Busy dads brew day - all the shortcuts I could think of

[luckybeagle]

Brulosophy has a great podcast and article about Short and Shoddy brewing methods that I've been thinking about lately. He extensively covers shortened boils (even using pilsner malt in a SMASH beer). They also have one about lonnnng mashes (I think 16 hours) and the relative inability of his testers to pick out the long vs 1 hour mashed beer (other than poor head retention). This got me thinking about ways to potentially reduce the amount of time I spend socked away in the garage while my wife and two young daughters (age 4 and a preemie) attempt to peacefully coexist

Since it's important to keep a (medically necessitated) supply of good homebrew on hand, without having it consume 4-5+ hours of my time during the day, here's what I've come up with for my 3-Vessel e-Herms setup:

The night before:

1. 10:00pm: Mill the grains, weigh hops and adjuncts, and fill the HLT and MLT. The HLT is simply to operate the herms coil overnight to keep the mash temperature consistent. Fire up the heating element to mash temperature (not strike temperature as it'll ultimately equalize, and cooling down the HLT to target temperature takes extra time). Add brewing salts and go inside for ~15 minutes.
2. 10:30pm: dough in at full volume for what will be a NO SPARGE mash and begin recirculating to hold the target mash temp. Go to bed.
3. 5:00am: Kids aren't up yet. Go to the garage and quickly drain MLT to BK. As soon as heating element is covered with wort, initiate the boil. Quickly clean out the MLT and put away.
4. 5:20am: Should now be up to a boil. Start that 30 minute boil timer and boil hard as an insurance policy to drive off any DMS (Brulosophy had none detected and I use highly modified MFB Pilsner malt as my base malt for most of my Belgian/German beers). Go inside and have a cup of coffee.
5. 5:50am: knock out, whirlpool and chill. I can get to pitching temperatures within about 15 minutes. I've repurposed my plate chiller to recirculate back into the BK. I know it's mimicking an immersion chiller, but it allows me to walk away without fiddling with the flow.
6. 6:05am: drain BK to fermenter, pitch the yeast, throw it in the fermentation fridge.
7. 6:15am: clean the BK and put everything away.
8. 6:30am: come in and get started on pancakes.

No sparge is a hard pivot from 1-hour fly sparging, and overnight mashing is probably not ideal for head retention, but I'm after tasty beer and have very limited time. For me, adjusting for poorer efficiency with an extra pound or two of grain and increasing the bittering addition is a small, small price to pay for having my hobby not eat up my days and pull me from my dad role.

Overall I am estimating this brew will only keep me in the garage for ~ 1 hour. Everything else runs mostly on autopilot. None of this time is during waking ours for my daughters, and it pulls minimal time away from my wife.

I know this is not using my setup to its potential, but time is more precious than a few extra bucks lost to poorer efficiency.

I will try this tonight/tomorrow with a Belgian Golden Strong.

Can anyone think of a more efficient way to do this?

 

[Kahler]

Very interesting concept.
I'd pad your time by 20% for safe measure.
Let us know how it goes.

 

[dawn_kiebawls]

I think in the end you're going to wind up with a very tasty beer but I imagine it's going to ferment drier than you're expecting. Somewhere along the lines of a Saison. Cheers!

 

[luckybeagle]

I think in the end you're going to wind up with a very tasty beer but I imagine it's going to ferment drier than you're expecting. Somewhere along the lines of a Saison. Cheers!

I agree..! That's a long mash and should make a very fermentable wort. This one will be fermented with WY3711 French Saison which is a beast... an extra dry beer would be ok in this scenario! Looking for a very low FG golden strong/saison-esque brew.

I'm about to keg up my "Scottish" Heavy--the first beer I've ever done an overnight mash on (at 153F). Hydrometer samples do not taste dry, but we'll see what the end product is like! The FG was right where I wanted it: 1.011 (73% attenuation with Wyeast Irish 1084) I guess the real test would be to take one of my tried-and-true recipes that I've brewed a dozen times using a 1 hour mash, and brew it again with the ~7 hour mash for comparison.

 

[AzOr]

I do something similar except I lauter then go to bed. I leave the wort on my burner outside and as soon as I wake up I fire it up while I make coffee. I’ve been brewing g this way for 6 years (coincidentally the age of my son).
It probably won’t save time because the wort chills overnight to upper 50’s and you have to reheat it. With your method the wort is at least 130f or so. But I don’t have to worry about it being too fermentable.

 

[blubrewbbq]

So I do tasks over 2 days and on brew day im in and out to a point where I'm not gone from my family for too long. Let's assume brew day is on Saturday.

Also I went to the anvil foundary setup when my daughter was born. Best decision in cutting down brew days.

FRIDAY

• Weigh and mill grains
• Weigh out hops and put back in fridge
• Weight out salts and place in cup
• Add water to Anvil (no sparge)

SATURDAY Morning

• Wake up and turn on Anvil to heat to strike water
• Start pancakes
• When breakfast is ready go to garage and mash in
• Eat breakfast and do stuff in house
• 45min to 1 hour later, take grains up and turn Anvil to boil
• Put spent grains in compost
• Go back in and do stuff listening for the beep (the Anvil beeps when it hits 200 degrees)
• Boil wort and follow hop schedule
• Drain wort into fermenter (i do no chill)
• Clean up immediately if kid is out with me or wait until nap time to clean

SUNDAY
Pitch yeast

All in all if I turn the Anvil on at 8am I'm done by 11. I maybe am away for 30minutes collectively not including the cleaning

 

[shoreman]

FYI I’ve used german pils as a base malt for the past two years and all I do is short and shoddy 30min mash, 20-30min boils - no issues at all.

I buy Avanguard by the sack and it’s all I brew with.

 

[Jim R]

I think I would go to bed at 10:00 after doing the prep and dough in at 4:30 AM and forget the overnight part. I would rather have a 30 min morning mash and move on. Then I would bag the pancakes and eat fast cereal for breakfast that day.

 

[eric19312]

I've got some reservations around safety aspects. I'd have difficulty sleeping with the eHERMs running. Any potential for electrical fire (I'm thinking DIY but happens even with commercial appliances) or more typical recirculation issues (stuck sparge, hose failure, pump failure) occuring during the night...

Don't disagree with fundamental strategy just using the eHERMs to pull it off. I've got friends that do overnight mashing in a well insulated cooler that works out fine especially for bigger beers where highly fermentable wort is the goal anyway.

 

[luckybeagle]

Some great contributions on this thread! I'm a little short on time but wanted to post in between appointments. I did the golden strong this morning--it recirculated overnight and resulted in a mash efficiency of 65%, which is about what I expected. Seeing as I was only getting 70-75% with fly sparging, even with overnight mashes, I think this just might become my new method. No idea why my fly sparge efficiency is so low--I always mash at 5.3ish pH, set my rollers to get a fair amount of flour, do a 20 minute mash out and sparge with 175F water. Meh, whatever. I think no sparging is going to be my new method--at least until pre-school is back in session for our oldest. I can't justify babysitting a sparge anymore.

Anyway, the process really couldn't have been easier this morning. I woke up, opened the valve on my MLT at 5:45am and pumped that crystal clear wort into the boil kettle, fired it up once the element was submerged, and boiled for 30 minutes. I cleaned out my mash tun and drained my HLT in the meantime, then began recirculating through my plate chiller at 15 minutes to sterilize it all. At flameout, I lidded the kettle and turned on the cold water supply to the plate chiller while I went inside and had a cup of coffee. 10 minutes later the wort was 62F, so I transfered it to the carboy, pitched the yeast, gave the plate chiller a quick blast of water, wiped out the kettle, and was completely wrapped up by 7am. Best, and least time-consuming brew day in a long time.

I do something similar except I lauter then go to bed. I leave the wort on my burner outside and as soon as I wake up I fire it up while I make coffee. I’ve been brewing g this way for 6 years (coincidentally the age of my son).
It probably won’t save time because the wort chills overnight to upper 50’s and you have to reheat it. With your method the wort is at least 130f or so. But I don’t have to worry about it being too fermentable.

I'm curious AzOr, does this cooling of the wort result in souring? Any adverse effects? I like this idea, too. If it does result in souring, I'm thinking I could pump my lautered wort back through the herms coil overnight and into the boil kettle, bypassing the MLT to keep the temperature up.

 

[AzOr]

Some great contributions on this thread! I'm a little short on time but wanted to post in between appointments. I did the golden strong this morning--it recirculated overnight and resulted in a mash efficiency of 65%, which is about what I expected. Seeing as I was only getting 70-75% with fly sparging, even with overnight mashes, I think this just might become my new method. No idea why my fly sparge efficiency is so low--I always mash at 5.3ish pH, set my rollers to get a fair amount of flour, do a 20 minute mash out and sparge with 175F water. Meh, whatever. I think no sparging is going to be my new method--at least until pre-school is back in session for our oldest. I can't justify babysitting a sparge anymore.

Anyway, the process really couldn't have been easier this morning. I woke up, opened the valve on my MLT at 5:45am and pumped that crystal clear wort into the boil kettle, fired it up once the element was submerged, and boiled for 30 minutes. I cleaned out my mash tun and drained my HLT in the meantime, then began recirculating through my plate chiller at 15 minutes to sterilize it all. At flameout, I lidded the kettle and turned on the cold water supply to the plate chiller while I went inside and had a cup of coffee. 10 minutes later the wort was 62F, so I transfered it to the carboy, pitched the yeast, gave the plate chiller a quick blast of water, wiped out the kettle, and was completely wrapped up by 7am. Best, and least time-consuming brew day in a long time.




I'm curious AzOr, does this cooling of the wort result in souring? Any adverse effects? I like this idea, too. If it does result in souring, I'm thinking I could pump my lautered wort back through the herms coil overnight and into the boil kettle, bypassing the MLT to keep the temperature up.

Nope. I’ve left the wort in the kettle with the lid for two days on during winter and never noticed a pellicle or any kind of souring.
Most of the time the wort is only left out for maybe 6 or 7 hours.

 

[kevin58]

I've been listening to their podcasts for a long time now and last year I started using the short and shoddy method. I still can't bring myself to mash and boil for 20 minutes so I do each for 30 minutes. I have stopped making starters and do either a SNS or vitality starter... or if I'm using Imperial yeast I just pitch directly from the packet into the fermenter. So far I have noticed no ill effects and a year later I'm still doing it.

 

[bobeer]

Nope. I’ve left the wort in the kettle with the lid for two days on during winter and never noticed a pellicle or any kind of souring.
Most of the time the wort is only left out for maybe 6 or 7 hours.

I used to the do same when my 2 kids were really little. I read if you sparge at 180 degrees ,or a tad higher, it stops the mash convergence so it doesn't sour if you let it sit. I'd wrap with with a sleeping bag and leave it on the stove then go to bed. I'd wake up early the next morning to finish the brew day and also did the no chill thing as well so I didn't have another thing to clean. All the beers came out well and it was a nice quiet time to myself when everyone was asleep still.

I still measure out and mill up the grist and get all my calculations ready the night before. Anything to shave some time off the actual process even though I enjoy it.

 

[AzOr]

I think this winter is when I bite the bullet and buy an all in one system such as the Anvil Foundry. That way I can mash and lauter at night then set the timer to preheat the wort in the morning. This will shave off 45 minutes or so.

It's been on my radar for a while. It's not so much the cost as it is learning a new system. I've been brewing on my set up for so long, I can usually ball park grain weights and come close to desired gravity #s without using software.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

... without using software.