[quote=“MullerBrau”][quote=“bdaugherty”]get up early in the morning i love mashing in with a big cup of coffee and brewing before the rest of the house or neighborhood gets up. here in southern ohio the low overnight is like 75 so it will will probably be hot again before ten am.[/quote]That’s my standard operating procedure.[/quote] Yep, same here. That’s what I normally do too.
It’s going to hit about 100 here tomorrow, but I’m still brewing anyways.
I don’t get as much time off as I used to, so I take it when I can.
I’ll do my best to stay hydrated tomorrow. :cheers:
I do a lot of prep the night before. I put my correct water volumes in the mash tun ( I have a electric element in my mash tun) and add my salts then measure out my salts and get every thing ready for the brew session then go to bed. In the morning I just turn on the element set progam to heat to 152f then go in for coffee. after 20 min I go out and add my grain stir then back in the house for a hour. I never spend more than 15 min out side so I can brew all seasons in relative comfort, ya got to love electric brewing. 8)
Very true. I normally only drink during the last couple hours of the process, so I keep my wits. Last time I brewed, I started enjoying beverages earlier in the process and ended up getting sloppy.
The other thing that I find distracting is when my friends come by to “help out.”
I just follow a rule I heard on here although I dont remember who said it… No Beers until after the first hop addition. At least this way you are on the downhill side of brewing and just have to keep on eye on a timer. Plus if you clean up as you go it makes the cleaning up easier.
Well, I went with the late night brew last night. I did most of the prep work in the morning (set up the kettle, mill grain, etc.). Brewed just at the opening of my garage as usual. Fired up the strike water at 7PM and pitched at 2AM. Ambient temp was 98 when I started an 85 when I racked to primary.
All went well, except chilling. I’m done using the immersion chiller
that I bought with my first kit last year. Cooled 6.5 gal. down to 90 deg. in 30 minutes. It took 30 more minutes to get down to 82 deg. After 10 more minutes the wort was still at 82. Fed up and tired, I racked to primary and moved into the basement where it got down to ~75 in an hour. What a PITA!
Since my late night brew session didn’t go quite as well as I had hoped, I went ahead and tried a morning brew session to beat the heat. Mashed in at 8:40. Wort was in the carboy by 1PM. Still have to wait until tonight to pitch the yeast, since I was only able to chill to 84 degrees given the high ground water temp.
One boneheaded mistake: I forgot to tare my scale and ended up adding 13 oz of crystal. I’m pretty pissed about that. Otherwise, I hit all of my targets on the money.
Small batch FTW!