Fine Tuning your process for brewing

[gbrewing]

The great thing about brewing communities is the amount of people who contribute. I would like to draw on some of this knowledge in the aspect of fine tuning!

I have been brewing for some time now and recently have been discussing ways to fine tune my brewing process. Some of the simple things that I have done are as follows.

- Preparing the grain bill the night before. Everything is crushed and ready to go for brew day.
- Filling my brew water bucket from the bath tub using the hot water side. I can usually start out around 120 degrees.
- Cleaning the MT and HLT during the boil.

I am interested in reading what others have done.

 

[Walker]

Sounds like you are trying to cut the time off the brewing session? Is that right?

Starting with hot tap water is definitely a smart thing to do if you can manage it (I would have to wait forever for the kitchen sink to give me the water or haul 8 gallons from the upstairs bathroom down to the garage... not practical.)

I find that there is plenty of time to weigh and mill the grain while waiting for my mash water to heat up, so doing that in advance wouldn't do anything for me except have me less busy while water was heating. The only "early" preparation I do is get the grain and hops out of the freezer to let them warm up. The equipment is always set up in the garage off to one side, waiting to be used.

To streamline the process, I just try to stay a step ahead of the things as it goes on so that I am ready for the next step when the current one is done. (Ready with milled grain when the water hits strike temp, ready with sparge water when the mash is done. ready with 1st hop addition when boil starts, ready with chiller when boil is done, ready with carboy when the chilling is done, etc). I also clean things as I go along so that, at end end of the day, the only thing left to clean is the kettle.

I'm pretty consistent with getting an AG batch done in 4.5 hours (including the end-of-day kettle cleaning). The batch I made on Tuesday night was only 4 hours, and I don't think there is much fat I can trim off of that.