Time-saving homebrewing tips
We’ve been brewing for over 2 years now. And we’ve been brewing on Monday nights, when time is limited. It used to take us 6.5-7 hours to brew a 10 gallon all-grain batch, including cleanup, kegging/bottling and any transferring. Now we can do the same amount of work in 4.5-5 hours. And that includes moving from a 1 hour boil to a 1.5 hour boil, so in essence we’re down to 4-4.5 hours. What has changed? Why are we more efficient now?
Below are some tips on a shorter brew day that we’ve learned the hard way. Chances are you’re already doing some or all of these. But if you’re looking to shave a little bit of time off of your brewing schedule, take a look. If you have any additional time-saving techniques, we’d love to hear them!
For those of you looking for the short version, see #4 and #6 for our 2 greatest time-saving techniques.
1) Think ahead and have ample supplies on hand
Let’s start with the basics. There are certain things we’re always running out of, so we’re sure to keep stocked up on them to avoid making unnecessary trips to the store during brewing. On the list of “don’t forgets” for us: propane, oxygen (see #8 below), teflon tape and clove cigarettes (though some would list these as a “nice to have,” we would argue that they are a necessity). Your list is likely different.
2) Brew with friends
Yes, it’s true. Brewing with friends is more fun than brewing alone. But it also enables you to tackle things simultaneously and usually you’ve got someone free for cleaning up as you go along. Crucial. We’ve gotten to the point where we “deputize” some of the die-hards to give us greater multitasking flexibility.
3) Mill grains beforehand
To be honest, we rarely mill our grains early. But when we do, it’s always worth it. Getting the mash started is always the first priority when brewing, so it’s nice to have the grains ready to go.
4) Use hot water (from tub) for mash and sparge water
Starting with hot water (instead of cold hose water) was the single biggest “duh” for us when saving time. Heating water is one of the most time-consuming parts of brewing. And while having a powerful burner helps, starting with 140 degree water instead of 60 degree water helps even more. We tote piping hot water from Jeff’s luxurious jacuzzi tub for the mash and the sparge. Added benefit: saves on propane costs.
5) Run sparge full open
Opening up the sparge to capacity is a recent addition to this list. Before we were constrained by the speed (or slowness) of our sparge arm. But we upgraded our sparge arm for $15 and started opening up the wort as much as we could. And before you ask, no, it didn’t negatively affect our starting gravity. At all.
6) Sparge onto a burner
This is probably the 2nd greatest time saver we’ve adopted. We sparge directly into our brewpot, which is already resting on the propane burner. When it’s about 40% full, we turn the burner on. We found that this allows us to get to volume we need while slowly heating it to near-boil. So when we’re done sparging, we’re already at 200 degrees and only need to wait 5 or so minutes to start the boil. BAM.
7) Use multiple cooling techniques
Cooling wort can take forever. We used to use a high-tech plate chiller, which was incredibly speedy. Unfortunately, we couldn’t live with the fact that we wouldn’t see where the wort was actually going. We boiled that thing twice each night and still couldn’t get it clean enough. One we stopped using it, we also stopped having sanitation problems. So now we use a simple copper wort chiller + an ice bath. The combo works very nicely. We immediately take the brewpot off the burner and move it into a big basin filled with the runoff from the chilling. When the temperature hits 100 degrees, we add ice (and salt, for an added kick) to take it down to 80. Giving the wort a stir every few minutes helps too. I’ve seen fancier cooling techniques using pumps and coolers. And who knows, maybe we’ll get there. But the time spent cooling also gives us the opportunity to clean up and prepare the conical fermenter to receive her bounty.
8) Use oxygen to aerate wort
Shaking carboys for 10 minutes after adding the yeast isn’t the most time-consuming thing in the world, but it’s still much faster to aerate with oxygen for 30 seconds. Plus, it’s almost impossible to shake a big conical fermenter.
9) Clean up as you go
Even with all of the time savers, there’s still time to clean up as you brew. So get the least fun part of brewing over with as quickly as you can.
Any other time-savers? Leave them as comments!
While I realize that many of your posts have a bit of sarcasm in them, please tell me that no one swims/bathes in the jacuzzi before you use it for mash/sparge water…
Sean, don’t ask, don’t tell. Actually, we take the hot water straight from the faucet. No need to fill up the tub.
Heating and cooling have to be the biggest time sinks. Brewing in Pennsylvania during the winter is a bonus ’cause the tap water is much colder and makes that immersion chiller more effective.
I’ve thought about adding a cooler of ice and second immersion chiller before the immersion chiller in the wort. That would help in the summer. You know chill the water before it gets to the chiller.
I’d be interested to see how well the ice vat works when July rolls around.
I’m thinking the cooling process will then take longer and require more ice (and salt)
Using hot water is a definite help — and one thing we don’t typically do. Of course, I usually try to make sure my brother-in-law is setting things up and heating the mash water while I’m driving to his place… It saves ME time, at least :-)
For chilling, we use a counterflow chiller. We pump boiling wort through the chiller (recirculating into the kettle) for 5+ minutes during the end of the boil to ensure the chiller is sterilized. After the boil, we continue recirculating the wort while using hose water in the outside of the chiller, until the temp in the kettle is down to 100-110 deg F. After that, we pump the wort through the chiller while pumping ICE WATER the opposite direction in the CFC, and can get down to < 60 deg F quickly if desired.
One thing we don’t do is sparge full open. Of course, we use a pump, not gravity, so full open wouldn’t be a good idea.
For aeration, when we pump the wort from the kettle to the fermenter I don’t put the outlet of the tube into the bottom of the fermenter. I let it aerate as it is being pumped. This works fine for normal-gravity beers, but I think I’m going to have to get an O2 system for the high-grav stuff.
Something that I haven’t done but fully plan on trying is:
1: Performing a shorter mash. Apparently most conversion is done between 7-20 min into the mash. I plan on slowly dropping the mash time on a beer I know well and see where my personal cut off is. Rumor has it the only reason a mash is 60 min is so that the brewer can take a coffee/smoke break.
2: Batch Sparging. I know there’s some controversy but it seems like batch sparging is a much quicker way to sparge (the way I’ve heard it performed is throw in all your sparge water at once, stir it, then open the mash tun full bore).
I think you’ll lose a little bit of efficiency with each one but it’s a trade off you may want to make (and if you want to get that back double crush your grain).
Good luck!
Not sucking helps too, but you guys haven’t tried that one yet.