3 full batch fermenters for 5 gal, and a slew of 4 gallon buckets which I use for small 2.5-3.0 gal batches. Usually only have 1 or 2 fermenters full at any point. Like to have at least 3 varieties of bottled brew on hand at any given time. Usually something "sessiony" like an APA, something more malt-forward, and maybe something funky. In an ideal world anyway.
How big is your pipeline?
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We (my dad and I brew together) keep 2 taps going and try to have at least 2 more in the fermentors. Currently, we have 15 gallons (3 batches) not counting the sours which don't really count as we'll bottle them and they take forever.
The "pipeline" ebbs and flows, however. We're pretty flush right now but a few weeks ago, we only had one beer on tap. Planning to brew can be difficult and drinking it isn't always consistent. We got behind because we brewed for a picnic so 5 gallons went in a day. Some beers go really quickly - a Bohemian lager that was amazing and probably one of the best Vienna lagers I've ever had - and put us behind. And how much my brother likes them...he stops over to "steal" beer.
Our biggest challenge is figuring out how to not have 2 beers on tap that are too similar and still reuse the same yeast at least twice. Brewing more often helps that but it all depends upon how quickly - or slowly - the beer is drunk.
The "pipeline" ebbs and flows, however. We're pretty flush right now but a few weeks ago, we only had one beer on tap. Planning to brew can be difficult and drinking it isn't always consistent. We got behind because we brewed for a picnic so 5 gallons went in a day. Some beers go really quickly - a Bohemian lager that was amazing and probably one of the best Vienna lagers I've ever had - and put us behind. And how much my brother likes them...he stops over to "steal" beer.
Our biggest challenge is figuring out how to not have 2 beers on tap that are too similar and still reuse the same yeast at least twice. Brewing more often helps that but it all depends upon how quickly - or slowly - the beer is drunk.
tracyk
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I always have 4 taps going with 2 in the fermenter. I am also aging a barleywine which should be ready around November. I try to have 4 different styles. Right now I have a brown ale, cream ale, wheat ale, and a pale ale. Once the wheat kicks the bucket I will look to brew some sort of darker beer. Not sure what right now as that will happen sometimes this week. This way I will have 2 darks and 2 lights.
MaryB
Well-Known Member
2-3 5 gallon fermenters going at a time. Depends on if friends drop over, what I have in process(like right now I have Caribou Slobber fermenting, my neighbor requested it) and it will need all of 4-5 weeks to ferment out so one slot is tied up. Hoping to brew up Innkeeper Ale from the NB recipe tomorrow and I am going to see if I can push it to completion in 2 weeks!
imasickboy
Drinkasaurus extraordinarius
13 fermenters, with many of them in use at all times with beer, wine, or mead.
Transamguy77
Well-Known Member
I go in waves, right now though I have 10 full kegs and 20 gallons in fermenters. When I was bottling I would have 6+ cases at any given time. When I move a few years ago I "found" 10 cases hidden in my basement, some good some not so good, I think the not so good ones I was trying to "age out" an undesirable flavor, didn't work to well.
Gameface
Well-Known Member
I feel like people are not correctly describing their pipeline.
Saying how many varieties or what your stockpile of beer is has nothing to do with your pipeline.
How much beer can you produce at maximum capacity.
For instance, I make 10G batches. The bottleneck in my pipeline is that I only have two fermenters (60L Speidels) and two fermentation chambers. Since I make mostly ale and keep the beer in the fermenters for two weeks, the most I can produce is 40 gallons of beer a month.
I have 8 kegs which is enough to receive everything I could produce in a month.
So my pipeline is big enough to produce 40G of beer a month.
How much beer I have on hand is my stockpile of beer. That is completely different than my pipeline. I could potentially have hundreds of gallons on hand using my 40G/month pipeline.
If I added another fermentor and increased my temp chamber capacity I could do 60G/month. If I pushed my 60L fermentor capacity by making 15G batches, which I could do with my brew system, I could produce 60G/month without adding another fermentor. Or if I did both I could produce 80G/month.
Saying how many varieties or what your stockpile of beer is has nothing to do with your pipeline.
How much beer can you produce at maximum capacity.
For instance, I make 10G batches. The bottleneck in my pipeline is that I only have two fermenters (60L Speidels) and two fermentation chambers. Since I make mostly ale and keep the beer in the fermenters for two weeks, the most I can produce is 40 gallons of beer a month.
I have 8 kegs which is enough to receive everything I could produce in a month.
So my pipeline is big enough to produce 40G of beer a month.
How much beer I have on hand is my stockpile of beer. That is completely different than my pipeline. I could potentially have hundreds of gallons on hand using my 40G/month pipeline.
If I added another fermentor and increased my temp chamber capacity I could do 60G/month. If I pushed my 60L fermentor capacity by making 15G batches, which I could do with my brew system, I could produce 60G/month without adding another fermentor. Or if I did both I could produce 80G/month.
^ this guy
Pipeline includes your stockpile
You can have the ability to only produce 40 gallons a month, but your storage capacity is 100 gallons per month, that just means you need to get ahead on brewing so that your 100 gallon pipeline is full, then assuming you drink less than 40 gallons per month you can maintain your 100 gallon stockpile.
Pipline = the stockpile of beer that you can maintain indefinitely based on your brewing and consumption rate and accounting for lagering and aging
Creating your own definition for pipeline doesn't make everyone else wrong bub [emoji51]
Pipeline includes your stockpile
You can have the ability to only produce 40 gallons a month, but your storage capacity is 100 gallons per month, that just means you need to get ahead on brewing so that your 100 gallon pipeline is full, then assuming you drink less than 40 gallons per month you can maintain your 100 gallon stockpile.
Pipline = the stockpile of beer that you can maintain indefinitely based on your brewing and consumption rate and accounting for lagering and aging
Creating your own definition for pipeline doesn't make everyone else wrong bub [emoji51]
Gameface
Well-Known Member
I do not agree with that definition of pipeline
By the name it means how much product you can have in various stages of development at any given time.
In practice, if you were asked to provide your product you'd have to have a pipeline that could support the demand. If in that context you were asked "how big is your pipeline" the answer would not at all mean how much product you had in a warehouse, the question would be how much new product you could deliver per a given amount of time.
A pipeline, in physical form, is a pipe of a specific diameter capable of moving a liquid at a specific amount of volume per amount of time. So the question in that regard to how big is your pipeline, would be answered by how much liquid you could move through that pipe in a certain amount of time. It would have nothing to do with how much of that liquid you had in storage.
I have: 7.5G Fermonster, 4x 6G fermenters (2 glass, 2 PTE), 5x 3G fermenters (better bottle), so total of, lets just call it 45G of fermenting ability (not counting kegs). Plus 2x6G buckets, but I barely use them - only if all fermenters are tied up, which is rare. Plus a few gallons of mead and kombucha, but that's a minor correction.
I have 8-keg, 8-tap keggerator that I built, but I have 10x 5G kegs and 3x 2.5G torpedo kegs. So my kegging capacity is 57.5G, and serving capacity is about 45G. Plus of course bottles.
My bottleneck is on serving/consuming side, obviously. I almost always have all 7-8 keg capacity on tap, probably closer to 30G of actual beer out of ~45-50G keggerator capacity, since many kegs are about half full (or half empty if you are that kind of person).
I brew 10G (sometimes 15G, on occasion 5G) batches and I usually have about 10G actively fermenting, in my fermentation chamber, plus another 10G or so "aging" at ambient and currently 5G of sour beer that will keep fermenting for 8-12 months. By the way, I usually split 10G batches into two 5G batches, or even one 5G and two 2.5G, or four 2.5G batches, and do different experiments - hops, fruit, oak, cocoa, nitro, peppers, bourbon, wine additions, you name it. Which is why I have 2.5G torpedoes and 3G fermentors.
I definitely agree with "stockpile" vs. "pipeline" discussion above.
It gets a bit tricky with sours (take forever) and lagers, but with ales, my pipeline could be similar to what Gameface described - about 40G a month (for me, assuming 1 week in fermenting chamber, which can take 10G, and then another week or slightly more in ambient).
My stockpile is (excluding bottles/growlers, which I also have dozens of gallons of) limited by my keggerator, which is also about 40G or so. So it takes a month to completely refill my "stockpile" if it ever runs dry.
The limiting factor of course then is consumption. I think I consume only about 20-25% of my beer, my neighbors, friends etc. do the remaining part.
Even then we never approach 40G theoretical limit per month (means I would brew 10G batch every week to keep up).
Currently I have a keg full of beer sitting outside of the fridge and two other fermenters that could have been transferred into kegs a week or so ago, except there is no room in keggerator. So they are still "aging". I think consumption rate is about 10-15G per month, which means I can brew 1-2 times a month to keep up with demand, easily.
That's pretty much exactly what I said...
The amount of beer you can keep stocked.. Meaning the amount you are capable of producing minus the among that is being consumed accounting for lagering and aging... Which boiled down to how many kegs you can keep filled and in what stages of production they are in and how often you have to brew to maintain that level of supply.
In a professional brewing operation, the pipeline would be the constant supply of beer that must be maintained in house via keeping beer in various stages of production to meet customer demand.
So I think we agree?
I'll ignore the pedantic dictionary definition, as we both know what pipeline means in this context.
I have 2 kegerators that hold 6 5 gallon kegs. With a 12 gallon fermenter and 5 or 6 buckets and carboys I COULD have 60 gallons on hand with just a few fermenters going to maintain the volume. My reality is that I brew a bunch in the fall, winter, and early spring and then coast until fall. Currently I have 25 gallons on hand and all my fermenters are dry. Check back in December, the situation will be very different
I'm not sure how to answer the question, but it seems like as soon as think I am caught up I some how end up with multiple kegs going empty at once with nothing to put into them. I do know my pipeline was much easier to manage before I started doing lagers and contests.
I am often surprised how light some the lager kegs feel when they get moved from the lager keezer to the serving keezer. It is amazing how just a few samples can remove so much weight.
I am often surprised how light some the lager kegs feel when they get moved from the lager keezer to the serving keezer. It is amazing how just a few samples can remove so much weight.
Yeastieboy
Well-Known Member
7.5G on draft at the moment. About 6G in fermenters. Probably going to bang out an Oktoberfest soon and then some sort of smash pale or white IPA for late summer.
Photopilot
Well-Known Member
My house is filled with a poop-ton of beer. I have more beer than my wife and I could drink in 6 months but I feel my pipeline is empty.
I have:
10+ gallons of cider in bottles
10+ gallons of kegged Imperial Red
10+ gallons of Vanilla Cream Ale
10+ gallons of a variety of beer
Of my 8 taps (one sparking water) only 2 have backups. So I am almost out of beer.
I have:
10+ gallons of cider in bottles
10+ gallons of kegged Imperial Red
10+ gallons of Vanilla Cream Ale
10+ gallons of a variety of beer
Of my 8 taps (one sparking water) only 2 have backups. So I am almost out of beer.
When I posted this question I was referring to the stockpile as well.
However the important distinction is that I bottle my beer, and my process needs to allow for bottle conditioning. If you keg your beer then things might be a bit more black and white but with bottling the distinction between what is ready and what is not ready can be a bit grey.
So for me the storage medium (bottles) is also part of the production process. My stockpile is busy carbonating and ageing to improve the flavour. In my mind that beer is in the production process right up until when I drink it. If I have a big enough pipeline/stockpile then I can leave that beer for longer before consuming and that allows for better quality beer (up to a point). There is ready-drinkable and ready-awesome, the defference between the 2 could be a few weeks/months in the pipeline.
Probably if you keg then you might consider your pipeline to be what is in the fermenters, but certainly I consider my 'pipeline' to be anything that hasn't been drunk yet
When I posted this question I was referring to the stockpile as well.
However the important distinction is that I bottle my beer, and my process needs to allow for bottle conditioning. If you keg your beer then things might be a bit more black and white but with bottling the distinction between what is ready and what is not ready can be a bit grey.
So for me the storage medium (bottles) is also part of the production process. My stockpile is busy carbonating and ageing to improve the flavour. In my mind that beer is in the production process right up until when I drink it. If I have a big enough pipeline/stockpile then I can leave that beer for longer before consuming and that allows for better quality beer (up to a point). There is ready-drinkable and ready-awesome, the defference between the 2 could be a few weeks/months in the pipeline.
Probably if you keg then you might consider your pipeline to be what is in the fermenters, but certainly I consider my 'pipeline' to be anything that hasn't been drunk yet
I keg and I still consider my pipeline to be the same thing.
Kegging still requires some aging, so anything that I'm not drinking is "next in line" in my pipeline
Gameface
Well-Known Member
My pipeline is about 120G.
10G in my brew system
20G in fermentation
40G in kegs
500 12oz bottles
I'd say a pipeline is only as big as the smallest bottleneck but I'll go with the crowd and just list how much I can have on hand at any given time.
10G in my brew system
20G in fermentation
40G in kegs
500 12oz bottles
I'd say a pipeline is only as big as the smallest bottleneck but I'll go with the crowd and just list how much I can have on hand at any given time.
brewbama
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Leave it to us beer nerds to debate the finer points of what a Homebrew Pipeline is (and is not). Cheers folks! My pipeline has a grain mill at one end and a tap at the other. Everything in between is the pipeline to the 640 oz in the keg connected....er uh... make that 620 oz in the keg connected to that tap.
I can fit 25g in my fermenting chamber. I leave it in there for 21 days before I keg. If I reduced that down to two weeks I could really increase my pipeline. Maybe it's time for me to consider reducing my fermentation time....... are you conditioning it in the keg ? or putting it on tap after two weeks ?
So basically my pipeline at the moment is 25g every 21 days.
The problem is with my inventory. I only have 5 kegs and two of them are always in the kegerator, I will be getting two more this week so I can keep the fermenting chamber full
Also my best friend just got a kegerator for his birthday and has no interest in brewing so I will be giving him a few kegs a month for the cottage.
I brew 11 gallon batches to end up with ten gallons of finished product. I have six five gallon corny kegs and a two tap kegerator. I ferment in a 14.5 gallon stainless steel conical and have several 6.5 gallon glass carboys also if needed. I usually have four kegs being used for the two ten gallon batches in the kegerator. Two in the kegerator and the other two in a spare fridge being carbed and held at temp, so they are ready to go when the first two are kicked. I try and brew every three weeks to a month, and use the other spare two kegs in rotation. So two empties are always coming up ready to use for a new batch of beer. I also have a spare chest freezer if I want to store or age a lager or Belgian or whatever I need for that purpose. It works for me......
John
John
80 gallons...rarely is the pipeline filled though. In general I have 30-35 gallons on at any one time but have been as low as (gulp) 5!
Gameface
Well-Known Member
In the past I have sort of brewed in spurts of brewing a lot and then not brewing for several months. The last 3 months I've been very active and have more beer on hand than I've ever really had before. I have ~55G right now. I can fit 4 kegs in my keezer so I've been essentially conditioning in the keg, but in the past I usually went from fermenter right to the keezer and carbing under 30psi for a day or so to get things moving. I'd use gelatin to clear faster and start drinking right away. I think I'm benefitting from keeping the kegs out at about 66F for several weeks before going into the keezer.
prrriiide
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I can do up to 40g in primary, up to 60 in secondary, and I have 100g worth of corneys. But generally, I have 20 in primary, 20 in secondary, and however much I am doing for the next festival in kegs.
Keg pipeline is capable of 60 gallons (12 kegs). Currently 8 have beer or cider in them. I rarely have less than 6 kegs ready to drink at any time.
NoIguanaForZ
Well-Known Member
It's not the size of the pipeline, it's how you use it.
your current homebrew "pipeline" is how much you have right now. How much you'd have to drink if you stopped brewing today. That was clearly the OPs question
by this other definition, anyone's pipeline is basically infinite. It would only be limited by how much space you have for filled bottles. I am constantly acquiring new bottles.
Its basically like saying you have 999,999,999 dollars because that is the potential capacity of your bank account due to the the number of digit spaces they have in the bank's system
by this other definition, anyone's pipeline is basically infinite. It would only be limited by how much space you have for filled bottles. I am constantly acquiring new bottles.
Its basically like saying you have 999,999,999 dollars because that is the potential capacity of your bank account due to the the number of digit spaces they have in the bank's system
I have two primary fermentors and I bottle. I brew 5 gallon batches and right now I have a batch and a half bottled, one fermentor conditioning and ready to bottle next weekend plus one batch in the active fermentation stage.
sleepspeaking
Well-Known Member
never more than 10gal can i still hang out with you guys?
can i still hang out with you guys?
I haven't laid enough pipe in this town to brag bout a pipeline. In case you mean beers, usually 20-25 gallons on average when it's full. 
In case you mean beers, usually 20-25 gallons on average when it's full.
Photopilot
Well-Known Member
never more than 10gal
If you only have 10 gallons around you should probably hang at one of our house instead. I remember when I had a small pipeline I had to be careful who I invited over, a few thirsty guys could wipe out beer in short supply.
