How long does all grain take from start to pinching the yeast? From what i understand its takes a lot longer than extract? How much longer?
Good question. It certainly does take longer... but by how much can vary of course depending on your equipment, the recipe, etc. I've only brewed 4 AG batches so far, but here's some general time lines (and I'm going off the top of my head here so these are just guestimations):
1) Get out the grain mill, a table to attach it to, some containers, measuring scale, etc, measure the grain, mill it, brush out the mill, put the stuff away that I took out. Approximately 1 hour.
2) Measure and heat strike water (which could be done while some of the above is going on, but so far I've kept it separate). Including getting out the kettle, various utensils/tools, burner, etc. Time here will significantly depend on your burner and quantity of strike water. With my equipment approx 30 mins.
3) Mash in and start measuring and heating sparge water. About an hour.
4) Conduct the sparge, about 15-20 mins.
5) Boil the wort, approx 1 hour
6) Chill it to pitching temp, (time depends on your chilling method). For me about 15 minutes.
7) Get the beer into the fermenter, aerate it and pitch. 10 mins?
8) Take it to its resting place and hook up a blow off tube. 5 mins.
9) Clean up. More stuff to clean up - the mash tun, likely a few more utensils, dispense with the spent grain. And all the normal stuff has to be cleaned too (as you would with extract). 1 hour or more.
What's that total, about 5 or 5+1/2 hours?
That's seems about right for me, 5-6 hours for an AG brew day. By the end of the day I'm tired, which is usually compounded by the fact that I've had a few beers throughout the day. And the worst part of brew day is the clean up which is unfortunately at the end. Certainly some time can be shaved off that... for example I could be heating strike water while I'm milling, but I don't yet do that. I could be cleaning the mash-tun while the wort is cooking, but I don't yet do that (God I'm an procrastinator at times). So it's probably possible to do the same recipe in just over 4 hours. Some recipes take longer - you might need to mash longer, or boil worth longer, etc.
Also, these guys that have tiered stands set up probably shave off some time as well as effort in lifting.
With extract you skip the milling and mashing altogether. You also don't need to boil nearly as long - perhaps in some cases not at all. If you were efficient you could probably brew 2 batches of extract in about as much time as it takes to do one AG.
But it's fun...