shortyjacobs
Well-Known Member
My brew days are just that. Days.
Yesterday I did a double batch of Ed's pale ale as a PM. I figure, nominally, it's 1/2 hr to heat the water, 1 hr to mash, 10 min to "sparge", 20 min to heat to boiling, 90 min boil, 20 min cooldown, 30 min transfer to carboys.
That's 4 hrs, 20 minutes total, in a perfect world. It took me over 7 hrs.
Now, I had little problems. Realized after the mash that my digital thermometer was bunked, (apparently after its third swim in wort, it got a little wonky). I had to run out and grab iodine to test my conversion...(still got it converted....even though it was probably around 145-150, not 155 where I wanted it).
Other than that though, I still wasted 2 hours in gathering all my stuff, getting ready to go, sanitizing, washing, cleaning up, organizing, etc.
My thoughts to speed things up are:
*get rid of the hop bag....it's a PITA to juggle this and the IC, and a PITA to clean.
*renovate the garage so that everything is ready to go, (instead of squirreled away), and install a sink/tap.
So, who out there has tips for accelerating a brew day?? There's got to be a way to do this without spending an entire day every week....that's 1/7th of my life! Even pure extract brewing takes me like 5 hours...PM takes 7, so god help me when I go all grain! I need some time to drink it still.
Yesterday I did a double batch of Ed's pale ale as a PM. I figure, nominally, it's 1/2 hr to heat the water, 1 hr to mash, 10 min to "sparge", 20 min to heat to boiling, 90 min boil, 20 min cooldown, 30 min transfer to carboys.
That's 4 hrs, 20 minutes total, in a perfect world. It took me over 7 hrs.
Now, I had little problems. Realized after the mash that my digital thermometer was bunked, (apparently after its third swim in wort, it got a little wonky). I had to run out and grab iodine to test my conversion...(still got it converted....even though it was probably around 145-150, not 155 where I wanted it).
Other than that though, I still wasted 2 hours in gathering all my stuff, getting ready to go, sanitizing, washing, cleaning up, organizing, etc.
My thoughts to speed things up are:
*get rid of the hop bag....it's a PITA to juggle this and the IC, and a PITA to clean.
*renovate the garage so that everything is ready to go, (instead of squirreled away), and install a sink/tap.
So, who out there has tips for accelerating a brew day?? There's got to be a way to do this without spending an entire day every week....that's 1/7th of my life! Even pure extract brewing takes me like 5 hours...PM takes 7, so god help me when I go all grain! I need some time to drink it still.