Time for AG Brew

Howdy,

I had my longest homebrewing day yesterday (about 9 hours of work dealing with 3 different beers and upgrading equipment). It started out with a 2.5-hour extract brew on a cold morning. That's my fastest extract start to finish (helps when the wife cleans equipment for me). At that rate, what can I expect my first few all-grain brew days to take? This is assuming I have proper equipment, etc.

Kojones

 

When me and my brew buddy brew it takes us 6 to 7 hours this also depends on how many homebrews we drink When I brew alone about 5 to 6 hours.If the wife has friends over then 8 hours for sure

 

For me:
- I batch sparge (or no sparge)
- I stay busy (cleaning out mash tun during the boil, prep.ing carboy, etc)
I can get through a 5 gallon brew day in a little more than 4 hours.

 

I take 6 to 7 hours total time. Actual hands on time is about 1.5 hours.

 

A basic single batch sparge AG brew day runs about 4.5-6 hours, depending on what your making

 

60 min mash - 60 min boil - Just at 4 hours start to finish. I double batch sparge.

L

 

6 hours is my personal best, with 5 gallon batches, stovetop for heat. I multitask as well, and my stove is heating something for pretty much the entire 6 hours: strike water, then sparge as I mash, second sparge if needed, etc. While the sparge is sitting (15 minutes) I heat the wort in my BK. Keeps it around 180, and drops about 45 minutes from my total brew day. And I'm cleaning always, so that helps a little. Biggest lag, though, is heating water. Kyle

 

My last brew was a double decoction, lit the burner under the strike water at 10:10AM and put the last of the cleaned equipment away 4:25PM so 6 hours and 15 minutes.

 

Thanks all... I gotta get going on AG. Can't wait to perfect that process....

Kojones

 

My BIAB brewday takes around 5 hours, but as noted there's a lot of time I'm not actually doing anything. Dough in and then leave it for 60-90 minutes. Get it to the boil and then leave it except to add hops. Start it cooling and leave it for a bit. Pitch yeast.

With any cooling equipment other than a bath I could knock an hour off.

 

I just did my first BIAB yesterday (have batched sparged in a cooler previously), the BIAB yeaterday start to finish including cleanup 4.5 hours.

 

Is that any quicker than your cooler mash days?

 

Slightly- I moved cross country and got rid of most of my equiptment last year, so just starting up again and only had to aquire the bag for this brewday.
I liked being able to apply a little heat in the kettle during mash if I needed to.

 

Gotcha, yeah that would be nice to be able to heat the mash tun. I seem to be charmed at hitting my temps so far, I never use a calculator and my mash temp is always either right on or 2-3 degrees higher. I always strike higher than I think ill need to, and it works great. Little stirring, and once I had to add a quart of cool water.