How many beers do you have going?

[Azurelimits]

I am still fairly new to home brewing and I have a question or two for everyone out there. How many beers do you have going right now? I am still building up my pipeline and I only have 3 primary vessels. I have a pumpkin ale in my 6.5g carboy brewed on the 25th. I have a stout in one of my buckets that I brewed on the 31st. I have an american wheat ale brewed on the 10th in my other bucket. These are my 3rd 4th and 5th beers. I dont want to just go out and buy more primary buckets and not use them in the future but I feel I need to brew more. I am planning moving my pumpkin beer over to a secondary sometime soon but that still leaves me without beer soon.


I am running pretty low on my current brew and I want to brew more to build up the queue. I have 2 taps on my kegorator and have all the stuff to upgrade to 4. I want to be able to have 4 of my own brews on but it seems like I am always playing catchup. I only have 7 kegs, is that enough to sustain 4 lines. How many kegs would be good to have to be able to keg carb and build up a line?


I am pretty scatterbrained right now but hopefully someone could help me out.

 

[Yooper]

I have seven kegs, and three taps. I can fit five kegs in my kegerator, but rarely have that many in there!

I don't know how to answer your question- I guess it depends on how fast you drink your beer. If you drink a keg a week, you need to make more than that. If you drink a keg a month, you need to make more than that. I like to brew twice a month, but sometimes it's less often (like this summer) and sometimes it's more often.

It's hard when you brew a beer with a long wait- like a lager. It is months and months before it's ready, so it seems like it doesn't "count" when you brew it!

 

[azscoob]

I have 6 kegs, 6 fermenters and 2 taps, I try to brew 2 times a month like yooper does, I find it eases the strain if I do 10 gallon batches of my favorites, same brew time more or less, but with double the volume. I think you can keep 4 taps running, but you will need to be brewing a lot, one keg will always seem to blow every few days.

 

[BrookdaleBrew]

I have 5 beers going right now.

Summit IIPA (keg conditioning)
Marzen Ale (keg conditioning)
Kolsch (bottled)
Imperial Russian Stout (primary)
Kolsner [which is a pilsner brewed with kolsch yeast] (primary)

The bad part is, I have nothing ready to drink at moment! I ran out of homebrew about 2 months ago and decided I was never letting that happen again, so I started building up a solid pipeline.

 

[Zamial]

so...

part one: (all of these are 5-6 gallon batches) I have 2 batches that are ready now.(both PM 1 wheat and 1 bitter) I have 3 batches that are in bottles conditioning(all AG wheat, IIPA and a stout), I have 2 batches fermenting ( also AG Imperial smoked stout and a strawberry SMaSH) and will be brewing my pumpkin ale this weekend.

part two: how to solve this problem. There are only 2 viable ways to solve it and 1 not so pleasant way. Let's get the not so pleasant way out 1st, Drink less. Ok, since that is not going to happen. You can either brew more often or make larger batches. I am opting for the 2nd option as I tried the 1st but brewing and bottling every or every other weekend is not doing well with my social life and SWMBO's plans.
IF things go well and I get my parts I ordered soon, so I know what else to order next, I should have my 30 gallon fermentor up and running in a week or 2...Then I will brew a 25 gallon batch 1 time every 5 weeks with a specialty 5 gallon batch and keg/bottle and clean the fermentor on the 4th week or as needed once the ole pipe line is full...

 

[shanecb]

At the moment I have a berliner weiss in secondary aging (which is will be for quite awhile), and an American IPA that's only a couple of days in primary. My bottleneck is that I only have two primary fermenters, and only have the capacity to keep one cooled at a time.

 

[OHIOSTEVE]

not counting what is being drank right now I have 5 batches bottle conditioning and one cold crashing plus a batch of pineapple wine bulk aging.. oh yeah a batch of blueberry wine bottle aging plus some various bottles of wine.

 

[BillyBeer]

I have 6 beers going:
Smoked Porter
IIPA
Red IPA
IPA
Dos Equis clone
Pale Ale

Primary and Secondary are empty - finally getting to brew again this weekend.

I have 13 kegs, 6 fermenters. I haven't brewed in 2 months but I brewed 50 gallons in the first 4 months of the year so I built up my pipeline.

I brew 10g batches of my IPA's and other favorites and 6gal batches for others.

I am the main drinker in the house so my kegs can last a while. The smoked porter has been on tap since Jan.

I love having a variety of beers so 6 taps works great for me.

 

[impur]

I have 3 going, you can see them in my signature. I've almost got a pipeline built up, I'm bottling my Red Hood ESB tonight and brewing again this weekend. I might have to do 2 brews this weekend since i'll have 2 primaries available

 

[Mischief_Brewing]

As somebody mentioned above, we tend to call this our "pipeline". It takes good planning skills to keep all of the taps full all of the time, not to mention a lot of brewing time and having spare $$ doesn't hurt.

I'm running 2 of six taps right now (slow expansion) and one is sitting empty. I've got a stout aging that won't be ready until Dec at the earliest and an IIPA that I'm kegging in 2 days. I'm brewing Sunday if my grain order arrives by then.

My problem is that we have at least 1 party a month when the weather is nice (March-October) and a big winter solstice party in December. We go through at least a keg and a half at each party. It's been tough keeping those kegs full!

I want to upgrade to 10-gallon batches but unfortunately it's a low priority on the beer todo list, which is driven by spare $$ that doesn't exist often.

So in summary, currently I've got:

Primary 1 - C-Hop IIPA
Primary 2 - Ed Wort's Apfelwein
Primary 3 - empty (will be MO/Cascade SMaSH early next week)
Primary 4 - empty
Primary 5 - empty

Secondary 1 - Peanutbutter Cup Stout
Secondary 2 - 3 gallons NJ Wildflower Honey Mead (primary fermentation)
Secondary 3 - empty

3-gallon secondary 1 - Dandelion Wine
3-gallon secondary 2 - empty

Wow, looking at that, I didn't realize I had that large of a capacity!

 

[KeithMoonsLiver]

4

 

[prosper]

On-deck, off the top of my head I currently have the following in my beercave:
-german pils
-cream ale
-pumpkin mild
-ESB
-3 or 4 different bitters
-amber ale
-saison
-wit
-nut brown
-irish stout
-APA
-2 english IPA's
-RyePA
and a handful of assorted bottles from old batches.

I've got an Orval-eque BPA almost ready to bottle, and an American-Irish Red Ale in primary.

Up next will be another belgian pale ale to reuse my brett-cake from the orval clone - (probably a 15 gallon batch), and a few hoppy west-coast ales.

 

[smakudwn]

I have 1 batch fermenting (esb)
1 batch bottle carbing (wee heavy)
2 batches kegged and on tap (American hefe and IPA)
1 batch bottle that is ready to drink (Breakfest stout)

and i you count it 1 batch of apfelwien bottled and ready to drink.

 

[Captain_Bigelow]

2 on tap
- Vanilla Caramel Cream Ale
- Scottish 70

3 fermenting
- N. German Pilsner
- Newcastle Brown Clone
- Haus Pale Ale

 

[ajf]

Drinking a Special Bitter, a Bohemian Pilsner, English cider and Cabernet Sauvignon.
2 more Special Bitters waiting to be drunk.
Another English Cider conditioning.
Bottled a Mid Atlantic IPA today (English IPA overdosed on late hop additions)
American IPA fermenting
Brewing another Special Bitter tomorrow.
Starting another Cabernet on Saturday

-a.

 

[tvtoms]

Bottled - Canadian Blonde Ale

primary 1 - Kit-bashed Coopers Real Ale
primary 2 - Midwest's Autumn Amber Ale

I know I like ales, so I'm stockpiling in case I dont care as much for whatever I try next. I havent tried a very wide range of brews in my life, so thats just my way of ensuring I have a few.

 

[robertbartsch]

eight


two cornie kegs in fridge, two kegs conditioning, 4 plastic fermentor buckets.

 

[LaurieGator]

I currently have 4 beers in carboys with 3 empty carboys that already have beers assigned to be brewed in the next 2 weeks.

Normally, I am a 2x per month brewer. Right now, I am going into overdrive with the production because my pipeline ran dry from a year of not being able to brew. I also have a large event I am attending in November and a larger one in February where I will go through large amounts of beer. I need to get the big beers started now so they are ready.

I am of the mind that you can never have too many carboys. I have some things (like mead) that may take up to a year (which removes that carboy from being able to make beer for all of that time). You may want to age some batches, add fruit or dry hops to some batches or just have a big beer that needs extra time in the carboy.

I vote that you buy some extra buckets and brew while you can! I had a year where I tried to get 7 hours to brew and was not able to because of work and family obligations. You never know when you may run out of time. If you can, make the extra brews while you can