Homebrew thread?

[hoping2retire35]

Is there a running homebrew thread? I did some searching and everything I found was dated. I have done a good bit of brewing in the past but every time i try to get back into it i just get exhausted after a couple of weeks. I can make an all grain batch in 3-31/2 hours by doing all the prep the day before and the cleanup the day after. But when it comes to racking and bottling I am worn out from doing a batch sometime earlier in the week. Usually goes something like this;

Monday: 9pm kids asleep- clean and prepare equipment, see what grain/hops are ready,. 15min
Tuesday: 9pm, kids asleep-measure grain and grind directly into brew pot, place in garage.
Wednesday(brew day): 6pm, kids at inlaws w/mom for the next 45 min-place brewpot under sink with water on hot. 6:15 take to propane cooker(mash temp 120) raise slowly to ~150. 645 place in mash tun(ten gallon cooler with 5 gal bucket with holes in bottom to drain). 715-pour mash water/wort into brew pot then dump back ontop of grains, warm sparge water. 745 pour mash water/wort into brewpot at full heat, pour on sparge water. read to kids, asleep by 815. 820-pour drained sparge water into brewpot just as temp reaches 212, add hops, start clock for 30 min and flame out hop addition.920-start wort chiller. 950-pour into fermenter with yeast and seal. 10pm-exhausted.
Thursday: 9pm, kids asleep-clean equipment usually 20-30 min.
Friday:6pm soak bottles, 9pm clean bottles
Saturday:9pm, bottle beer that was made previously, 945-10 exhausted.
Sunday:9pm, be sure there is a good secondary fermenter extremely clean, prepare yeast.

Somehow I always end up like this. Exhausted and the fun begins to come out of homebrewing.  I could brew on saturdays or sundays during nap but that means some other chore does not get done and I would rather do something not as attentive on the weekends since I am watching kids the whole time. I realize i quickly go from a fun hobby to an obession with this. Really looking for clues to better time management. I dislike buying commercial beer and get tired of meads and wines(nothing like a good stout) even though they are great for the amount of time it takes.

[skunkfunk]

I've done a few things to make the hobby easier. Before I had a kid, I did it in the kitchen and bottled everything, 5 gallons at a time. Now, I just can't spend the time.

First thing - kegs. Get a few kegs, screw bottling. It's expensive and un-mustachian. Whatever. Bottling sucks.

The other thing I did was bigger batches. Now, for the same investment in time, I can get 2-4 completely different 5 gallon batches fermenting. Just an advantage of piecing together a big system.

[theSlowTurtle]

I agree with skunkfunk, although it isn't cheap, kegging is a big win time wise. If you don't want to do that then maybe you can evaluate your bottle cleaning process to save more up and clean/Sanitize more at once.

How much are you drinking or what size batches are you making? Seems like you either drinking a ton or brew small volumes - decrease the former or increase the latter :)

For xtra time savings consider ditching the mash tun for BIAB and look into 30 min boils (see brulosophy.com boil experiments) and no chill. Hope this helps - Cheers!

[hoping2retire35]

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How much are you drinking or what size batches are you making? Seems like you either drinking a ton or brew small volumes - decrease the former or increase the latter :)

-1
AYE! keep you hands off my bottle!
j/k

At the moment I have three mostly full kegs, three that are in secondary(really needs to be bottled or kegged) and 100~ bottled. It is more that as I begin to get into my 'stache' it will tend to go down over a few weeks, until one day I hear a sputtering sound and see lots of bubbles coming from my kegerator, at which point I get this gut wrenching, sinking feeling knowing that is my last filled keg and the bottles need some more aging... That's a bad place to be and I do not want to go there again.

All joking aside I guess it is that I just like to brew certain times of the year(holidays, nice weather, not raining) so if I can brew nearly every week during the good times and not during the busy or bad times it all works out. I do have some equipment for larger brews, just not everything, however it seems like that takes more coordination. I guess large brews would work well with a small group where everyone brews once every month or so and the batch is split or something.

[skunkfunk]

Large brews work for me. I coordinate with myself to make 15-20 gallons and then split it with myself.

More seriously, the answer could be as simple as "more kegs." Get enough capacity to make it through the winter months.

[therethere]

First off, I'm pretty impressed you can get your all grain brew day in under 4 hours. That's awesome. My brew days usually start around 7/30 and run full through 2pm. This is with waking up to measured and crushed grains along with pre-heated water ready to mash in. The past year or so brewing has started to become a chore because I'm brewing to have beer not necessarily create. So I've definitely fallen out of love with it. It sounds like that is where you are beginning to go.

A few ideas to ponder:
1- I would advocate moving to kegging. Hands down most rewarding upgrade I did. That takes two nights of work off right there.

2- Also, since you are brewing outside anyway you should look into doing 10 gallon batches once in awhile. Even if its just once in awhile of your favorite beer so you always have some on hand. It does add about an hour more of time with heating and cooling more water. But you get twice as much! Keg shells are pretty cheap to come by for a boil pot. If you choose a low gravity you might still be able to use the same mash tun.

3- If you really want to save time. Maybe think about moving back to extract. Its really not that much more expensive than all grain if you buy in bulk. Get a 50# bag of Extra Light DME. It tastes clean and you use it in everything. I did extract this way for 5+ years and surprised a lot of people when they heard it was extract. Quality does not have to suffer. Extract works very well for most beers and using dry extract there is no extract "twang" that everyone is terrified of.

[skunkfunk]

First off, I'm pretty impressed you can get your all grain brew day in under 4 hours. That's awesome. My brew days usually start around 7/30 and run full through 2pm. This is with waking up to measured and crushed grains along with pre-heated water ready to mash in. The past year or so brewing has started to become a chore because I'm brewing to have beer not necessarily create. So I've definitely fallen out of love with it. It sounds like that is where you are beginning to go.

A few ideas to ponder:
1- I would advocate moving to kegging. Hands down most rewarding upgrade I did. That takes two nights of work off right there.

2- Also, since you are brewing outside anyway you should look into doing 10 gallon batches once in awhile. Even if its just once in awhile of your favorite beer so you always have some on hand. It does add about an hour more of time with heating and cooling more water. But you get twice as much! Keg shells are pretty cheap to come by for a boil pot. If you choose a low gravity you might still be able to use the same mash tun.

3- If you really want to save time. Maybe think about moving back to extract. Its really not that much more expensive than all grain if you buy in bulk. Get a 50# bag of Extra Light DME. It tastes clean and you use it in everything. I did extract this way for 5+ years and surprised a lot of people when they heard it was extract. Quality does not have to suffer. Extract works very well for most beers and using dry extract there is no extract "twang" that everyone is terrified of.

Couple comments-

1. Do you fly sparge and boil 90+ minutes? That's a long brew day. Really long. Ouch.

2. Using various partigyle techniques and a couple mashes, you can get in more than just 1 batch from a 10+ gallon brew. I've done such things as have an extra BIAB going in a 5 gallon bucket and dumping it in after drawing off the first 5 gallons, or partigyle, or draining 5 gallons and then adding different hops to the rest of it, using different yeast, or various combinations of these techniques. Last brew day was 4 different 5 gallon batches in around 5 hours, and I did not preheat the water. Rye saison, sour ale, blonde ale, and schwarzbier. I used a few 5 gallon buckets, one keggle, and a 48 qt MLT.

[therethere]

My process is pretty streamlined so I'm not sure how it qualifies as "really long". 2pm is the usual end when I'm brewing leisurely which is most of the time. On a good day with everything smooth I'm looking at finishing at 1pm at the earliest.

730 - Make coffee. Heat water to exact temp (preheats to around 160 with bucket heater). Pull out rest of brew equip.
8AM - Mash in (grains done the night before)
9AM - Mash out takes about 20 min to drain.
9:30 - batch sparge  (takes 20 min to circ and drain)
10AM - Water is up to boiling.
11AM - End of Boil. Start Whirlpool for 15-20.
11:20 - Start Cooling.
12 - Transfer to buckets. Pitch yeast.
Cleanup is another 45 minutes or so. So finish around 1245/1pm. This is for 10 gallons.

What am I doing that is out of the ordinary? Yes, there's a little buffer room in the sparge times but other than that its pretty straightforward.

I have not investigated partigyle techniques. Sounds interesting though! I may need to look into that as my supply is low and I rarely brew in the winter.

[skunkfunk]

Two hours from start of mash to start of boil seems like a long time. Is your burner pretty strong? I BIAB though (in a cooler) so I may have a somewhat warped perspective. Draining mash and then batch sparging does not take me very long.

[BudgetSlasher]

I am going to echo what has already been said, switch to kegs; I bottled once, the people I started brewing with had just started with kegs and when I saw the 15 minutes needs to rinse the kegs with sanitizer and then simply place the hose in the keg and let the beer flow . . . well it sure beat the starting and stopping, capping, and spilling of bottling. I just got all 4 taps up and running.

A second tip I would give you is if you get into kegs, have more kegs. I was "forced" to brew more often when I only had 1-2 kegs online (plus the downtime is a annoying as you wait for carbonation), but with 4 kegs it stretches out the time between pulses of brewing. It also allows me to have my beer, a beer for the wife, and a couple general beers on tap. Heck if you can get 4 kegs filled and 4 beers in fermenters it will be some time before you have to brew again.

A third idea, if your setup allow and you have a beer you like, up your batch size, it will take longer to heat up and it will lengthen the day, but a 10 or 15 gallon batch instead of a 5 gallon batch will increase time between brews.

Fourth, equipment, equipment, equipment, I started off brewing using a cheap turkey fryer that I had inherited, I moved to a blichmann 72,000 BTU burner, and then one cold (-25f) brew day I vowed to go all electric and inside. I now have a dedicated brewery in the basement with exhaust hood and a brew kettle with a 5500 watt immersion element (exhaust hood pretty much required).

A little tip, with practice comes the ability to do other things. I will set a timer on my cell phone and go off and read a book, watch a TV show, drink a beer, play a game of pool, or attack another project, checking back occasionally, and acting when needed to add hops, transfer vessel, fight the break.

Finally, it sounds like you are doing this, but I will clean/prep in the days leading up to the brew and I will leave clean up until the following day, allowing the grains to cool allows for a a better experience as I wrestle them into the composter. 

[hoping2retire35]

Thanks all. I guess I am trying to get my motivation up for doing the work to get back into it. Actually found another secondary, so now four, that I need to keg/bottle. I have three kegs but I'll look into getting some more, wife wants me to do that too.

I might check into the 50# of dme price, that might be worth while. I got into the price point a little too much, even learned to make my own malt from raw grain and built a type of giant food dehydrator, pretty fun, just more work though.

Thanks for the encouragement, I'll clean up the beer stuff and stratigize about how to reapproach this, hopefully come up with some solutions.

What is everybody currently have in the fermenter? I have two saisons, one sour, and one American ale(yeast 1056) hoppy brown. Haven't tapped one of the kegs yet so I might put a bunch hops in a bag and let it set in ther this week for supper hoppy beer( it is either a saison or a sour)

[hoping2retire35]

dry hopped my newest keg 4 days ago, just placed in the fridge this morning so should be GTG tonight.

Ive been cleaning my beer hall the last two days too, barn and garage have been revamped so it was up next anyways. I had been in the habit of saving all my pop top bottles and that was turning into a horde situation so good to see all that needless, calling it like it is here, trash gone.

been doing a slow dark roast/toast on the grill of 2# of barley for making stouts. Never been able to do this well, always has a burnt, coffee, tobacco,leather taste/aroma, so hopefully going slow and patient i can finally get creamy chocolaty flavor. Still a medium brown for now though. might make some more crystal malt since my last batch didn't turn out too well (not getting a sweet enough fkavor.

baby up, time for life.

[Kaplin261]

I've done a few things to make the hobby easier. Before I had a kid, I did it in the kitchen and bottled everything, 5 gallons at a time. Now, I just can't spend the time.

First thing - kegs. Get a few kegs, screw bottling. It's expensive and un-mustachian. Whatever. Bottling sucks.

The other thing I did was bigger batches. Now, for the same investment in time, I can get 2-4 completely different 5 gallon batches fermenting. Just an advantage of piecing together a big system.

How is bottling more expensive? The bottles are free, I can keep 3 bottles refrigerated for on demand consumption. A keg is not free, a dedicated cooler, co2 tank, tap tower.

I brew 1 gallon batches in my kitchen. I can cook dinner at the same time so the time sink is not as bad. I get 9 bottles for each brew, I brew once a month and to diversify I supplement my consumption with a local brew six pack. I sometimes buy a gallon of apple cider and do the lazy brew MMM mentioned.

[hoping2retire35]

I've done a few things to make the hobby easier. Before I had a kid, I did it in the kitchen and bottled everything, 5 gallons at a time. Now, I just can't spend the time.

First thing - kegs. Get a few kegs, screw bottling. It's expensive and un-mustachian. Whatever. Bottling sucks.

The other thing I did was bigger batches. Now, for the same investment in time, I can get 2-4 completely different 5 gallon batches fermenting. Just an advantage of piecing together a big system.

How is bottling more expensive? The bottles are free, I can keep 3 bottles refrigerated for on demand consumption. A keg is not free, a dedicated cooler, co2 tank, tap tower.

I brew 1 gallon batches in my kitchen. I can cook dinner at the same time so the time sink is not as bad. I get 9 bottles for each brew, I brew once a month and to diversify I supplement my consumption with a local brew six pack. I sometimes buy a gallon of apple cider and do the lazy brew MMM mentioned.

I guess CO2 would eventually become cheaper than primer but I am sure that takes decades of a lot of home brewing due to the upfront equipment costs. I guess he just meant that bottling is time consuming and annoying. I kinda have started to enjoy it again though. Just found three czech pils dark wheats I had made about two years ago, really good. So there is a plus side to bottled beer when it comes to aging, which is another reason I like it for lagers.

[skunkfunk]

I've done a few things to make the hobby easier. Before I had a kid, I did it in the kitchen and bottled everything, 5 gallons at a time. Now, I just can't spend the time.

First thing - kegs. Get a few kegs, screw bottling. It's expensive and un-mustachian. Whatever. Bottling sucks.

The other thing I did was bigger batches. Now, for the same investment in time, I can get 2-4 completely different 5 gallon batches fermenting. Just an advantage of piecing together a big system.

How is bottling more expensive? The bottles are free, I can keep 3 bottles refrigerated for on demand consumption. A keg is not free, a dedicated cooler, co2 tank, tap tower.

I brew 1 gallon batches in my kitchen. I can cook dinner at the same time so the time sink is not as bad. I get 9 bottles for each brew, I brew once a month and to diversify I supplement my consumption with a local brew six pack. I sometimes buy a gallon of apple cider and do the lazy brew MMM mentioned.

I was unclear. Kegging is expensive and un-mustachian. Bottling is indeed much cheaper in my opinion, but I hate it enough to bite the bullet and get a kegging setup.