16 hour brew day

[Biermann]

Ok, I'm feeling the burn today. To celebrate my birthday, and to Christen my second conical, I decided to brew last night. . . and of course, have a few homebrews. After the first conical was full, and with half a buzz, I decided that the other conical needed to be full as well. So I brewed another beer with whatever ingredients I had on hand (turned out to be a sort of pale ale). 16 hours later, both of my 14.5 SS conicals are full and bubbling like mad--

One thing I learned though-- your productivity drops off tremendously after 10 hours and 7 homebrews. I injured myself at least 6 times, including burning myself 3 times, spraining my ankle, and breaking my pint glass that I was drinking out of, and cutting my hand on broken glass as a result. I spilled boiling hot wort all over myself several times, and got soaking wet. At the end, I was hurting, tired, wet, and yet extremely pleased that I have 20 gallons of beer in primary.

Damn I love brewing.

I did an inventory today, and now I have 55 gallons of homebrew in fermenters, kegs and bottles. I didn't even count all the commercial brews I have in my fridges.

I need to get drinking!!

 

[Cheesefood]

Do you have a lot of friends who drink your brew? I'd get too bored with a style before I'd finish 14.5 gallons.

 

[Biermann]

I do have a lot of beer drinking friends, but I don't have a lot of time to have them over to drink my stuff. I'm literally trying to give away some of it. I'm still drinking a beer that was made in December.

I'm not cracked up about my porter that I have on tap, so its the last thing I drink. I even threw out half of it.

Fortunately a couple of my friends love it, so I 'm going to fill up a bunch of growlers and give it away.

 

[david_42]

There's reasons I stick with 5 gallon batches. When 95% of your friends are homebrewers, it's tough to get rid of the surplus. 16 hours is way over my limit, maybe when I was 35, but I'm sticking to single batches these days.

 

[Biermann]

It'll be a long time before I do a double brew day by myself again, that's for sure.

My first batch went perfectly. The second batch, not so much. Temps all over the place (140-160)-- I spent 20 minutes stuck at 140-145. HERMS wouldn't work right on the 2nd. . . .you name it, it went wrong.


If I hadn't been drunk from homebrew, I probably would have realized that a double brew day was too much.

 

[BierMuncher]

I need to get drinking!!

I'll be right over.

At least your 16 hours netted 20 gallons. That's four weekends worth of brewing for most.

I had the mother of all stuck sparges on a 10 gallon batch last night and two boilovers today (same batch, mashed last night and boiled today.) so I ended up with nearly 10 hours from start to finish.

That's an hour a gallon. Sheesh.

 

[Biermann]

I'll be right over.

At least your 16 hours netted 20 gallons. That's four weekends worth of brewing for most.

I had the mother of all stuck sparges on a 10 gallon batch last night and two boilovers today (same batch, mashed last night and boiled today.) so I ended up with nearly 10 hours from start to finish.

That's an hour a gallon. Sheesh.

That's why I do 10 gallon batches. .. its more efficient.

one thing about yesterday though. .. even though the second batch seemed to have lots that went wrong (all minor things, but still), I ended up with an 81 % efficiency. My first batch was only 76%.