Cutting Brew Day Time the time challenge!

[Owly055]

Yesterday evening, I did a completely un-rushed brew. Total time including crushing grain was 3 hours approximately. Not a bad number at all. I cooked and ate dinner and cleaned up, bottled some beer, and various other things. I did a full one hour mash, with a more normal grind, making a fairly "big" beer. The result was poor efficiency. I also did a full one hour boil. Chill took 5 minutes to pitch temp.

This is a big red sweet ale..........mashed at 155F, hopped to about 40 IBUs, OG 1.085. Almost 8 pounds of grain including crystal, in a 2.5 gallon brew. Hops are Motueka and Nelson. Motueka for bittering, and Motueka and Nelson at 10 min. I like the combo a lot!

Multi tasking works well with brewing, and as part of my time reduction program, it would be silly to discount this as a factor. I can blast through a brew day in a couple of hours, and from what I've tasted, the result is good. In fact my "speed brew" with the 10 minute mash produced an excellent brew. The slight sweetness produced by the under attenuation... less than one percent alcohol by volume below target, set off the hops very well. I'm wishing I'd brewed more of it! Obviously efficiency and attenuation are not the ultimate target. A good tasting brew IS. Yesterday's brew was an attempt to produce a slightly under attenuated brew along the same lines.


H.W.

 

[jmitchell3]

I've been thinking a similar thing....I'd like to save some time where I can, not because I want to rush through my brew day, but because I'd like to have my time to do more things. Heating and chilling came first, I'm thinking of moving to a high wattage electric kettle for heating mash water and boiling, and doing a therminator chiller to cut my chilling time from 1 hour (current immersion chiller) to 5 minutes. Seems like I should be able to cut my 5-6 hour brew day to 4-4.5 pretty readily with a few large dollar expenditures.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

 

[Owly055]

I've been thinking a similar thing....I'd like to save some time where I can, not because I want to rush through my brew day, but because I'd like to have my time to do more things. Heating and chilling came first, I'm thinking of moving to a high wattage electric kettle for heating mash water and boiling, and doing a therminator chiller to cut my chilling time from 1 hour (current immersion chiller) to 5 minutes. Seems like I should be able to cut my 5-6 hour brew day to 4-4.5 pretty readily with a few large dollar expenditures.


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

My immersion chiller consists of 20' of 1/2" copper tubing, I also set the kettle in a larger kettle in the sink, and run water in the larger kettle, and I float 5 restaurant ketchup bottles full of ice in the middle of the chiller coil. Lead weights in the bottom of the ketchup bottles makes them float upright. These bottles are in the freezer all the time.

I brew 2.5 gallons, and this chills it to pitch temp in 5 - 6 minutes depending on weather I stir or not. I consider it "pitch temp" at 10 deg above pitch temp, because that is approximately what I lose transferring it to the fermenter.

I just ordered a 2500 watt heating element for $15.79 free shipping. http://tinyurl.com/lsg3jor

This heating element will be mounted to a small pan to act as a float so it will float in my wort to speed the boil, and in my strike water to bring it up to temp fast. My heating time is a significant time factor.

H.W.

 

[TexasWine]

This heating element will be mounted to a small pan to act as a float

If you don't mind, could you upload some pictures of this when it's assembled? The concept of a floating heating element is intriguing.

 

[Owly055]

If you don't mind, could you upload some pictures of this when it's assembled? The concept of a floating heating element is intriguing.

No problem........ To put it very simply, I will purchase a small pan of some sort from Wally World, and simply drill two holes in the bottom to attach this element. the pan, which will not have a handle will act as the float. I'll probably seal my electrical connections with some sort of resin The only issue I see is one of keeping the pan floating fairly level due to the cord supplying the element. It may require a simple hanger from above. It may also be sufficient to simply weight the pan...... time will tell. It's an experiment.

H.W.

 

[Arrheinous]

If you're going to build something, make sure it's safe! Use a little wisdom from the heatstick builds around here. Some of the attempts to seal these things go bad anyway and trigger a breaker.

 

[Halifax]

So I am looking for recommendations on a good kettle for BIAB 5 gallon batches. I like the Thermometer and see how its in the way. Found Spike has a horizontal design ( welded ). Anyone see a significant benefit to having the thermometer? Also the Bayou has a nice pot with the strainer to help with the bag and keeps it off the bottom. The kettle and burner are all I need to get going and want to make the right purchase.

 

[Owly055]

So I am looking for recommendations on a good kettle for BIAB 5 gallon batches. I like the Thermometer and see how its in the way. Found Spike has a horizontal design ( welded ). Anyone see a significant benefit to having the thermometer? Also the Bayou has a nice pot with the strainer to help with the bag and keeps it off the bottom. The kettle and burner are all I need to get going and want to make the right purchase.

I would suggest a floating thermometer. I have one on order that should be here in time for my next brew after tomorrow's brew. Google Floating Thermometer, and click "shop".
This will eliminate having a thermometer sticking through the side of your pot. Mashing inline like I've been doing lately, good temp monitoring is a real asset. I've been using a thermocouple probe hanging in the bag.

H.W.

 

[Halifax]

Any suggestions on the size kettle for BIAB, looking at either a 40 or 44 quart for 5 ( 5.5) batches.

 

[RM-MN]

Any suggestions on the size kettle for BIAB, looking at either a 40 or 44 quart for 5 ( 5.5) batches.

Either of those should be great. I've done several 5 gallon batches in a 30 qt turkey fryer pot but it's less than ideal. I'd say choose the bigger one unless the smaller is substantially lower in price.

 

[Bamsdealer]

Im generally under four hours for 60 min mash and boils. A lot of times I have my grain crushed before hand. With simple grain bills I dont worry about it as I can crush while the sparge water is heating. Figure 10 min to mash trmp. 60 min mash. 15 min for a double batch sparge w hot tap water, 20 to boil. 60 min boil. 15 min hop stand. 15 min chill. 15 min cleanup. Thats 210 minutes or 3.5 hours. Figure another 15 minutes for little things that eat up time and I'm looking at 3.75 hours for a hop stand ipa... which seems about right. I have done some under 3.5 hours though

 

[Owly055]

Im generally under four hours for 60 min mash and boils. A lot of times I have my grain crushed before hand. With simple grain bills I dont worry about it as I can crush while the sparge water is heating. Figure 10 min to mash trmp. 60 min mash. 15 min for a double batch sparge w hot tap water, 20 to boil. 60 min boil. 15 min hop stand. 15 min chill. 15 min cleanup. Thats 210 minutes or 3.5 hours. Figure another 15 minutes for little things that eat up time and I'm looking at 3.75 hours for a hop stand ipa... which seems about right. I have done some under 3.5 hours though

I did a relatively normal mash and boil Friday evening. Started at 5:45 PM, filled my pot with "hot" tap water and put it on the heat, and set up and crushed by grain.

Dough in at 140F (BIAB), stirring steadily until I hit 152, then killed the heat and insulated.

30 minutes from start to beginning of mash.

1 hour mash........... Cooked and ate dinner, cleaned up, prepared hops, etc

30 minutes to heat to a boil

1 hour boil Did various things during the boil including putting things away, etc

15 minutes to chill, pitch, clean up, and put away stuff.


Total time 3 hours 15 minutes


I've concluded that it's absurd to mash for an hour, based on the results of my tests. I only did an hour mash because it was dinner time. Normally I will be doing no more than a 30 minute mash.

The jury is out on the hour boil.......... I'm NOT seeing any degradation from shorter boils of half an hour to 45 minutes......... Iean toward 45 minutes.

Those two changes reduce brew time to 2.5 hours, which is reasonable enough.

Heating time is a very large factor......... a total of an hour. My next target is to cut heating time down to 50% or less. I believe my floating heater should accomplish this, bringing me down to a realistic 2 hour brew day.

I've experimented heavily over the last month or so since I started this thread. I know what I can get away with in time savings. I'm NOT looking at developing a system where I have to rush through things. Brew day shouldn't be a race to the finish, but that doesn't mean that we should be satisfied with frittering away 4.5 hours brewing, unless we make it a neighborhood social event with elaborate 3 tier systems and admiring neighbors and fellow home brewers sipping home brews, and pitching in here and there, lounging in lawn chairs, shooting the breeze, and maybe doing a barbeque or something while cranking out 11 gallons of brew. That doesn't apply to me. I brew 2.5 gallons once a week in the kitchen by myself.

H.W.

 

[TexasWine]

Hey H.W. I just put a kettle full of water in my oven on the warm setting. When I wake up I'll have strike water ready to start the mash. Tomorrow will be my first 30 minute mash. Going for a 45 minute boil as well. All thanks to this thread I might add. Wish me luck!

One other item of note on this brew. It's my first time using my RO system. By my calculations, the RO system will pay for itself in 3 brew sessions. After that, it's money in the bank.

 

[RM-MN]

Hey H.W. I just put a kettle full of water in my oven on the warm setting. When I wake up I'll have strike water ready to start the mash. Tomorrow will be my first 30 minute mash. Going for a 45 minute boil as well. All thanks to this thread I might add. Wish me luck!

One other item of note on this brew. It's my first time using my RO system. By my calculations, the RO system will pay for itself in 3 brew sessions. After that, it's money in the bank.

Are you planning to make mineral adjustments to your RO water? I've read that RO is great for extract brewing as it doesn't add mineral content that can have weird flavors but that mashing needs some minerals.

 

[TexasWine]

Are you planning to make mineral adjustments to your RO water? I've read that RO is great for extract brewing as it doesn't add mineral content that can have weird flavors but that mashing needs some minerals.

Sure am! Going to create the profile in Brewer's Friend, as soon as I take the dog on a walk.

 

[TexasWine]

I'm glad to report I had a successful brew day fellas (and ladies)! Spent some time figuring out how to adjust my mill. Ran it through at 0.025 and then again at 0.010. The second run I milled directly into my bag. Then I dropped that sucker full of grain into my kettle of strike water, stirred out the dough balls, slid it into the oven and watched it sit there at 151F, without even budging, for 30 minutes.

On to the boil, I did a first wort hop addition while it was heating up, then a 15, 10, 5 and 1 minute (Zombie Dust clone here on HBT in case anyone was wondering). Hit my volumes spot on using PricelessBrewing's spreadsheet. Did a no chill right into the bucket and now it's sitting in the fermentation chamber. I'll pitch the yeast tomorrow morn and report back in a few weeks to let y'all know how the finished product turned out.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this discussion. I'm pumped!!!

 

[MaxStout]

Any suggestions on the size kettle for BIAB, looking at either a 40 or 44 quart for 5 ( 5.5) batches.

Just a thought...you might want to opt for 15 gal. I also do BIAB and with larger grain bills I've found that it's very tight in a 10. (I have since switched over to a keggle.) If you do choose the 10 or 11 gal, you can always hold back a couple gallons from the strike, then do a pour-over sparge after the bag is lifted out. But having a 15 means you never have to worry about space. I like the Spike design with the horizontal thermo and valve. If your batch runs a little smaller, the thermo probe is still submerged.

 

[pricelessbrewing]

Can't wait to contribute to this, probably next week. Have some tests and papers due this week. Going to do a 30 min mash, but probably not cut the boil due to not wanting to deal with hop utilization.

Btw use my website please, there's been a few updates and corrections from the spreadsheet. Super detailed, super accurate.

 

[Owly055]

Hey H.W. I just put a kettle full of water in my oven on the warm setting. When I wake up I'll have strike water ready to start the mash. Tomorrow will be my first 30 minute mash. Going for a 45 minute boil as well. All thanks to this thread I might add. Wish me luck!

One other item of note on this brew. It's my first time using my RO system. By my calculations, the RO system will pay for itself in 3 brew sessions. After that, it's money in the bank.

Good luck! Remember you need a fine crush to make a short mash work. Check your gravity with a refractometer periodically or do iodine testing. Refractometer readings will tell you when the conversion starts and when it stops.... they otherwise are of no value at this point and at this temp. When the mash clears up, you are seeing conversion happen........ don't waste your time taking readings before you see the milky liquid begin to clear.

H.W.

 

[j1n]

I need to time how long it takes me. I just upgrade a couple things to improve my time. I got a blichmann burner, upgraded from a darkstar and got the hydra immersion chiller which is an upgrade from a 25ft 3/8ths copper IC. the hydra gets me down to 80*F with 77*F water in 5 min. im sure i can get down to pitching temps much faster when my tap water temp gets lower.

 

[goybar]

I second the 15 gallon for a 5 gallon BIAB.

I bave a 10 gallon and is really too small.

I also mostly brew lagers with pilsner and conventional wisdom is 90 min boil for SMS/DMS.

chris

 

[goybar]

I rememeber hearing John Palmer talking about mashing in a Brew Strong show.

If I recall correctly....
He stated you could leave your grains soaking in water overnight and will get full conversion. Just like the Egyptians did. Heating just speeds up the process, but time will do the job.

Now all you have to do is the boil.

Chris

 

[steveoatley]

or do iodine testing. .

Is there a certain kind of Iodine to use for this test ?


Thx
S

 

[TexasWine]

Hey gang. Lookee what someone just posted in another thread. We're not crazy after all!

Sorry if this copy/paste on my phone doesn't come out right.

Well, looks like it worked.

To those that are saying they will continue to do 60 minutes because that's what pro brewers do, many pro brewers, including me do not do 60 minute mashes. This actually came up the other day on pro brewer.
http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?41266-10-minute-mash&highlight=minute

 

[jbaysurfer]

Hey gang. Lookee what someone just posted in another thread. We're not crazy after all!

Sorry if this copy/paste on my phone doesn't come out right.

Well, looks like it worked.

It's important to note that not one of those probrewers on that thread is batch sparging OR BIAB brewing. They get by with short mashes because they do 90minfly sparges (usually) and conversion continues for a good period of time after that begins.

It's not exactly apples to apples. There is also more then just conversion going on in the mash tun, there is a breakdown of longer chain sugars into shorter chain sugars. You can get complete conversion without breaking down the longer chains and you'll get a nice full bodied beer out of it with a higher FG. If you give the enzymes more time to work, you can get those dry and (digestible as the Euro brewers refer to it) beers that many styles require, and many brewers/beer drinkers, enjoy.

There's a balance to be struck. Some dude on pro brewer says "conversion takes place in as little as 8 minutes" and it's off to the races, but make sure you're getting what you want out of your mash. That's the whole purpose of being an AG homebrewer isn't it? To exercise a level of control over your final product that extract might not give you? If you're going to do an 8 minute mash because first and foremost you want to cut time, I sincerely think you'd be better off using extract. If you can't low and slow a mash to get a very dry finish (ala Pliny the Younger and other popular "triple IPAs") then what you're going to get from high quality extract is well worth the time savings.

I know Owly said his whole point was to see how fast he could do an AG BIAB brewday, but I'm submitting some food for thought here. At what point are you missing a huge opportunity to cut time by insisting on a mash process that yields you the same product extract gives you?

 

[Halifax]

Just a thought...you might want to opt for 15 gal. I also do BIAB and with larger grain bills I've found that it's very tight in a 10. (I have since switched over to a keggle.) If you do choose the 10 or 11 gal, you can always hold back a couple gallons from the strike, then do a pour-over sparge after the bag is lifted out. But having a 15 means you never have to worry about space. I like the Spike design with the horizontal thermo and valve. If your batch runs a little smaller, the thermo probe is still submerged.

I ordered the 10 from Spike that has the low horizontal design. After some thought, I opted for the smaller size just to make life easy. I could also do more crushed grain or like you said, a sparge over bag.

Still wondering what burner to get, lots of bad reviews out there from defects to poor efficiency. Any recommendations on a propane burner? Might also check out electric, being in Florida, we often get unexpected rain.

EDIT* I am looking forward to brewing outside in the cooler weather with some friends drinking my beer....

 

[TexasWine]

I ordered the 10 from Spike that has the low horizontal design. After some thought, I opted for the smaller size just to make life easy. I could also do more crushed grain or like you said, a sparge over bag.

Still wondering what burner to get, lots of bad reviews out there from defects to poor efficiency. Any recommendations on a propane burner? Might also check out electric, being in Florida, we often get unexpected rain.

EDIT* I am looking forward to brewing outside in the cooler weather with some friends drinking my beer....

Hey guys. I'm all for helping folks out. Really, I am. But this whole discussion about what kettle to buy and other what-not is way off topic for this thread. Would it be possible to start a new thread so it doesn't distract from the intended topic, which is cutting down the time it takes to brew?

 

[Owly055]

I strongly advocate finer crush, shorter mash, and shorter boil. It has a HUGE effect on time reduction.

I am at the moment working toward the goal of automating the mash to some extent so I can set up the night before, and wake up ready to boil. My current system goal is a reverse circulation system that will auto start. The grain will be dry until circulation starts. Reverse circulation offers the option of cycling the pump automatically so the screens clear themselves. It also inherently keeps the grain in suspension if the flow is reasonable.

I've had excellent results from 20 minute mashes. Attenuation being equal to an hour mash easily, and great efficiency. The product is NOT inferior to conventional processes. People who claim otherwise simply have not tried it (properly).

I am also eagerly awaiting my heating element........ The addition of 2500 watts will cut my heating times down to almost insignificant figures.

Time efficiency takes many forms. One is the straight through race to get the job done.... as I was doing. Another is to set things up around other activities.... Which I have done in my last two brews, and yet another is to automate so you don't have to be there part of all of the time............. Pico Brew being a classic example.


H.W.

 

[Halifax]

^^ Looking into electric also, both for the weather and time savings. Anyone using electric already and is it faster?

 

[Halifax]

Hey guys. I'm all for helping folks out. Really, I am. But this whole discussion about what kettle to buy and other what-not is way off topic for this thread. Would it be possible to start a new thread so it doesn't distract from the intended topic, which is cutting down the time it takes to brew?

Actually I meant to and did post in another thread specific to the topic and could not find a way to 'delete' my post here afterwards.

Anyways, I landed here initially to look at saving time, sorry if anyone got wrapped up in this.