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Staticsouls

Staticsouls

When will the beer be free?
Joined
Mar 31, 2016
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Rancho Santa Margarita
Well news has arrived that I will be a new parent! With all the excitement and other feelings that come along with this huge change, I can't help but wonder how this will affect my brewing. Thankfully I have a system that can do 5 or 10 gallon batches, so if I can't make it into the brew house I can easily double up.

How have the introduction of children changed the way, or how you brew?
 
Congrats on the new addition!

I have three kids 6 and under and I average 12-13 brews a year, along with 5-7 ciders and wines. For me, brewing is a lot of small activities followed by a lot of waiting. I started BIAB after having kids so that I can do it after I had kids to make it easier. I do everything on my deck outside my sliding window so I'm able to brew and watch kids at the same time. The wife usually helps too, but I have done brew days with kids around too....

Here is my typical schedule:
-- start water, feed the kids lunch
-- mash in, play with kids
-- hang brew bag to let it drain, play with kids
-- start my boil watching closely for boilovers
-- add hops at the correct times
-- put kids down for naps with 20 minutes left in boil
-- cool and move wort to carboy while kids sleep

I do all of my kegging and bottling after the kids go to bed at night.

My typical brew day is 3.5 hours. Brewing with kids can be done, it just takes extra planning!
 
Congratulations!!!! When I had kids, I made efforts to shorten the brew day. A few ideas:
  • Smaller batches. Less time to heat up and boil, less time to chill, etc.
  • Prepare the night before. Get your ingredients gathered, crush your malt, etc.
  • Mash for just 40 minutes. It's good enough. I've been doing this for >10 years.
  • Boil for just 45-60 minutes, never 90 minutes. No adverse effect. Fears of DMS are truly unsubstantiated, for homebrewers anyway -- it's really a concern for commercial breweries only. I won't go into detail, but it's true.
  • When they're old enough, let the kids grind your malt, stir the mash, whatever. Keep them away from boiling kettles, but for other things it works.
  • Let your spouse help you out. You don't need to juggle kids and brewing at the same time the whole time. That's why there's two of you. Along with this...
  • Take advantage of those times when kids are out of the house. Kids and wife running to grandma's for a while? Going shopping for new clothes for school? Going to soccer practice? Cha-ching! Brew time!!
It's totally doable. My kids are all teens now but I never had a problem fitting brewing into my schedule, not at all really. Any homebrewers who say "with the kids it's just so hard..." really just aren't committed to brewing and just making excuses to get out of this FRIGGIN AWESOME HOBBY!!!
 
Congrats, I'm also in the same boat, kid #1 on the way!

I've also had these same thoughts! :D I think everyone is right, it's going to be all about time management. I'm assuming the first few months are going to be pretty hectic, getting used to this whole new human you created and now have to take care of. I'm going to try to up my brew game in the next few months prior to the bundle of joy arriving, that way I'll either just be enjoying the fruits of my labor during those months or i'll have the beer already aging in carboys or kegs.

Good luck!
 
When my kid was born, it slowed me down a bit. I brewed 5 batches I a year. When I brewed, I did it super early, doughed in at 4am and wrapped up by 9am. I screwed some things up but hey I had beer. Now, I try to incorporate her into some of the processes, weighing out ingredients and crushing grain. She is not allowed near the hot stuff at all, but she loves to help and now asks when are we brewing? I am not one of those that has to dedicate an entire block of time to watch the entire process. I do what I need and play/watch/do chores when I don’t need to be there.
 
With a baby, its easy. They're asleep all the time and you're stuck at home. Might be a little tired from sleep deprivation, but plenty of time to brew.

I've got a 3.5 year old. I brew every once in a while when he's home, but since I work one weekend every month and get to take a day off during the week to cover that, I brew while he's at daycare.

BIAB and small batches helps. My brew day takes 3.5 hours with all the setup done the night before.
 
When the kids were real young, I had plenty of time to brew. It wasn't until they got older and I was always running them to soccer practice or dance that it became a struggle to schedule a brew day.
 
Unless you have help to watch the little one - I actually think babies are harder. Yeah, they sleep a lot - but when they need you, they want/need you NOW....even if you just put the wort chiller in the kettle or some other point that your beer wants some babysitting too.

Not my daughter is 6 and other than keeping her away from the hot stuff, she is fun to be around during brew day. I did adjust processes to keep things shorter and have less running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Not I can spend time playing cards or catch with her while waiting for water to boil, during the mash, etc.
 
Congrats on the news!

It's harder to find time to brew; that can be mitigated by things like setting up the night before, getting up early to brew before everyone else's day starts, using techniques that shorten the brew day, things like that.
 
Hey, I'm in the same boat! Baby boy, incoming March 2019.

My plan is to make brewing a social activity. We're moving closer to the wife's family, so I'll be inviting her brothers and sisters over when I want to brew. I figure if there's like 6 of us around, someone can take over and wipe a poopy butt from time to time when I'm busy.

If that means I cut from brewing every 2-4 weeks to every 6-8 weeks, well, at least I still brew every 6-8 weeks.
 
2 kids here, one just turned 2 and the other is 6 months. I prep as much as I can the night before (weigh out water treatment, get all my gear out in the garage, etc) and then I start at 5 AM. Yeah it's early but I find it peaceful being up and doing stuff before everyone else and I can usually have everything cleaned and the yeast pitched before 10 AM.
 
Staticsouls said:
Well news has arrived that I will be a new parent! With all the excitement and other feelings that come along with this huge change, I can't help but wonder how this will affect my brewing. Thankfully I have a system that can do 5 or 10 gallon batches, so if I can't make it into the brew house I can easily double up.

How have the introduction of children changed the way, or how you brew?
Click to expand...

Congrats on your pending arrival!

When my kids were born and until they were through the toddler stage, it did make my brew days more infrequent. Fast forward a couple decades, and now I have two enthusiastic brewing assistants, one of whom is now old enough to drink the beer we make. So over time, it evens out, then pays back.
 
Yup, first baby slowed me down a bit, 2nd one a bit more, but if you’re committed and love brewing it’s easy to find time (not necessarily energy) with a few simplifications to the brewday. Looking forward to having both girls help me when they’re older (safety first!).

I recently switched back to extract and dry yeast in batch size of 1 gallon. I can brew 2 different batches in 3 hours including cleanup. Usually done after kids go to bed. I ferment in simple 2 gallon buckets which easily fit in my dorm fridge (with an inkbird temp controller and heating mat). I had to get rid of my other kegerator fridge for the time being to store all the baby stuff in our garage. I bottle now in 16oz PET. Makes things a tiny bit easier than kegging (at this batch size).
Kids will come first, but the time invested is so worth it! They’ll love to be around you just to help! So much fun!
 
CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!

My daughter was 2 when I started brewing. That was 19 years ago and have managed to raise 2 more while working full time, starting and running my company and YES brewing. The design idea behind my brewery was so that I could "set it and forget it" if you have the ability to design some simple step savers into your process you will still be able to brew, cook dinner, feed the munchkins and clean the house all the while the beer also gets brewed to save your sanity.

These days you can just buy a RoboBrew and it does it ALL for you....LOL But whats the fun in that?

Cheers
Jay
 
Thanks for the words of confidence hbt. Also congrats to the other brews with little brewers brewing too!
I guess I should just relax dont worry and have a home brew.
 
I have two daughters now and I did slow down some due to time/money at first but now they're 7 and 2 and I can pretty much brew whenever I want. They can hang out with me or play on their bikes or scooters while I brew. My 7 year old even likes to take part and always has. She gets excited about smelling the different types of hops, she always wants to dough-in with me and stir the mash. I really love when she's around for the day but the 2 year old is still a bit too much of a distraction to have around all the time, on my own.
 
Sort of off-topic, but read up on sleep training as much as possible while the little one is brewing (pun intended), because when you need it, it will be far too late. Getting your little one on a good sleep schedule where they both fall and stay asleep as early as they are capable will help tremendously with finding time to do all of the little things you need to do without interruption (laundry, cleaning, down-time with your partner, odd jobs around the house, etc) as well as the things you want to do (brewing, other hobbies, preferably things that will not make too much noise!). Our little girl has the energy equivalent of 5 normal toddlers shotgunning redbulls in a bounce house, but when she's out, she's out. She hit her stride with sleep fairly early, minus a few different periods of jet lag adjustment from when we lived in Europe and visited family in the US, and reliably goes down from 7:30pm to 6:15am. You could set your watch to her. Finding the energy after dinner to do much is hard, but you find a way to press through it over time if the activity is rewarding enough! Pray to whatever entity you value (or all of them, just to be safe) that you luck into a mellow kid! Nature beat the %#$@ out of nurture in our case (we're both very type-b).

Though I'm new to brewing I'm very much looking forward to starting brew day bright and early so that I've got the boil going just as she's waking up. I'm sure you'll find pockets of time to pursue your craft once you get the hang of the whole dad thing and establish a routine. :)

Good luck and congrats!
 
Schreiner said:
Just make sure you give your wife time to do her hobby activities free from the kids also.
Click to expand...

This. I know so many people who don't do this and don't do that because of their kids and they are miserable. I'm not saying my life and mental health are perfect, far from it, but we've always tried to balance what we want to do, together and separate with stuff with our daughter. Again far from perfect but she's a pretty well balanced 16 year old now. We only have the one so that makes things infinitely easier too. We are close to our moms and she's also spent a lot of time with them which I see as a good thing. We don't hesitate to send her to Grandmas for a weekend so we can have a weekend and I think both are better off for it. She's even gone or trips for a week or two with my mom to visit family.
 
I started brewing extract recipes more often. MoreBeer and William's both sell LME in larger volumes. Let's me slip brew days in more often since it only takes me 2 hours with setup and clean up.
 
I do as much prep as I can before brew day since prep can start and stop as needed for family. Sometimes this is spread over a couple of days. Then on brew day, I get up at 3-4 am so that by the time the kids are up and going I’m just about to start clean up. It’s not for everyone but it works for me. Congrats on the best thing to ever happen to you (next to making your own beer, that is)[emoji2]
 
I have just started brewing the past couple months and have done 4 batches. My last batch i did the night before my newest came a few weeks ago. I'm planning on doing another brew soon and instead of a smaller batch I'm planning on doing a bigger/ double batch and then having two 5 gallon batches and treat them slightly different so it makes up for brewing less often.
 
I grind the night before, after he's in bed. I'm very cavalier with my mash times - if time is going to be tight, I'll do an overnight mash or start the mash in the morning and boil in the afternoon during nap time. With the kettle (BIAB) on a mat on the ground and a thick jacket around it, the mash doesn't lose enough temperature to get into souring mode in the hours between mash in and pulling the bag. I actually do longer brewdays than I used to, though, because I make double batches in my 34L kettle; one 6-7 hour brew day goes down better with the wife than two 4-5 hour ones. With your ability to do 10g batches on your system, you shouldn't have any trouble. In my case, I have to get creative. I split some batches unevenly with more top-off water in one for different strengths, vary the batches with different yeast selections or cold-side additions like dry hops or candi syrup. I'm planning on splitting a batch as an APA and an oatmeal porter next time by doing a fairly simple grainbill for the primary mash, pulling a portion of the wort post-boil and mixing it with a separate mini-mashed wort with all of the roasted grains and oats for the porter, and doing all of the APA's kettle hopping in the whirlpool after pulling the portion that goes into the porter.

Oh, and since there's a lot of down time in a brew day, I do my best to either clean (shortening the brewday) or dad (reducing the parenting load on my wife) during those downtimes. If I took brew days for granted or tried to make them my sacred personal time, I would find them much harder to come by.
 
I have two kids and my process is actually breaking the brewday into 3 days. Bear with me for a moment. On day 1 i crush the grains and do the mash overnight: takes about 40 min. The older kid (8 years old) helps with crushing the grains and stirring the mash. On day two I boil the wort for typically 90 min and then chill with plate chiller directly into the fermentor. From the moment I start heating to the moment I have the wort in the fermentor it takes about 2 hours. Wort is usually in the 20c range then. Then I put the brewjacket immersion pro to bring the wort to pitching temp and leave overnight. Then on day 3 I pitch the yeast. It allows me to have quite some time with the kids, I don't "disappear" for a full day and it also allows me to enjoy brewing every day for 3 consecutive days
 
One of my little tricks to at least secure two brew days a year is, I brew birthday beers for each of my daughters. We have big birthday parties at the house with out of town guests and all that so I made recipes for both daughters and name them after them and all that. It's obviously for the of-age guests and not the kids but it gives me two can't miss brew days.
 
After my first kid nothing much changed. At that point I was an extract/partial mash brewer.

After my second kid was born I just ran out of time completely and took a 4 year break.

I just started brewing again in February doing All Grain. That was a lot of fun and made some great beers.

Now we're expecting kid #3 in November so I think I'm going to at least try to keep up with doing extract batches, especially if I can get "brewday" down to <2 hours.

Speaking of which.

lump42 said:
I started brewing extract recipes more often. MoreBeer and William's both sell LME in larger volumes. Let's me slip brew days in more often since it only takes me 2 hours with setup and clean up.
Click to expand...

lump42 What is your typical process? Do you do full boil or partial boil and then cool the wort with your extra couple top off gallons? I think I'm probably going to do the same kind of thing for the next year.
 
Long since planned due to the OP's reason, but now finally realized, i am brewing on weekday evenings. I used to be exclusively a weekend brewer but found that ate into "family time" quite a bit.

Kids are usually in bed by 7-7:30 on weeknights so i get home at 4:30, mashed in by 5, in the kettle by 7 and pitched by 10:30. Net loss of family time is maybe 30-45 minutes. Wife likes it much better this way. And i get my weekends to do the usual weekend stuff.
 
schematix said:
Long since planned due to the OP's reason, but now finally realized, i am brewing on weekday evenings. I used to be exclusively a weekend brewer but found that ate into "family time" quite a bit.

Kids are usually in bed by 7-7:30 on weeknights so i get home at 4:30, mashed in by 5, in the kettle by 7 and pitched by 10:30. Net loss of family time is maybe 30-45 minutes. Wife likes it much better this way. And i get my weekends to do the usual weekend stuff.
Click to expand...

I wish i could brew outdoors at night/evening. We live next to a lake so the bugs/gnats are THICK around any light source. The only time of year I can brew at night outdoors is a couple months of the "coldest" part of winter (which in North Texas Means 40's-50s). If i want to evening brew its indoors for me. But If i can do extract successfully thats probably what i'll end up doing.
 
knotquiteawake said:
I wish i could brew outdoors at night/evening. We live next to a lake so the bugs/gnats are THICK around any light source. The only time of year I can brew at night outdoors is a couple months of the "coldest" part of winter (which in North Texas Means 40's-50s). If i want to evening brew its indoors for me. But If i can do extract successfully thats probably what i'll end up doing.
Click to expand...

That’s why I built an electric brewery in my basement.... year round no problem.
 
I would say small batches could be a solution - I think its better to brew smaller amounts more often than a full batch only once in a while.

A 1.5 gal batch takes me about 2 hours, which I know I can squeeze into a weeknight, or maybe even an early weekend morning. Trying to find 6-7 hours is harder, and probably sacrifices family time or my wife's sanity. Plus I get to brew more often and get more beer variety this way. The only downside is this may not be enough output.
 
knotquiteawake said:
After my first kid nothing much changed. At that point I was an extract/partial mash brewer.

After my second kid was born I just ran out of time completely and took a 4 year break.

I just started brewing again in February doing All Grain. That was a lot of fun and made some great beers.

Now we're expecting kid #3 in November so I think I'm going to at least try to keep up with doing extract batches, especially if I can get "brewday" down to <2 hours.

Speaking of which.



lump42 What is your typical process? Do you do full boil or partial boil and then cool the wort with your extra couple top off gallons? I think I'm probably going to do the same kind of thing for the next year.
Click to expand...


I still do full boils. I still brew all-grain when I have time, but the extract batches fill in and keep my beer lines full.

I use brewers friend and it calculates the water needed less the volume of the extract. Other software may as well.
Fill the kettle with pre-boil water, add 1/2 campden tablet for chloramine. Then add any steeping grains while the water heats. When the water hit 170-200, I kill the flame add extract and stir till dissolved, bring to boil, add hops, chill, pitch.

Chilling, I fill 40-50 qt cooler full of ice from work add a gallon of water (just enough to submerge a pond pump) and recirculate the ice water through my IC while I stir, even with a smaller homemade IC (~40' 3/8") it takes near 10-15 min to chill to 64F.

Recipes are either following Basic Brewing Radio's 15-min pale ale recipe or kits I've picked up on sale.

15-min pale ale (source)
5 gallon batch
6lbs light dme
1lb C60
2oz cascade @15min
1oz cascade @ flameout

Hops can easily be substituted and adjusted to taste/ whats on hand. Total brew time is around 2-hours with setup to clean up.
 
I haven't brewed since April 2015. I did three batches. Daughter #1 born in May 2015.

Things evened out and was going to get back into it and Daughter #2 was born in May 2018. #2 is easier adjustment for us, so I'm hoping to brew relatively soon.

Though it's likely going to be a day off of work. I'm not to the point where I can brew on the weekends with the kids.
 
Staticsouls said:
Well news has arrived that I will be a new parent! With all the excitement and other feelings that come along with this huge change, I can't help but wonder how this will affect my brewing. Thankfully I have a system that can do 5 or 10 gallon batches, so if I can't make it into the brew house I can easily double up.

How have the introduction of children changed the way, or how you brew?
Click to expand...
my boy is 3 and my girl is 9 months. the year before my son was born i made about 20+ brews. Since he was born I have made 1.
 
My youngest will be 21 in a few days so I'm about to have all adult children. The hardest part of brewing when they were growing up was during middle and high school when I actually quit brewing for about 7 years.

Maybe you can steer your kid away from sports or extracurricular activities and towards being a couch potato. That will free up a lot of brewing time.

I am of course kidding.
 

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