This hobby is hard work! (or I'm just old)

[SumnerH]

The main thing you can do without affecting your overall procedure is to make sure you start doing things in the right order.

e.g. rather than go through your whole checklist and make sure you've got everything before you begin, go ahead and start heating your water first and then break out the checklist. Worst case you waste a little water (but you still aren't wasting any other ingredients without doing your final check), and you'll save 10+ minutes right there every brew day. And obviously you'll have the water going while you crush your grain.

Basically, look for any points where you can overlap time-consuming activities. With any step that's going to take a long time, look for every opportunity to start it as early as possible.

I left the house at 9:45AM on Saturday for the 20 minute drive to the LHBS and by 4:30 had finished cleaning after doing 2 brews (a partial mash and an extract+specialty), with only 1 large brew pot so I had to do consecutive boils (I used a smaller pot to steep the specialty in 2 gallons of water during boil #1).

 

[Beerthoven]

... Add a couple beers to that once the boil gets started, and I'm a cranky mess by the time I have to rinse out the brew kettle and dump my grains ...

Cleaning as you go is big help. At the end of the day, once the beer is in the fermenter, all I have to clean up is the chiller and kettle and a few odds and ends.

 

[SumnerH]

Cleaning as you go is big help. At the end of the day, once the beer is in the fermenter, all I have to clean up is the chiller and kettle and a few odds and ends.

+1 on this. Any time that you have a moment when you don't need to be actively attending to the brew, look around for something to clean.

That way you're always just cleaning a few things at a time and never facing a huge mountain of cleaning (which is disheartening, especially at the end of the brewday)..

 

[RedIrocZ-28]

I find that using this method is pretty good at recuding time.

1)Get out all equipment and set up: 10 minutes
2)Fill HLT/Mash tun with purified water While crushing grain : 10 minutes
3)Put HLT on burner and bring to strike temp: 15 minutes
4)Add grain to MT, stir, read temp: 5 minutes

Crack 1st beer

5)Wait for magic to happen in Mash tun: 60 minutes
5a)During mash, fill up 5gal pot for Sparge water and put on burner last 15 minutes of mash to get up to temp.
6)Strain grains after pulling from tun (I use a BiAB method): 5 minutes
7)Set grainbag in sparge water, stir again and wait: 15 minutes
8)Combine first and second wort in kettle and start boil: 10 minutes

Open 2nd beer

9)Boil: 60 minutes
9a) Remember to put immersion chiller in boil last 15 minutes
10)Remove from flame and hook to faucet/hose - chill wort: 9 minutes
11)Siphon to sanitized carboy: 10 minutes
12)Pitch yeast: those magical few seconds at the end of the brewday
13)Hose out pots and hit them quick with a sponge to clean up any spills: 15 minutes.

Get out 3rd beer

That should be less than 4 hours so long as you have things ready before they are needed.

 

[fratermus]

I find working outside as much as possible helps me to get through the cleanup steps much faster. I'm not worried about spills and what mess I'm making out of the kitchen if I can just hose off the table when I'm done.

Absolutely. The ability to get wild with the waterhose is a godsend.

 

[Laughing_Gnome_Invisible]

Absolutely. The ability to get wild with the waterhose is a godsend.

Oh yeah, oh yeah! I brew in a garage that has a drain in the floor. I get plenty wild with everything that is not sanitary. Brewing jock, that's me!

 

[HenryHill]

I have two burners, plenty of vessels, cold well water to chill, and I drink 3-4 beers while I am brewing. I try to pre-stage my hops out of the freezer and weighed to specified addition amounts, and have the grain pre-milled and in pails for mash-in on brewday, but now matter what, I find my self doing other things that also need done while I am brewing.

By the end of the chill, I am getting tired, (picking up 11 gallons of boiled wort in a keggle to set on my bench for gravity drain to fermenters is a b!tch at 48, I have a pump but am waiting on silicon hose for being able to use it. ), but the worst is always last, now matter how well you planned and are prepared and that is dumping the grain and BK out and hosing clean.

I generally just give it all a rinse and oxy my stuff at the start on the next brewday....

 

[IrregularPulse]

(picking up 11 gallons of boiled wort in a keggle to set on my bench for gravity drain to fermenters is a b!tch at 48,

Hercules!

 

[JVD_X]

I'm so old I remember steam powered computers!

Steam? You had STEAM? My god... I remember ROCK powered computers!

 

[flyangler18]

Steam? You had STEAM? My god... I remember ROCK powered computers!

I think they called those 'abacus'.

 

[ajwillys]

For me, the thing that shortened my brew day the most was my electric HLT. It's just a heat stick plugged into a temperature controller but with it, the first two hours of brewing are totally hands off. Here are my steps:

Night before:
1) Fill mash tun with mash water
2) Fill another bucket with sparge water
3) Crush Grain
4) Put heat stick in mash tun with Ranco, leave unplugged

Morning of:
1) Plug in Ranco... walk away
2) One hour later, move ranco/heatstick to other bucket to heat sparge water.
3) Dump grain in mash tun, stir, walk away
4) One hour later, it's time to get down to business.

I built the heatstick for about $30 and I already had the Ranco. I love that crazy thing. I don't spend more than 15 minutes outside brewing until its time to sparge.

 

[JVD_X]

I think they called those 'abacus'.

ab-a-cus? Must be a NEW fangled invention young whipper snapper!