Show Us Your Short-Cuts

[Captain_Bigelow]

Another vote for cleaning as you go. I clean out the grain from the cooler and wash it while I wait for the rolling boil.

Also I typically do my batches first thing on a Saturday morning. I usually put the strike water on the burner, then go and get washed and dressed. By the time I am done, I am ready to mash.

 

[Homercidal]

I try to clean as I go, but often I am getting stuff ready that I forgot to get ready ahead of time. But my brewday is strictly for brewing. No mowing or any of that other stuff.

 

[passedpawn]

Am I the only one that mows their lawn while mashing?

No. I'm with you there.

 

[redalert]

Here's another tip. When done cleaning your carboys out why not just sanitize and cover with sanitized saran wrap or aluminum foil. They'll be good to go for your next brewday.

 

[Stuntman]

All good stuff, guys.

The posts about not worrying about how long it takes is what I needed. I brew at night after getting home about 9 PM, I likey the drinking and brewing theory as it were. Weekends are for playing and partying, so I do all the work around the house mainly during the week.

I am set up for ten gallon batches so 4 mostly, sometimes 5 hour average (is usually what I am looking at) is not that bad, I guess.

And Cheers

 

[rico567]

Well, I followed the lead of one post and did something I've never done before....I mowed during the mash of today's Amarillo Ale. I dunno if that qualifies as a brewing short cut or not, though....unless I were mowing barley.

 

[Burgs]

Cleaning as you go is a must. When the beer is in the carboy, I'm pretty much ready to be done - so the less stuff to clean up at the very end, the better.

 

[EricT]

A lot of it's been said but:

I use a pump and recirculate ice water. The more ice, the quicker it chills. I drop the pump in my pool for the initial cool-down. Winter is nice with an unlimited supply of sub-50 degree water.

Great Idea, the wife has been asking me to figure a way to get the pool to warm up a bit Not sure how fun lugging hot Wort to the pool is going to be though.

 

[weirdboy]

Great Idea, the wife has been asking me to figure a way to get the pool to warm up a bit Not sure how fun lugging hot Wort to the pool is going to be though.

Why not just set up a brew stand poolside?




I have been saving up ice the past few days with my icemaker set to "max" in anticipation of chilling my next batch to lagering temps.

 

[Stuntman]

Just shaved some more time (10 to 15 minutes). I only have to remember....Freeze unopened bottles of water (after opening and pouring a little out), they are sterile, with my equipment, I always have to top off the carboy a touch after pitching. I am figuring about 4 frozen bottles of water is what I have to add, will save me considerable time.

Weirdboy, About having a cooling chamber, After a lot of ideas, I figured out that I can build a small insulated box. I already have an airconditioner (hurricanes, or just in case the AC craps out) to hook up to said box. It has a digital read out...too simple.

Come to think of it, scratch building the box, the portable AC sits inside the house, you just have to rig exhaust to go outside. If I put it in my closet where my fermenters sit, the exhaust won't be that hot as I am only bringing room temp 6 degrees colder to 68 degrees or so. Easy Squeezy Lemon Freezy!

 

[jds]

Another "speed up your brewing" step that I just recalled. Ditch your 3/8" hose and skinny racking cane and switch over to 1/2" hose and a copper or stainless racking cane. Transfers from HLT to mash tun to boiler to fermenter take less than half the time. The same goes for racking.

 

[SwampassJ]

Great Idea, the wife has been asking me to figure a way to get the pool to warm up a bit Not sure how fun lugging hot Wort to the pool is going to be though.

I brew from in the pool, unfortunately I also happen to be slower on the gas control since I have to reach the gas from the pool. First two brews I used pool water from the hose adapter on my pool drainage pipe to run the immersion chiller. Now the water is 88 and it's just easier to use 79 degree tap water.

 

[Airborneguy]

Definitely cleaning as you go is a must, in my opinion. Before I started doing that, I used to slack on the cleaning afterwards, often not doing it until the next day!

One of the biggest jumps in time for me just happened last night. After brewing yesterday, I finally had enough of filling my water buckets on my second floor and carrying them downstairs to use. While at Home Depot last night, I bought a shower head with a hose for my downstairs bathroom so I can fill my cooling buckets (I recirculate with a pump) and sanitizer bucket. Previously, I could only fill buckets upstairs. My house has a lot of stairs and it was back-breaking carrying 20+ gallons of water downstairs to brew with every time. Not to mention, I of course spilled a lot of the stairs.

To measure my strike, sparge, and top-off water quickly I measured and marked off gallons on a Poland Spring bottle. Saved me tons of time over using a quart measuring cup like I used to.

Another change happened a few batches back when I stopped siphoning from my boiling pot into the fermentor. I use buckets and realized that roughly pouring it straight into the bucket adequately aerates the wort and saves me like 5 minutes easily.

Another time saver for me, but mostly unique to my situation, is that I can dump my grains straight into the woods across the street from my house without cooling them, then I hose out my mash tun (summer) which cuts a ton of time off of when in the winter I have to clean it in my sink.

I am also a huge fan of hop bags. Besides saving me a ton of wort, they make cleanup much faster and have reduced my boil-overs to ZERO since I've been using them.

My friend cringes at some of the things I do because he brews in an environment more sanitized than a medical lab, but I have never had any cleanliness issues or infections.

Using only one burner and one pot for all heating, I have my brew day down to 4-4.5 hours from milling to sipping my first post-brew beer.

 

[Paul_Aris]

I carry my mash tun to the woods in my backyard and dump the entire spent grains all at once. Then clean the tun. This is done during the boil.

 

[passedpawn]

I carry my mash tun to the woods in my backyard and dump the entire spent grains all at once. Then clean the tun. This is done during the boil.

Same here. Gets pretty funky back there after a day or two, doesn't it?

 

[Pick]

I use a 5 gallon Boyou Classic pot with 5500 watt element for heating strike and sparge water. Boil in 15 gallon pot heated with propane. I figure the electric saves me 30 to 45 minutes brew time.

 

[ghpeel]

No Chill works great. It cost me around $15 for the vessel (see the big No Chill thread) and works perfectly for any beers that don't need late hop additions.

 

[bsdx]

[*]Recirculate your immersion chiller. When I'm chilling, once the wort hits 90F or so, I switch my chiller to recirculate 5 gallons of icewater out of a Homer bucket. For the price of a $30 pump, I get my wort down to 60F pre-pitching temperatures a lot faster than using simply tapwater.

Could you tell me what kind of pump? I am interested in doing the same. Maybe a pond/fountain pump? I'd buy a pump just for the chiller but I suppose I could use it the rest of the time on my fermentation water bath too. Thanks.

 

[bsdx]

Going along with the idea of processing multiple brew batches in one day and overlapping them when possible, I setup a large plastic tub of cleaner (20 gallons of PBW, Straight-A, oxiclean, whatever) so I can submerge a whole batch of bottles or a bucket or entire tools like the autosiphon and not have to spend twice the time if I had to flip them over to do the other side. I also try to have a spare of each reasonably priced item and have an extra cleaned and sanitized incase I break/drop/dirty something and desire a replacement real quick. The tubs of cleaner/sanitizer also come in handy there because I can rinse off whatever I got dirty and just toss it in while I work on other things. The cost of cleaner/sanitizer is tolerable and worth it to me, it depends what you use and how good of a price you got. $8 for PBW would be pushing it but I just bought some in bulk for closer to $3 for 20 gallons. Star-San would be about $2.50 to mix up 20 gallons but since I can re-use it, its practically free. Even if it was $6 to cover both, and I use it for multiple brews that day, its worth it to me for the peace of mind that its sitting there when I need it (always forget something...)

It helped me out to switch from Iodophor to Star-San because among other reasons it won't stain my equipment (I can leave my racking canes, auto-siphon, airlocks etc submerged until I need them) and won't fade away while I'm working.

I can keep my gigantic tub of Star-San for a long time (months?) and it makes it easy for impromptu racking or simple jobs like making apfelwein, starters, etc since funnels and airlocks should stay pretty clean otherwise. I check the pH occasionally. If it decided to spring a leak, its in the garage so I don't care.

I use my auto-siphon to pump cleaner/sanitizer through its tube to fill it up, no air bubbles to worry about areas not getting cleaned/sanitized, and the whole thing fits in my tub submerged.

I have enough flexible tubes to have one for each auto-siphon and one for the bottle filler at the very least, that way if I am racking and bottling several batches in one day I am not wasting a lot of time moving the hose back and forth between devices. Even for just bottling it was helpful to have two auto-siphon because one could sit dirty for a while and I'd still have one ready to use for the next pail or carboy. I catch up on cleaning when I get a convenient chance (always the same day), it gives me more flexibility.

Recently since I assembled a portable utility sink for my garage, I realized I could use one or more siphons to help me drain my 20G tubs away when I'm done. That is considerably easier than bailing by the bucketful or trying to lift it, and I don't end up with misc small plastic brewing parts dumped into the driveway. Thats how my vehicle crushed the non-critical end of my only remaining bottle filler And yes I used it anyway afterwards, its just about 3" long now.

I second the idea to use 1/2" ID racking equipment, my LHBS introduced me to that years ago and I was thrilled.

I have a 4-way hose valve in my garage, I can run either the outside hose to it or a hose from inside the house during the winter and then I can control the water going to multiple places in my garage such as to the wort chiller, plastic tubs for cleaning, etc. The runs for my tubs are tied to support arms for a shelf so they are always aimed at a bucket, all I have to do is operate the valve. Another way would be to have one or more hooks on the ceiling to loop the hose through. I don't put hose water in my beer because I don't know what nasties live in it. And "lead". Didn't we all drink out of the hose as kids, and we grew up fine?

 

[bsdx]

Oh yeah, if you have a tub of cleaner or sanitizer with more volume than a pail/cornie/carboy, you could rack it into the pail/cornie/carboy and dump it back in when done.

 

[bsdx]

Sorry, one more for now...

Fermcap-S or another defoamer!!!!!! Takes a considerable amount of the trepidation away from the boil. Just watch for the first hop addition, the rest should be a breeze.

 

[Paul_Aris]

Same here. Gets pretty funky back there after a day or two, doesn't it?

Never really noticed. I have a large piece of property so I dump them a ways back. I always dump a small amount near the edge of the yard just for the animals. I thought the deer and other animals would like them. However, I never seems that the pile gets any smaller. They must not like them.

 

[Boar Beer]

Another "speed up your brewing" step that I just recalled. Ditch your 3/8" hose and skinny racking cane and switch over to 1/2" hose and a copper or stainless racking cane. Transfers from HLT to mash tun to boiler to fermenter take less than half the time. The same goes for racking.

I'll second that one. Dumped the 3/8 hose years ago

 

[joekerr1]

Stay as sober as possible so I don't end up with a beer with 3oz of hops when it only needs one.

 

[mrk305]

Mobile mashing. My pickup truck is my brewstand. A couple times I have filled up my cooler with water a little hotter than usual, and then drove to LHBS to buy my grains. I stirred in right there in their parking lot.

 

[brewingmeister]

Mobile mashing. My pickup truck is my brewstand. A couple times I have filled up my cooler with water a little hotter than usual, and then drove to LHBS to buy my grains. I stirred in right there in their parking lot.

mobile mashing, that's spectacular :rockin:

do you heat the sparge water off the block or the exhaust?

 

[curlyfat]

My biggest time saver? Not "sampling" previous batches while brewing. For some reason having a buzz seems to really stretch the brewing process out....

Although, I do usually have a brew while doing my final clean up.

 

[LVBen]

I don't do any immersion chilling or anything like that. I just stick my hot wort in my temperature-controlled freezer and set it to whatever temp I want to get the wort down to, and then pitch the yeast in the morning.

 

[Selfsufficient]

My one remaining chicken loves 135 degree grain, its almost as though I cooked it just for her. You should hear the thanks I get. Who knew chickens had personalities. Start to finish for me is also 4 to 5 hours depending on other chores to be done. Quickest was 4 on the dot and I don't mind spending an 8th of a day on something that tastes so good and perplexes the average beer drinker. SWMBO helped me to realize I need to clean as I go, left the mash on the counter all night and the next day till I got home. PHEW, I could understand her disappointment in me. I am also anal about having things laid out, in order so there is no confusion. Sorry, I also brew sober.

 

[homebrewer_99]

Am I the only one that mows their lawn while mashing?

It takes me 4.5 hours to mow my lawn...on a riding tractor...