plan on doing something similar but on a much smaller scale once the temps cool down around here. Brew once a week during the winter giving each beer 5 days in the ferm chamber and them pulling them out and letting them sit in ambient temps so i can pop in the next brew. cheers!!!

 

So I gotta ask, How do you control ferm temps with a pyramid of buckets like that?

 

It's the law of the brewing gods that if you stack your ferementers then the one on the bottom will blow off.

 

Giant swamp cooler with a giant towel (sheet?) covering the whole pyramid.

Industrial strength fan pointed at the whole monster.

I'm envisioning a system of cascading blowoff tubes. You'd have to plan your brews accordingly (and not care too much about a little bit of yeast/beer mixing). The top of the pyramid blows off into the 2nd tier, 2nd tier into the 3rd, and so on. The bottom layer blows off into the giant swamp cooler referenced above.

 

You should totally arrange all the buckets in some kind of Iron Throne deal. The #2 HDPE Throne?

 

Burton Union FTW!