I’m new to the game and I want to work on the timing of my brew days so I can brew frequently without pissing anyone in the family off.
PBW heavy cleaning happens at the end of brew day and the equipment stays in my cellar furnace room (dry air) until the next brew day. Another soft-clean is needed the day of OR the day before brew day, right? This is my current practice. Is soap and warm water okay BEFORE I sanitize with StarSan on brew day? If I just use hot tap water to make my StarSan sanitizer, how long is it effective if I keep it in an old Northern brewer brew kit 5 gallon plastic fermentor? Will it make it until racking day 2 weeks later?
I might have jumped into the All Grain brewing a little too soon, but oh well. Can an All Grain total brew time be done in 3.5 hrs if I’m Batch Sparging? Sorry for all the questions. I’m trying to brew more often because I have not done so well in my first few batches.
I’ve been able to turn out a brew in just under 5 hours, and that’s including cleaning and everything back where it belongs. Although, I don’t try to rush the process if I don’t have to.
I clean my fermenter the day I need it but I will give it a good rinse after transferring finished beer. I don’t save any sanitizer, I use it and dump it into the garden (it contains phosphorus)
I’m not too worried about the mash tun being dirty, but i make sure it isn’t too bad – it’ll all get boiled. I do take time to clean the boil kettle, it can get pretty dirty.
Be careful with the plastic fermenters. Those are in the beginner kits because they’re cheap, and you can use the bucket for something else if you end up quitting the hobby. You should look into a glass carboy or a stainless steel brew bucket. I’ve got a brew bucket, I think they’re the best.
Wishful thinking with the 3.5 hrs. Is 5 hours the safe and average for most ? It took me that long the last time and I messed up the sparge. How much starsan do you make for an all grain brew day ?
5 hours from start to finish is pretty typical for me, brewing all-grain with an all-in-one system.
The amount of StarSan will vary depending on your setup. I usually make about 2.5 gallons, which is more than sufficient to completely coat the inside of the fermenter after I invert it and shake it, and also be on hand to sanitize anything else that needs it. I do alternate with iodophor on some batches, to knock back any resistant bugs.
I don’t save mixed StarSan after my brew-day, because it goes bad pretty quickly with my mineral-rich tap water. I do keep a spray bottle in which I mix StarSan with distilled water, and that will keep for much longer (weeks or months).
You can reduce your brew-day time through several strategies, such as staging things the night before, or doing an occasional extract batch, or going with a shorter mash or boil. I will sometimes do a 30-minute mash and 30 minute boil, and with a little adjustment to the recipes it works just fine for most recipes with most malts nowadays.
I clean my brewing equipment right after he brew day and do not clean again before brewing. PBW or Craft Meister are good cleaning agents (I personally use caustic since I can get it from a local brewery and because that is what we used when i worked at a brewery, just beware it is sodium hydroxide, a.k.a. lye, and is a bit more dangerous to work with). During the brew day I clean and sanitize my conical fermenter, plate chiller, and pump so they are ready to go when the boil is completed (like homebrew_kev does). The whole brew day takes me about 5-5.5 hours from start to finish. When the beer is finished and keegged, I rinse out my fermenter with hot water
With regard to storing sanitizer, if you use RO or distilled water the sanitizer will last a bit longer than using tap water. I use Saniclean, the non-foaming version of Star San, and it lasts for several months with RO water. You can verify your sanitizer is good by measuring the pH. If it is below 3 you are good.
I would steer away from using glass carboys for your fermenters since they can shatter and cause severe injury. If you ultimately use one be sure to get a milk crate to put them in and pick them up when full as the glass neck is not made to support approximately 40 lbs. of weight. DO NOT PRESSURIZE GLASS CARBOYS! This is a recipe for disaster. A plastic brewing bucket or Better Bottles are better choices but can be scratched with cleaning brushes or scrubbing pads. Use a soft cloth or swirl the cleaner in the Better Bottle to avoid scratching the plastic.
I use a Grainfather G40, which has a impact on my brewing time. I set up the day before brewing…weigh and crush grain, measure and treat water, sanitize fermenter. Of course, those all take time, but it means on brewday itself I only need 2.75-3.5 hours for a 6 gal. batch. Also, in Simple Homebrewing, I present a procedure that let’s you do a 3 gal stovetop AG batch in about 2 hours.
I have so little equipment that cleaning is almost therapeutic.
2.5 gallon BIAB setup.
After brew day, I have a pot, a lid, a hose and an auto-siphon to clean. 10 minutes tops, and that’s only if Liverpool is on TV. Typical brew day is about 4-1/2 hours. I could easily cut another :30 minutes off, but I’m never really in a hurry.
After packaging, the fermenter gets broken down and hand washed. I’ll then give the fermenter, hose(s) and miscellaneous valves a bonus soak with ABW. All rinsed the next day and packed away until the next time.
All in all, not a lot of time invested in cleaning.
I mix my Star-San with my house well water and use it for a few months. Never check the pH. I’ll dump it when it feels right. I usually get 3 beers minimum from a batch.
In addition to Simple Home Brewing (which I enjoyed and still reference periodically), I found these two HomeBrew Con presentations (2017, 2018) to be helpful.
back in the original post
Switching from “extract” to all-grain will likely not fix the problems you have had with your first few batches.
Took me longer than 5 hrs yesterday, but that’s because I didn’t get the Batch Sparge temp hot enough originally and had to boil more h20…TWICE… Is there a general rule of thumb for batch sparge volume? Batch water temp. (175 +) seems simple enough - I just missed under which is NOT what you want to do.
Better to miss the strike temp under than way over. You essentially performed a step mash.
I find that having an AIO that can be programmed is a great time saver on brew day. It probably takes me 30-40 minutes to crush grain, set up the AIO and fill with water the night before then program to be at strike temp when I wake up. I also save a little time later on because I have a deep well with cold water all year for chilling wort. My brew day now is about 3 to 3.25 hours plus the set up the night before.
I nailed the strike temp using online calculators and my PH was right on as well at 5.2. Iodine test showed brown at the end of the rest and I was off to a great start. But, I feel like when I added EXTRA batch sparge water it through it all off. I took a temp of my mash after adding my first Batch sparge and it only got to 164. I added more water TWICE to get it to above 168 long enough to rinse, but the second runnings had an OG of 1.010 on hydrometer (1.020ish on the refractometer). My post boil OG was .07 below where the recipe wanted it (1.047)
The ROT is to measure how much wort you get from the mash, then sparge with enough to get your boil volume. There’s no grain absorption during the sparge, so what goes in is what comes out.
3.1 gallons of strike water to 8.7 lbs of 2row at 162 got me to 151 mash recipe temp. One thing I forgot to write down was volume I got from my first runnings. I have the blichmann with the external sight glass and it was below 3 obviously with grain retention.
1.43 quarts/lb., which is what you have, isn’t a bad ratio. I shoot for 1.5 for my brew system, but YMMV. As long as your pre-boil kettle gravity is good, you will be fine. A little less wort if your OG is OK won’t hurt.
