Making Beer More Easily?

What are your tips, techniques, gadgets, whatever, that you have used that made your brew sessions more efficient in terms of time (without sacrificing quality), or just easier to complete. I was reading a thread about someone who was brewing several batches in one day, and thought to myself, they obviously know something I don’t. :wink:

Anyway, thought it might be a good discussion topic. :cheers:

Besides the obvious, like setting up ahead of time, here are some things that make my brew day easier.

  • Use a bucket heater and timer to have strike water ready.
  • Keep a small bowl in the freezer for quickly chilling wort for pH and gravity readings.
  • Partigyle as an easy way to do multiple batches in one brew day.

Just bought a 50’ half inch copper immersion chiller - I hope that shortens the most boring part of my brew day when chilling and waiting to pitch the workers. Now I can use my first IC as a pre-chiller, too!

+1 to shadetree’s suggestions, too - a bucket heater works great on a timer for me!

Mostly having everything in order such that no step that can extend the brew is delayed. Therminator cut down some serious time since is cools so fast.

Getting everything ready ahead of time makes it a smooth day.

Post fermentation, I would say kegging makes life so much easier. If you still bottle, use the dishwasher while filling the bottles. You can store all the sanitized bottles on the racks and just fill on the door. That way if you spill, you don’t have to worry about clean up. Just close the door and you are done!

Other thing is doing 2 all grain batches in a row is quite a bit quicker than 2x the time of one batch. Once you get the first batch in to the boil kettle you can come right in behind by getting the second beer’s mash going during the boil. If you time it well you can be filling the boil kettle again right after you get the first batch in the fermenter.

Organization and simply brewing on a regular basis is probably the single best thing you can do - the more familiar you are with your system and routine, the faster you are, and the better you can anticipate steps/

*Chiller is a MUST for a fast day.
*Having everything set up the night before - grain crushed, pots assembled and in the right area. Water ready to go, water additions figured out and ready to go.
*Get water heating early - right when you wake up if you plan on brewing first thing.
*Multiple burners.
*My system allows me to start a second mash while I am boiling the first beer. As soon as I cool my first wort, get it in the fermenter and clean my boil kettle I am ready to sparge my second beer and start on boil#2.
*Take advantage of down time to clean up. During the last boil, I am cleaning out my Sparge water kettle and mash tun. During chilling, I am cleaning up all the odds and ends and my brew room. By the time my wort is done chilling, and is transferred to fermenter, the only thing I have left to do is clean my chiller and boil kettle and I am done.

If I am super organized and have grain ready, water ready, etc. I can knock out two 6.5 gallon all grain batches in under 6 hours - including cleanup.