how long was your longest brew day?

[killian]

I just had a pretty long brew day yesterday & it got me thinking, some one has to have had a longer day that I had.

The recipe was based on one out of byo mag. sweet potatoe esb. I made it 10 gallons.
Ist I peeled and mashed 10 lbs of sweet potatoes and toasted some pale malt for 45 minutes. then I realized that the mash wouldnt fit in my 10 gallon cooler, I then had to convert one of my kegs into a mash tun ( based this on somewhat on flyguy's cooler conversion). mashed for 1hr and started the 1st runnings of the batch sparge. the run off had to have taken all of 2.5 hours. I think the mashed potatoes gummed up the braid. I forgot to start the sparge water until the run over was about 3/4 the way through.

So after all is said and done the day lasted just under 12 hours!

 

[WOP31]

ALthough very uncommon and I doubt it will happen again for a long long time, I had a 24 Hour Brewday. But other than that i think the longest was 6-7 hours.

Cheers

 

[Orfy]

Shortest 3.5 hours for an AG
12 hours for 3 back to back AG with breaks in between.,

 

[user 574]

double brew day 10+. I think I had a nightmare brewday once that came close to 10 as well. 105+ ambient temp, manifold fell off in tun, 1st time with a cfc; stuck kettle filter, no pump. water temp from tap at 85+. no immersion chiller anymore. Dude's house bitter. Had to be dumped.

I try to forget that day.

 

[killian]

sorry to bring up bad memories but for me its some thing to learn from.
Im not planning on another sweet potatoe beer but if I do make this beer again I will add chopped potatoes instead of mashed.

 

[Ryanh1801]

Little over 10 hours, boiling down a big barley wine.

 

[david_42]

About 11 hours for two AG batches. Did that once and never again!

 

[iamjonsharp]

boiled down a big AG beer....took forever...I think I'll just add some extract next time....

 

[zoebisch01]

Well hehe. Mine was a stiff lesson in how not to do things. First thing that was stupid, and you should never do is add day old soured mash into the tun with all the other stuff and try to get it to convert. Also don't try this in conjunction with grinding raw wheat on 'new' (aka. smaller-than-usual) roller gap settings. Horrible time consuming problem #1, conversion took something like (can't recall exactly how long) but something like 7 hrs due to the low pH. Time consuming problem #2, the lauter and sparge took basically overnight. I'd wake up at regular intervals to add more water to the 5 gallon cooler.

live an learn

 

[killian]

I just took a good look at the keg mash tun & I noticed the steel braid was kind of crimped almost right by the out connection. that must have been my run off problem. any one else had this problem. I think I have read some where about putting some plastic tubing in the braid, I think this would be an issue if I direct heat the keg though. anyone have any ideas?

 

[ohiobrewtus]

a little over 8 hours to brew 2 batches, rack 1 to secondary and bottle another.

 

[Rhoobarb]

About 11 hours for two AG batches. Did that once and never again!

Same here. About 14 hours for two back-to-back brews. My fiancee and I thought it would be cool to do. Never again; it was just too much!

 

[Lil' Sparky]

I did a back-to-back brew day a while back and it took 5 1/2 hrs. That's just a little longer than my longest single-batch outing when I first started. I don't have any interest spending half a day brewing. Forgive the heresy.

 

[the_Roqk]

My first AG was about 6 hrs. Second one was about 5 hrs. Hopefully the next one will be around 4 hrs. I'm learning and the more I do it the better and more efficient I'll get. Can't wait to brew another one!

 

[BierMuncher]

If I didn't drink, they'd go a lot faster.

 

[HarvInSTL]

If I didn't drink, they'd go a lot faster.

My first AG back in April was from 7pm til 3:30am. Now I average about about 4-4.5hr per 10gal batch and about 5.5hr for back to back 10gal batches.

Next step, 15gal batches! :rockin:

 

[Madtown Brew]

For my 4th AG batch I went crazy with a double batch partigyle - dopplebock and sweet stout. I only have a 5 gallon MT so I had to split the 19# grain bill into 2 parts and mash twice! I even did a double decoction for my first mash (second was a single infusion). The first runnings from each batch went into the kettles to boil for the dopplebock. I then added 4 oz. chocolate and 4 oz roasted barley to the mash and sparged again, this time into a sanitized bucket for the stout.

total mash time: ~ 7hrs

I had too much volume for the dopplebock and ended up boiling for a bit over 90 minutes. 20 minutes to cool it to 60dF with IC, then into the carboy and the ice chest to continue to cool to 48 dF. The stout went well, ~120 more minutes to boil, cool, tranfer and pitch.

then it was just a matter of cleaning up and waiting for the lager to cool. Which was the hardest part because it was so late by then.
Initial dough in was @ 4:30 pm
Total brew time: +- 13 hrs

Don't think I'll try that again.

 

[ajf]

Just to be an EAC, every brewday has been 24 hours long except those when switching from standard time to daylight savings time and vica versa, and disregarding leap seconds.

There have been a few brews that have taken more than 12 hours from start to finish but there was a major interruption in the middle - such as my wife giving birth. Fortunately, this only happened once on brew day.

Actual preparation, brewing, and cleanup time has never exceeded 8 hours, and usually includes a racking and a kegging as well as a brewing.

-a.

 

[Bernie Brewer]

Had my shortest today at 5 hrs. Next one will prolly be longest cause it's going to be a Wee Heavy, with 3 hours just for the boil.

 

[uglygoat]

If I didn't drink, they'd go a lot faster.

there would be no pint if i didn't drink :fro:

 

[killian]

last brew was 4 hours damn that was so much better.
I just transfered the sweet potatoe to the secondary I think it was almost worth the pain in the A--

 

[Shoopdog]

My first took a little over 6 hours, but had a little accident with burning myself...the second was 5 hours, the third with cleanup ended up a little over 4.5 hours. I'm getting there, now if I could only get that efficiency up...geesh.

 

[Yuri_Rage]

I've had a couple of 8+ hour brew days. My first AG brew lasted a while, and my most recent pumpkin ale brew lasted about 9 hours (4 hour sparge with all the gooey pumpkin - it never stuck, but it trickled pretty slowly).

Fastest AG brew has been 4 hours.

 

[bradsul]

My longest was about 8 hours. That was my first attempt at a double decoction and I just couldn't hit my rest temps. I'm usually about 5 hours now, though it's about 6 before my apartment is converted back from a brewery.

 

[Soulive]

I partial-mash and made a RyePA about 3 months ago. The sparge got stuck and it ended up being about 7-8 hours from start to finish. I dont know if thats good or bad, but the beer was great...