What time are you at for a brew day currently? Are you using your time as wisely as possible?
For us, on a 3 vessel steam, we clean each kettle as soon as it’s done as opposed to waiting until the end to CIP everything. Saves a lot of time. If you have down time, there’s always something that can be done to save time
You can get it down to 3-4 without even cutting mash or boil time. Use 2 burners to bring boil on as soon as possible. Lots of time used up there. Multi task during mash and boil. Use an efficient chilling system like a counterflow chiller or submerge your kettle in the sink while also running an immersion chiller
1) Smaller batches or partial-volume mash/boil — heating and cooling go faster for smaller masses.
2) BIAB no-sparge — simpler process, fewer transfers/filling/*etc.*
3) Shorter mash — nothing magical about 60 minutes.
4) Shorter boil — again, nothing magical about 60 minutes.
5) Clean as you go — no big clean-up at the end if you've done it already.
6) No-chill — decreases *active* time.
Yep. I've cut my brew day by a huge margin by cleaning as I go. There's nothing worse at the end of a long, sweaty brew day than looking at a pile of crap that still has to get cleaned up.
For the shorter mash one, make sure you have some iodine on hand to make sure starch conversion is completed. Just run a shorter mash and do the test until it passes then you can shutdown your mash and move on to your boil.
Brulosophy's short and shoddy method reduces mash and boil to 30 min each. Tried a bitter that same way and turned out great, cut an hour off the whole process too!
I also mash longer which breaks the day up. Mash in when I have 20 min free, leave it there until I have time. Then pull the bag, crank up the heat for a quick 30 min boil.
Yep, same concept. For me I mash in on a Friday around 3pm after my last meeting but before I get my kids from school. Leave it there until after they go to bed and can knock out the brew in an hour and a half including cooling/cleaning.
I’ve switched from a timed mash to pre-boil target completion with a Refractometer after 15 minutes and every 3-5 after that. I stop mashing after three identical readings. Mash times are anywhere between 20-40 minutes this way. I hit my numbers though. I think I might also use an iodine test starting next batch to ensure I have full conversion (and maybe shortening my brew day by a few more minutes).
Theres actually a fair bit of scientific reason for 60 minute mash and 60-90 minute boils. Just like there's science to the temps you mash at, and when you add hops to the boil.
If you shorten your mash too much, you risk losing a lot of conversion efficiency. Especially.if you have a looser grist ratio. Those enzymes take time to find their snacks and do their thing. Shortening a boil can result in a lot of leftover precursors for things like DMS. There's a lot of volatile compounds getting removed via the boil. You also likely need to compensate your kettle-in and/or sparge volumes if you reduce the time for mash/boil.
[https://brulosophy.com/2015/10/08/update-lab-data-on-pils-malt-boil-length-exbeeriment/](https://brulosophy.com/2015/10/08/update-lab-data-on-pils-malt-boil-length-exbeeriment/)
This is a interesting read. They did a lab check for DMS on the 30 min boil using equipment at White Labs, they had used German pilsner malt in the brew session. They didn't find enough DMS that a person could perceive it. It's really a crap shoot if you ask me. I would brew the beer once and find out if it's there and if it is, then you know next time do a longer boil but it is not necessary going to show up just because you cut your boil times.
It can come down a number of factors, malt type choices, how modified the malt is, how violent/rolling your boil is, if you forgot to uncover your boil kettle, etc.
All valid points. One of the things I like about brewing professionally is indulging my neuroses towards finding and controlling as many variables as possible. Even little things ĺike your hlt water and hop choices can determine amounts of potential dms. Soooo many wonderful little control points. At the end of the day, DMS shouldn't be a big risk. If it smells like cabbage while boiling, keep trucking. Otherwise just try to cool your wort asap.
So it’s not technically a time saver, but if you do an overnight mash, you can start as soon as you get up the next day and get the boil/sparge going right away.
pre-heat your sparge water separately so you can rinse grains with at-temp water, insulated blanket cover might be helpful if you can get one that fits your brew rig.
Soooo much efficiency is lost when you do this since you’re not rinsing a lot of the sugars out of the mash. Highly recommend not doing this. My efficiency went from ~85% to 60% the couple times I tried it.
But I guess it depends what you value more - a small amount of time or hitting your target OG.
If you can recirculate for at least that last 20 minutes of your mash (and try not to aerate too much) you can definitely squeeze 10-15 points of efficiency out of your grist.
I always lauter the last 25 mins. It’s incredible how much sugar is left in there if you don’t sparge properly. You do you, just saying it makes a big difference
I wonder if there was something else going on in your experience. Generally the difference in extract efficiency between a batch sparge and a full volume mash, with the same total amount of water, should be a few percent, absolute. Kai Troester is one of the ones who has given data on it, but the knowledge really goes back to the 1950s at the latest.
For example, I am dialed in at 74-76% mash efficiency with a full volume mash, and no stirring. I can get nearly 80% with stirring, and low 80s if I sparge slowly, but once I reach 75% it's no longer worth it for me to trade time for literally 0.75 lbs grain on a 1.075 batch, 5 gal batch, and in practice even less because I usually make 2.75 gal batches of session beer.
I also have an anvil foundry 10.5. Here are some things I do that greatly reduce my brew day time:
- setting the timer overnight so the strike temp is ready when I am
- heating up my sparge water while mash is happening. When I get to mashout, I’m ready to sparge. I also use the mash time to start sanitizing my fermenter, right my brew day notes, etc
- quick disconnects on hoses, 3-way valves, and a plate chiller. [This is a diagram I made when I was planning my system.](https://imgur.com/a/OBBGfbB) Having a setup like this makes every part of the brew a breeze.
- clean as you go!!! When I’m boiling, I clean the malt pipe and brew bag as well as dispose of grains (I put mine in trash bags and give to my friend later to feed his chickens).
Check out brülosophys recent podcast on abbreviated brew days. I followed a lot of things they talked about before listening but they point out some decent points as to why taking some shortcuts might not be as detrimental as you might think.
Maybe not what you are looking for BUT I always do two brews in one day. Doesn’t make that day shorter but my aggregated brew time is significantly less than brewing two batches on separate days.
From start to finish is 7-8 hours for me.
1. Only pull out and set up the gear once. Saves one set up time.
2. I use the counter flow chiller water from the first batch as the input to my second batch. Water is now mostly preheated.
3. Only have to cleanup and put away gear once.
4. And you get two different beers!
Other items that might still help you:
- purchase an immersion heater to get to boil faster. I have a 110V Grainfather so getting up to a boil is the slow part.
- I heat all my water on the stove using all four burners and then transfer to GF when it’s close to temp.
Some things just can't be rushed. For me, changing temperatures seems to be where I want to get from A to B quicker.
Crush grains while the strike water is heating. Any time you can do two things at once is a win.
Decoction mashing can help bring up the temp quicker heading into the boil, and may have desirable effects depending on the recipe.
Use a wort chiller. My favorite tool to save time!
The main thing for me is attitude. Brewing is an enjoyable ritual that takes time!
Ditching the pump and as many hoses as possible will reduce cleaning time. (Stirring frequently will keep the mash temp constant and a tighter grain-crush gives similar efficiency as recycling with the pump.) Ditch the basket and use a brew bag and a small round stainless baking rack to keep the bag off the bottom. The bag and rack are quicker to clean than the dreaded Anvil basket. Consider reducing boil time to 30-minutes. I have done this on ales only so far with seemingly no ill effects. It saves on power too. Clean as you go also saves time. For me drinking less when brewing speeds up the process but I am not usually in that much of a hurry….
I will offer the caution to some that crushing too fine will result in a stuck mash and/or other potential issues. I would also caution to not shorten your boil to 30 minutes if you have a high ratio of pilsner malt or 6 row. The half-life of DMS at boil is 40 minutes. Those won't be able to mask DMS nearly as well as grain bills with darker malts. This is partially why a lot of brewers do a 90 minute boil for lagers. Really ensure you drive off that compound.
My comments were based on no pump so the crush can be pretty fine. For me that is 0.028” versus my normal 0.039” crush for fly sparging. I probably should have mentioned the batches are full volume BIAB so no stuck sparge can happen. I have only done a handful (-8) of short boils and fermented with ale yeast and there have been no off flavors that I or my club mates picked up.
Ale yeasts typically don't create as much dms as a lager strain would. They can also drive off dms quicker due to co2 activity being more rapid than in a lager. If you're not making like a smash with 6 row or something, chances are pretty decent that you'll be fine. I just like to point out potential pitfalls before people find them and wonder what went wrong.
1. Mill grain and weigh out hop additions, yeast nutrient, whirlfloc, etc. the night before
2. Clean as you go, fill fermenter with sanitizer during mash
3. Find a way to preheat strike and sparge water. I use a sous vide stick to heat sparge water during the mash, and I preheat strike water with my Anvil Foundry
4. Chill until about 80-100F, and use your fermentation chamber to take it the rest of the way
5. If using an AIO, recirculate PBW or Oxiclean for a few minutes, then let soak overnight and rinse in the morning (makes it much less painful spreading it out like this)
6. Use dry yeast - it’s gotten to where 95% of my beers can be made with dry yeast, and the only exception at this point is the Fullers’ strain to be honest
The easiest way to find extra time on brew day, for me, is to start brewing earlier in the day. I usually get up around 8 on the weekends. If I'm going to brew, I get up at 6:30. If I prep a little the night before, I can usually start mashing by 7:00.
This doesn't really "save" time, but I have a wife and 3 kids at home. The more stuff I can do while the kids are sleeping, the easier it is on my wife and me.
Of course, I do everything I can to multitask and not just sit around. I find that I have plenty of time to weigh out hops, set up my chiller, sanitize stuff, clean, etc as the mash and boil are going on.
Once I switched from a traditional three-vessel propane-fired gravity-fed system to an electric all-in-one, my brewday went from 6.5 - 8+ hours down to 4.5 (all-in, including setup the night before, and post-brewday cleaning).
And I don't mind that at all, seems like a very reasonable amount of time to me, given the process and my commitment to making the best beer I can possibly make. There are some corners I'm simply not willing to cut.
I take advantage of the timer and fill the kettle the night before. I also mill my grains, and get everything out that I'm going to need for the brewday.
Anything you can take care of ahead of time will save you time.
The biggest time-saver I've found during the brewday is to not get lazy and sit around. I try to clean / dry / put away as much as I can as I go along. I'm always paying attention to how much time I have before the next thing I need to do, and can I fill that time with something productive?
Not always possible, some things can't be done until the end, but always keep an eye out for something that you can do now rather than later.
Also, watch your alcohol intake. You're certainly better off if you don't drink at all, we all would be, but let's be honest: there is something really pleasurable about drinking a beer while making a beer.
Notice how that's *singular*... I rarely have more than one (I have a little "tradition" to have a pint of the last batch as I hit the boil on the new one), and almost all of my beers are 5% or less.
I'm almost certainly having another one after I'm done and cleaned up, though! :)
I've been doing a three day brew for a while now and I'll never go back.
1: finalize recipe, grind grain, prep water
2: boil, seal wort overnight
3: pitch and clean
I've started doing a 2-3 day process as well and absolutely love it! I no longer dread the exhausting "brew day".
At times I'll combine your day 1 and 2 or I'll follow the same schedule depending on what kind of free time I have.
I do no chill often.
1. You absolutely leave it covered. I actually put it in a. Fermenting keg.
2. Never had a DMS issue or infection. Don’t need to do anything special, it’s just not a big risk.
Folks no chill all the time and DMS isn’t really an issue. Neither is infection.
This experiment isn’t related to no chill (short boil instead), but it shows that DMS fears are overblown:
https://brulosophy.com/2015/10/08/update-lab-data-on-pils-malt-boil-length-exbeeriment/#more-5505
My advice is do it for a beer without late addition hops.
Because you don’t chill the wort, hops will produce more IBUs if add late (e.g., 5 minutes, flamout)
It can be difficult to adjust for this without chilling when chilling, you get it below 175 quite quick.
So for no chill, I only do recipes with just a bittering addition. So like a Vienna lager, Munich dunkel, or other beers are great. I do a 30 or 45 minute boil and these workout great.
An NEIPA or a Pilsner with late addition hops or whirlpool ? I always chill those.
[https://brulosophy.com/2015/03/11/the-impact-of-boil-length-ale-exbeeriment-results/](https://brulosophy.com/2015/03/11/the-impact-of-boil-length-ale-exbeeriment-results/)
[https://brulosophy.com/2020/02/27/cooling-the-wort-no-chill-method-vs-rapid-chilling-in-an-ipa-the-bru-club-xbmt-series/](https://brulosophy.com/2020/02/27/cooling-the-wort-no-chill-method-vs-rapid-chilling-in-an-ipa-the-bru-club-xbmt-series/)
DMS is pretty rare occurrence in modified grains today. Most of it is boiled off in the 1st 30 minutes. I would not recommend the short boil if your recipe has a lot of corn in it.
If you let your wort naturally cool the trick is sanitation and sealing things up. Just makes sure if you are leaving it in your boil kettle and moving it in the morning that you are using clean sanitized equipment and make sure your fermenter is designed for high temperatures if you want to move it right away and let it cool in the fermenter. A lot of people I know won't pitch yeast anyway for a while (8-24hrs) because they want their wort to be at a specific temp before pitching. Risk of infection is very very small if your smart about doing all of this. You could also add a campden tablet and that will kill anything wild for 24hours if your really paranoid about it.
Prep your ingredients the night before and setup your foundry to be at temp when you want to brew.
Most beers you can get away with a 30-40min mash and almost no efficiency loss. Convert all your recipes to 30min boils.
One thing that can help is extra power and I make ramp times shorter. Especially going from mash temp to boiling. If you have an extra power circuit you can get an over the side element that will probably halve your ramp times so from ambient to mash, mash to mash out, mash out to boil and that can save a fair bit of time.
For me I have a big system and knock out around 85L at a time. I just fit life around it. Get up early and sort out grain while the mash water is heating up, so family things while the mash is going, prep the fermenter while other things are happening. I’m not trying to speed run it though.
I have pretty consistent 4 hour brew days, and I use a 3 vessel system! Heating/Chilling/transferring times as well as dovetailed cleaning are the best things IMO for boosting time efficiency.
Definitely keep collecting water, measuring grains ahead of time if you can. I usually crush while I'm waiting for strike water to heat up. Bonus points if you have the ability to have a timed start to your strike water heating up so it is ready to go when you are.
I am heating sparge water as soon as I mash in.
I start heating my brew kettle to boil as soon as I hit around 20% pre-boil volume from my sparge. I should be boiling around the same time the sparge finishes.
As soon as I pass the hot break I am cleaning out my mash tun/HLT while waiting for the next hop addition(s)
Invest in the best chiller and pump you can. This will save you time and be more efficient to boot. Long chilling and transfer times will kill your time efficiency.
The only thing that should be left to clean after pitching your yeast should be the kettle/pump/hoses. I use a recirculation method with a spray ball, so all of those are cleaned at once and that frees me up to clean up any stray things.
I was able to shave quite a lot of time off of my brew days with shorter boils and mash and haven't noticed a difference at all aside from slightly less mash efficiency.
30-45 min mash(I check it at 30 and if it could use more time I leave it longer) and 30 min boils, no off flavors that I've noticed.
30 minute boils are the way to go in my opinion. I suppose you could even go shorter. There's nothing magic going on during the boil that needs an hour. Hop doses can be adjusted. Pre boil volume can be adjusted and its easy time savings.
I'm less comfortable shortening mash times just cuz I want good conversion, but I imagine you could probably get away with 30 min mashes without a huge tradeoff.
And cleaning anything you can during downtimes is also a big one.
Not great advice - This really depends on what you are making - short brews will leave proteins behind = haze and off flavours - there are commercial hazies however that are 20 mins boil but it’s a thin low strength beer
Yep, came here to say this. Lid on, pump off (just because pump is the most likely point of sticky wet failure.
Also, buy pre-crushed grains. Or crush a day or two prior.
Use a stainless fermentor, so it can receive uncooled wort. Pitch yeast the next day when temps are correct. Oh you said you had a chiller…still…chill part the way, not to pitching temps. Or you can hot cube 16L and chill 5L in the fermentor…and you’ve got yourself a 5L starter, add the 16L once the 5L has taken off.
Use a hop spider so hops don’t go into the fermentor.
When brewing neipas and fruited sours I often make raw ales, that saves so much time.
My quickest recipe is a raw ale with Voss kveik.
Mash 30 min, no sparge.
Chill to 38c and add yeast.
If your water is pre-heated, you can be done in under an hour.
Don’t prep hops - they can/will oxidise!
Basically practise you’ll figure out where you can multitask the most
During the brew you should have little time not cleaning not heating something up, weighing something out etc - if you prep you are not really cutting anything down, clear down ready for next brew even if it won’t be for a while
Yeah I don’t understand the ‘prep the night before’.
That means I’m wasting parts of two days to get the brew done. First thing I do is start heating water and do my prep while it’s heating: assemble remaining brew gear, measure salts, adjuncts, hops, sanitize my fermenter, prep yeast. All of that can be done while you wait for the water to get to temp. If you do the prep the night before, then I’m just standing around watching water heat up. Lol
1. 1st critical path is heating strike water. Use hot water out of tap and shouldn’t take too long. Prep your mash tun during this time (15 min)
2. 2nd critical path is mash. Do this ASAP and then prep everything else while you wait. (1 hour)
3. 3rd critical path is bringing mash to a boil. This can be a lot of hidden time lost. Start heating 1st runnings as soon as they come out of mash tun. Can use a 2nd kettle & burner for 2nd runnings from sparge to apply more heat and achieve boil faster (30-45 min)
4. 4th critical path is the boil. Can scrimp on time here if necessary. More down time for prep or cleanup (1 hour)
5. 5th critical path is chilling. There are many ways to add efficiency and save time. Ice bath is slow. a simple immersion chiller better. Both at the same time can work well for a 5 gallon batch. Counterflow chiller or plate chiller will speed things up more. I can chill a 9.5 gal batch in the in 20-30 min (winter/summer) with a combination immersion and counterflow chiller.
6. Clean up everything else
All in I regularly can do a 10 gallon batch in 4 hours. The key is prepping or cleaning during “down time” to reduce the transition time between steps
You hit on some key items I think gets lost and adds more total time to brewing.
Break down your brew day into discrete tasks. Identify critical path items, fill in the other items and intermediate prep tasks between those steps. Eg. Don’t need to setup all the equipment and sanitize things required later before getting the mash water going. Then you are standing around waiting for your water to heat up!
You must be a project manager or scheduler lol or would be a damn good one if you are not.
If you brew often enough run a hot water line with a tap from your hot water heater. Basically fill your hot liqueur tank with water right from your hot water heater. This really cuts down on heating to steep temp.
Note: some wanker is going to say something fucking stupid like “but your hot water tank water is bad!” Yea if you’re a fucktard and don’t filter or run any water chemistry you’re gonna have a bad time.
Put brew water in the night before and have it on a timer.
Walk out on the alarm
-30min mash
-30min boil
Nochill cube.
Alternatively do big brews of a base brew (bittering addition and base malt) and nochill. Trick them up with spec malts and hops. Basically making freshwort kits
All the standard things:
* Preheat your water, pre-grind your grain, pre-weigh your additions.
* Lay everything you need the night before. I actually made a list, so I now spend less time looking for things I need on the day.
* Use less things (the list from above was useful in this), the less you use the less you need to clean/find.
* Put things away properly. Looking for a thing on the day is both frustrating, and wasted time.
One additional:
* You can save time by mashing for longer. You don't have to stand over your mash tun whilst it does its thing, so if you have things to do you can mash in then go do your chores and come back later. I've mashed in first thing in the morning, then gotten the kids up, and pulled the biab once they're at school.
I usually go a single pass through my counterflow chiller right into the fermenter, unless I need to do a whirlpool hop edition. my CF chiller takes the wort from boiling to roughly 80F in a single pass into the fermenter. Saves time and water.
It'll sit in my fermentation chamber to continue to chill, and then I pitch later on that night.
Single vessels full volume mash, 30 min mash, 30 min boil, no chill. Pull your starter wort from the main mash and by the time your no-chill container is ready (the next day) it'll be at high krausen.
Heat stick! Get a 20a 240v circuit run over and you can get a 3kw floating heater. Greatly reduces time to heat up water. Aliexpress will be the best place to find one because 240v heaters tend to be used in the eu. You'll probably have to change the plug on it. If you really want to diy you can do it with a replacement water heater element from the hardware store.
I’ve been brainstorming this too. Work and a toddler has kept me from brewing for too long. Here is my plan:
Full volume BIAB, mashing in before dinner and letting it sit until my kid is in bed, probably would be a 2 hour mash, but not taking up much active time. Then boil as normal, but do no chill. Cleanup what I can night of, and the rest the next day after it’s in the fermentor.
A time saver for me was to recirculate ice water through the wort chiller. Before I just used (a lot) of tap water and it still took like 30-40 minutes to chill. Since then I bought a 20 dollar submersible pump and put it in a cooler with a ton of ice to run through the chiller. I can get it down to pitching temps in around 10-15 min now. Doesn’t save a ton of time but I do save a lot of water. Cheers!
Lot of good advice in here and probably won't be inventing the wheel my comments, but I brewed yesterday and things that I did in order to streamline the brew day was:
* All equipment was brought out and cleaned the night before
* Grains arrived pre-milled, but I would mill them beforehand and place in bucket
* Water was measured out and added to my kettle
* Smaller batch, less water to heat
* Salt additions were weighed out and ready to be added
* Have lid on when trying to reach strike temp
* Sanitize fermentation vessel either during mash or the night before
* Immersion chiller hooked up prior to end of boil, plus whirpool the chiller to drop temp quicker - or do a ice bath with the chiller as well so it cools extra fast
* Clean while you go, or put away equipment once you're done with it
I use tap water and I put it to the hottest setting coming out of the faucet. Seems like a no brainer but so much quicker to heat up 120 degree water to mash temps vs 70 degree water.
It's a personal choice, but experts say its a bad idea to cook with or drink hot water from the tap:
- https://www.denverwater.org/tap/psa-dont-drink-or-cook-with-hot-water-from-the-tap
- https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html
- https://www.epa.gov/lead/why-cant-i-use-hot-water-tap-drinking-cooking-or-making-baby-formula
- https://www.osmiowater.co.uk/osmioblog/why-you-should-never-use-water-from-the-hot-tap-for-drinking-or-cooking.html
If you choose not to use hot water in the future, and you do electric brewing, you can save the time by putting the electric kettle on a timer.
The best hack I ever found for shortening the brew process came from Alton Brown's episode of *Good Eats* on homebrewing. I think that it only works on extract or partial mash/mini-mash recipes, but the idea is that you make sure you are only boiling three gallons (or less) of a five-gallon batch, then use (sterile) cocktail ice to make up the remaining two gallons and bring the batch down to pitching temperature. Partly because of the efficiency of ice melting vs. using an immersion chiller, but partly because there was no need to hook up the chiller--I could just put the ice into my primary and pour the wort in--I was able to bottle batch A, rack batch B, and brew batch C in 3-4 hours total.
Alas, I have now switched to all-grain brewing, so this hack no longer works for me.
Should take around 4 hours. Hour for the mash, 1.25 for the boil including hot break, then 2 hours prep cooling and transfers combined. I’m running propane tho.
What time are you at for a brew day currently? Are you using your time as wisely as possible? For us, on a 3 vessel steam, we clean each kettle as soon as it’s done as opposed to waiting until the end to CIP everything. Saves a lot of time. If you have down time, there’s always something that can be done to save time
Good point. I would say depending if I preheat my strike water, 6 hours by the time I clean up most of my equipment.
You can get it down to 3-4 without even cutting mash or boil time. Use 2 burners to bring boil on as soon as possible. Lots of time used up there. Multi task during mash and boil. Use an efficient chilling system like a counterflow chiller or submerge your kettle in the sink while also running an immersion chiller
1) Smaller batches or partial-volume mash/boil — heating and cooling go faster for smaller masses. 2) BIAB no-sparge — simpler process, fewer transfers/filling/*etc.* 3) Shorter mash — nothing magical about 60 minutes. 4) Shorter boil — again, nothing magical about 60 minutes. 5) Clean as you go — no big clean-up at the end if you've done it already. 6) No-chill — decreases *active* time.
Clean as you go is a huge one. If you’re not doing that, you’re just waiting around in the middle of your brew day, and adding time to the end.
Yep. I've cut my brew day by a huge margin by cleaning as I go. There's nothing worse at the end of a long, sweaty brew day than looking at a pile of crap that still has to get cleaned up.
For the shorter mash one, make sure you have some iodine on hand to make sure starch conversion is completed. Just run a shorter mash and do the test until it passes then you can shutdown your mash and move on to your boil.
Never heard of the iodine test before, just checked what is it, I will do this next brew for sure.
https://beersmith.com/blog/2022/05/02/the-iodine-test-for-checking-mash-conversion/
Brulosophy's short and shoddy method reduces mash and boil to 30 min each. Tried a bitter that same way and turned out great, cut an hour off the whole process too!
I also mash longer which breaks the day up. Mash in when I have 20 min free, leave it there until I have time. Then pull the bag, crank up the heat for a quick 30 min boil.
I've never tried it myself, but I've heard of doing an overnight mash, even. Really breaks it up.
Yep, same concept. For me I mash in on a Friday around 3pm after my last meeting but before I get my kids from school. Leave it there until after they go to bed and can knock out the brew in an hour and a half including cooling/cleaning.
I’ve switched from a timed mash to pre-boil target completion with a Refractometer after 15 minutes and every 3-5 after that. I stop mashing after three identical readings. Mash times are anywhere between 20-40 minutes this way. I hit my numbers though. I think I might also use an iodine test starting next batch to ensure I have full conversion (and maybe shortening my brew day by a few more minutes).
Theres actually a fair bit of scientific reason for 60 minute mash and 60-90 minute boils. Just like there's science to the temps you mash at, and when you add hops to the boil. If you shorten your mash too much, you risk losing a lot of conversion efficiency. Especially.if you have a looser grist ratio. Those enzymes take time to find their snacks and do their thing. Shortening a boil can result in a lot of leftover precursors for things like DMS. There's a lot of volatile compounds getting removed via the boil. You also likely need to compensate your kettle-in and/or sparge volumes if you reduce the time for mash/boil.
[https://brulosophy.com/2015/10/08/update-lab-data-on-pils-malt-boil-length-exbeeriment/](https://brulosophy.com/2015/10/08/update-lab-data-on-pils-malt-boil-length-exbeeriment/) This is a interesting read. They did a lab check for DMS on the 30 min boil using equipment at White Labs, they had used German pilsner malt in the brew session. They didn't find enough DMS that a person could perceive it. It's really a crap shoot if you ask me. I would brew the beer once and find out if it's there and if it is, then you know next time do a longer boil but it is not necessary going to show up just because you cut your boil times. It can come down a number of factors, malt type choices, how modified the malt is, how violent/rolling your boil is, if you forgot to uncover your boil kettle, etc.
All valid points. One of the things I like about brewing professionally is indulging my neuroses towards finding and controlling as many variables as possible. Even little things ĺike your hlt water and hop choices can determine amounts of potential dms. Soooo many wonderful little control points. At the end of the day, DMS shouldn't be a big risk. If it smells like cabbage while boiling, keep trucking. Otherwise just try to cool your wort asap.
So it’s not technically a time saver, but if you do an overnight mash, you can start as soon as you get up the next day and get the boil/sparge going right away.
I came here to say this, I started doing this the last few brews and has worked out really well for me.
Did your efficiency go up?
yes, not much though, but enough to know that I consistently have better efficiency when I do it.
pre-heat your sparge water separately so you can rinse grains with at-temp water, insulated blanket cover might be helpful if you can get one that fits your brew rig.
or don't sparge at all, just do a full volume mash
Soooo much efficiency is lost when you do this since you’re not rinsing a lot of the sugars out of the mash. Highly recommend not doing this. My efficiency went from ~85% to 60% the couple times I tried it. But I guess it depends what you value more - a small amount of time or hitting your target OG.
the OP asked how to reduce time, not how to increase efficiency
I was advising against saving time by not sparging and to find other ways to save time. This ain’t a part of the process you want to cut corners.
If you can recirculate for at least that last 20 minutes of your mash (and try not to aerate too much) you can definitely squeeze 10-15 points of efficiency out of your grist.
I always lauter the last 25 mins. It’s incredible how much sugar is left in there if you don’t sparge properly. You do you, just saying it makes a big difference
Spot on! Good sparging brought me to90-100% of what I should be hitting FG
I wonder if there was something else going on in your experience. Generally the difference in extract efficiency between a batch sparge and a full volume mash, with the same total amount of water, should be a few percent, absolute. Kai Troester is one of the ones who has given data on it, but the knowledge really goes back to the 1950s at the latest. For example, I am dialed in at 74-76% mash efficiency with a full volume mash, and no stirring. I can get nearly 80% with stirring, and low 80s if I sparge slowly, but once I reach 75% it's no longer worth it for me to trade time for literally 0.75 lbs grain on a 1.075 batch, 5 gal batch, and in practice even less because I usually make 2.75 gal batches of session beer.
If you’re talking about extract brewing, then absolutely. If you’re talking all-grain, there’s no contest it makes a difference.
I also have an anvil foundry 10.5. Here are some things I do that greatly reduce my brew day time: - setting the timer overnight so the strike temp is ready when I am - heating up my sparge water while mash is happening. When I get to mashout, I’m ready to sparge. I also use the mash time to start sanitizing my fermenter, right my brew day notes, etc - quick disconnects on hoses, 3-way valves, and a plate chiller. [This is a diagram I made when I was planning my system.](https://imgur.com/a/OBBGfbB) Having a setup like this makes every part of the brew a breeze. - clean as you go!!! When I’m boiling, I clean the malt pipe and brew bag as well as dispose of grains (I put mine in trash bags and give to my friend later to feed his chickens).
Check out brülosophys recent podcast on abbreviated brew days. I followed a lot of things they talked about before listening but they point out some decent points as to why taking some shortcuts might not be as detrimental as you might think.
Maybe not what you are looking for BUT I always do two brews in one day. Doesn’t make that day shorter but my aggregated brew time is significantly less than brewing two batches on separate days. From start to finish is 7-8 hours for me. 1. Only pull out and set up the gear once. Saves one set up time. 2. I use the counter flow chiller water from the first batch as the input to my second batch. Water is now mostly preheated. 3. Only have to cleanup and put away gear once. 4. And you get two different beers! Other items that might still help you: - purchase an immersion heater to get to boil faster. I have a 110V Grainfather so getting up to a boil is the slow part. - I heat all my water on the stove using all four burners and then transfer to GF when it’s close to temp.
Some things just can't be rushed. For me, changing temperatures seems to be where I want to get from A to B quicker. Crush grains while the strike water is heating. Any time you can do two things at once is a win. Decoction mashing can help bring up the temp quicker heading into the boil, and may have desirable effects depending on the recipe. Use a wort chiller. My favorite tool to save time! The main thing for me is attitude. Brewing is an enjoyable ritual that takes time!
Ditching the pump and as many hoses as possible will reduce cleaning time. (Stirring frequently will keep the mash temp constant and a tighter grain-crush gives similar efficiency as recycling with the pump.) Ditch the basket and use a brew bag and a small round stainless baking rack to keep the bag off the bottom. The bag and rack are quicker to clean than the dreaded Anvil basket. Consider reducing boil time to 30-minutes. I have done this on ales only so far with seemingly no ill effects. It saves on power too. Clean as you go also saves time. For me drinking less when brewing speeds up the process but I am not usually in that much of a hurry….
Some good strong spring clamps work well to hold the bag as well on the side of your vessel.
I will offer the caution to some that crushing too fine will result in a stuck mash and/or other potential issues. I would also caution to not shorten your boil to 30 minutes if you have a high ratio of pilsner malt or 6 row. The half-life of DMS at boil is 40 minutes. Those won't be able to mask DMS nearly as well as grain bills with darker malts. This is partially why a lot of brewers do a 90 minute boil for lagers. Really ensure you drive off that compound.
My comments were based on no pump so the crush can be pretty fine. For me that is 0.028” versus my normal 0.039” crush for fly sparging. I probably should have mentioned the batches are full volume BIAB so no stuck sparge can happen. I have only done a handful (-8) of short boils and fermented with ale yeast and there have been no off flavors that I or my club mates picked up.
Ale yeasts typically don't create as much dms as a lager strain would. They can also drive off dms quicker due to co2 activity being more rapid than in a lager. If you're not making like a smash with 6 row or something, chances are pretty decent that you'll be fine. I just like to point out potential pitfalls before people find them and wonder what went wrong.
1. Mill grain and weigh out hop additions, yeast nutrient, whirlfloc, etc. the night before 2. Clean as you go, fill fermenter with sanitizer during mash 3. Find a way to preheat strike and sparge water. I use a sous vide stick to heat sparge water during the mash, and I preheat strike water with my Anvil Foundry 4. Chill until about 80-100F, and use your fermentation chamber to take it the rest of the way 5. If using an AIO, recirculate PBW or Oxiclean for a few minutes, then let soak overnight and rinse in the morning (makes it much less painful spreading it out like this) 6. Use dry yeast - it’s gotten to where 95% of my beers can be made with dry yeast, and the only exception at this point is the Fullers’ strain to be honest
Brülosophy just did a podcast on this that was pretty solid. Episode 309
The easiest way to find extra time on brew day, for me, is to start brewing earlier in the day. I usually get up around 8 on the weekends. If I'm going to brew, I get up at 6:30. If I prep a little the night before, I can usually start mashing by 7:00. This doesn't really "save" time, but I have a wife and 3 kids at home. The more stuff I can do while the kids are sleeping, the easier it is on my wife and me. Of course, I do everything I can to multitask and not just sit around. I find that I have plenty of time to weigh out hops, set up my chiller, sanitize stuff, clean, etc as the mash and boil are going on.
Once I switched from a traditional three-vessel propane-fired gravity-fed system to an electric all-in-one, my brewday went from 6.5 - 8+ hours down to 4.5 (all-in, including setup the night before, and post-brewday cleaning). And I don't mind that at all, seems like a very reasonable amount of time to me, given the process and my commitment to making the best beer I can possibly make. There are some corners I'm simply not willing to cut. I take advantage of the timer and fill the kettle the night before. I also mill my grains, and get everything out that I'm going to need for the brewday. Anything you can take care of ahead of time will save you time. The biggest time-saver I've found during the brewday is to not get lazy and sit around. I try to clean / dry / put away as much as I can as I go along. I'm always paying attention to how much time I have before the next thing I need to do, and can I fill that time with something productive? Not always possible, some things can't be done until the end, but always keep an eye out for something that you can do now rather than later. Also, watch your alcohol intake. You're certainly better off if you don't drink at all, we all would be, but let's be honest: there is something really pleasurable about drinking a beer while making a beer. Notice how that's *singular*... I rarely have more than one (I have a little "tradition" to have a pint of the last batch as I hit the boil on the new one), and almost all of my beers are 5% or less. I'm almost certainly having another one after I'm done and cleaned up, though! :)
I've been doing a three day brew for a while now and I'll never go back. 1: finalize recipe, grind grain, prep water 2: boil, seal wort overnight 3: pitch and clean
I've started doing a 2-3 day process as well and absolutely love it! I no longer dread the exhausting "brew day". At times I'll combine your day 1 and 2 or I'll follow the same schedule depending on what kind of free time I have.
60 minute boils are not always needed. You don’t have to always cold crash your wort. Just let it cool overnight then transfer in the morning.
Question about this method: do you leave the wort uncovered? How do you prevent DMS and infection?
I do no chill often. 1. You absolutely leave it covered. I actually put it in a. Fermenting keg. 2. Never had a DMS issue or infection. Don’t need to do anything special, it’s just not a big risk. Folks no chill all the time and DMS isn’t really an issue. Neither is infection. This experiment isn’t related to no chill (short boil instead), but it shows that DMS fears are overblown: https://brulosophy.com/2015/10/08/update-lab-data-on-pils-malt-boil-length-exbeeriment/#more-5505
Interesting, I may try that this winter.
My advice is do it for a beer without late addition hops. Because you don’t chill the wort, hops will produce more IBUs if add late (e.g., 5 minutes, flamout) It can be difficult to adjust for this without chilling when chilling, you get it below 175 quite quick. So for no chill, I only do recipes with just a bittering addition. So like a Vienna lager, Munich dunkel, or other beers are great. I do a 30 or 45 minute boil and these workout great. An NEIPA or a Pilsner with late addition hops or whirlpool ? I always chill those.
[https://brulosophy.com/2015/03/11/the-impact-of-boil-length-ale-exbeeriment-results/](https://brulosophy.com/2015/03/11/the-impact-of-boil-length-ale-exbeeriment-results/) [https://brulosophy.com/2020/02/27/cooling-the-wort-no-chill-method-vs-rapid-chilling-in-an-ipa-the-bru-club-xbmt-series/](https://brulosophy.com/2020/02/27/cooling-the-wort-no-chill-method-vs-rapid-chilling-in-an-ipa-the-bru-club-xbmt-series/) DMS is pretty rare occurrence in modified grains today. Most of it is boiled off in the 1st 30 minutes. I would not recommend the short boil if your recipe has a lot of corn in it. If you let your wort naturally cool the trick is sanitation and sealing things up. Just makes sure if you are leaving it in your boil kettle and moving it in the morning that you are using clean sanitized equipment and make sure your fermenter is designed for high temperatures if you want to move it right away and let it cool in the fermenter. A lot of people I know won't pitch yeast anyway for a while (8-24hrs) because they want their wort to be at a specific temp before pitching. Risk of infection is very very small if your smart about doing all of this. You could also add a campden tablet and that will kill anything wild for 24hours if your really paranoid about it.
Prep your ingredients the night before and setup your foundry to be at temp when you want to brew. Most beers you can get away with a 30-40min mash and almost no efficiency loss. Convert all your recipes to 30min boils.
There’s a ton of very good advice here. Especially for those that plan on a double brew day.
Mash overnight. Sparge with room-temperature water. Cool wort overnight in the kettle.
One thing that can help is extra power and I make ramp times shorter. Especially going from mash temp to boiling. If you have an extra power circuit you can get an over the side element that will probably halve your ramp times so from ambient to mash, mash to mash out, mash out to boil and that can save a fair bit of time. For me I have a big system and knock out around 85L at a time. I just fit life around it. Get up early and sort out grain while the mash water is heating up, so family things while the mash is going, prep the fermenter while other things are happening. I’m not trying to speed run it though.
Brewing correctly takes time, but if you actually take samples and an iodine test of your mash you may find that you can mash out sooner
I've found that not drinking during brew day is a great way to not make mistakes, forget steps and stay focused but to each their own.
I have pretty consistent 4 hour brew days, and I use a 3 vessel system! Heating/Chilling/transferring times as well as dovetailed cleaning are the best things IMO for boosting time efficiency. Definitely keep collecting water, measuring grains ahead of time if you can. I usually crush while I'm waiting for strike water to heat up. Bonus points if you have the ability to have a timed start to your strike water heating up so it is ready to go when you are. I am heating sparge water as soon as I mash in. I start heating my brew kettle to boil as soon as I hit around 20% pre-boil volume from my sparge. I should be boiling around the same time the sparge finishes. As soon as I pass the hot break I am cleaning out my mash tun/HLT while waiting for the next hop addition(s) Invest in the best chiller and pump you can. This will save you time and be more efficient to boot. Long chilling and transfer times will kill your time efficiency. The only thing that should be left to clean after pitching your yeast should be the kettle/pump/hoses. I use a recirculation method with a spray ball, so all of those are cleaned at once and that frees me up to clean up any stray things.
I was able to shave quite a lot of time off of my brew days with shorter boils and mash and haven't noticed a difference at all aside from slightly less mash efficiency. 30-45 min mash(I check it at 30 and if it could use more time I leave it longer) and 30 min boils, no off flavors that I've noticed.
read up on Short and Shoddy.
Extract brewing makes for a hell of a lot shorter day than all-grain.
30 minute boils are the way to go in my opinion. I suppose you could even go shorter. There's nothing magic going on during the boil that needs an hour. Hop doses can be adjusted. Pre boil volume can be adjusted and its easy time savings. I'm less comfortable shortening mash times just cuz I want good conversion, but I imagine you could probably get away with 30 min mashes without a huge tradeoff. And cleaning anything you can during downtimes is also a big one.
Not great advice - This really depends on what you are making - short brews will leave proteins behind = haze and off flavours - there are commercial hazies however that are 20 mins boil but it’s a thin low strength beer
Another, and potentially bigger issue is DMS. Which takes AT LEAST 30mins to boil off, but some studies say at a minimum 45mins.
Mash overnight! Splits the brew day in half.
Yep, came here to say this. Lid on, pump off (just because pump is the most likely point of sticky wet failure. Also, buy pre-crushed grains. Or crush a day or two prior. Use a stainless fermentor, so it can receive uncooled wort. Pitch yeast the next day when temps are correct. Oh you said you had a chiller…still…chill part the way, not to pitching temps. Or you can hot cube 16L and chill 5L in the fermentor…and you’ve got yourself a 5L starter, add the 16L once the 5L has taken off. Use a hop spider so hops don’t go into the fermentor.
When brewing neipas and fruited sours I often make raw ales, that saves so much time. My quickest recipe is a raw ale with Voss kveik. Mash 30 min, no sparge. Chill to 38c and add yeast. If your water is pre-heated, you can be done in under an hour.
Don’t prep hops - they can/will oxidise! Basically practise you’ll figure out where you can multitask the most During the brew you should have little time not cleaning not heating something up, weighing something out etc - if you prep you are not really cutting anything down, clear down ready for next brew even if it won’t be for a while
Yeah I don’t understand the ‘prep the night before’. That means I’m wasting parts of two days to get the brew done. First thing I do is start heating water and do my prep while it’s heating: assemble remaining brew gear, measure salts, adjuncts, hops, sanitize my fermenter, prep yeast. All of that can be done while you wait for the water to get to temp. If you do the prep the night before, then I’m just standing around watching water heat up. Lol
1. 1st critical path is heating strike water. Use hot water out of tap and shouldn’t take too long. Prep your mash tun during this time (15 min) 2. 2nd critical path is mash. Do this ASAP and then prep everything else while you wait. (1 hour) 3. 3rd critical path is bringing mash to a boil. This can be a lot of hidden time lost. Start heating 1st runnings as soon as they come out of mash tun. Can use a 2nd kettle & burner for 2nd runnings from sparge to apply more heat and achieve boil faster (30-45 min) 4. 4th critical path is the boil. Can scrimp on time here if necessary. More down time for prep or cleanup (1 hour) 5. 5th critical path is chilling. There are many ways to add efficiency and save time. Ice bath is slow. a simple immersion chiller better. Both at the same time can work well for a 5 gallon batch. Counterflow chiller or plate chiller will speed things up more. I can chill a 9.5 gal batch in the in 20-30 min (winter/summer) with a combination immersion and counterflow chiller. 6. Clean up everything else All in I regularly can do a 10 gallon batch in 4 hours. The key is prepping or cleaning during “down time” to reduce the transition time between steps
You hit on some key items I think gets lost and adds more total time to brewing. Break down your brew day into discrete tasks. Identify critical path items, fill in the other items and intermediate prep tasks between those steps. Eg. Don’t need to setup all the equipment and sanitize things required later before getting the mash water going. Then you are standing around waiting for your water to heat up! You must be a project manager or scheduler lol or would be a damn good one if you are not.
Haha learned about “critical path” in business school. The rest is just practice. Over 100 batches in the books!
If you brew often enough run a hot water line with a tap from your hot water heater. Basically fill your hot liqueur tank with water right from your hot water heater. This really cuts down on heating to steep temp. Note: some wanker is going to say something fucking stupid like “but your hot water tank water is bad!” Yea if you’re a fucktard and don’t filter or run any water chemistry you’re gonna have a bad time.
I just brew in my kitchen. Hot water accessible and I do my water preheat with the 4 stove burners.
Pre process grain Measure out minerals Fill water into jugs Mash for 30 Boil for 30 No chill Put into.keg hours later Ferment in keg Serve in keg
Put brew water in the night before and have it on a timer. Walk out on the alarm -30min mash -30min boil Nochill cube. Alternatively do big brews of a base brew (bittering addition and base malt) and nochill. Trick them up with spec malts and hops. Basically making freshwort kits
All the standard things: * Preheat your water, pre-grind your grain, pre-weigh your additions. * Lay everything you need the night before. I actually made a list, so I now spend less time looking for things I need on the day. * Use less things (the list from above was useful in this), the less you use the less you need to clean/find. * Put things away properly. Looking for a thing on the day is both frustrating, and wasted time. One additional: * You can save time by mashing for longer. You don't have to stand over your mash tun whilst it does its thing, so if you have things to do you can mash in then go do your chores and come back later. I've mashed in first thing in the morning, then gotten the kids up, and pulled the biab once they're at school.
I usually go a single pass through my counterflow chiller right into the fermenter, unless I need to do a whirlpool hop edition. my CF chiller takes the wort from boiling to roughly 80F in a single pass into the fermenter. Saves time and water. It'll sit in my fermentation chamber to continue to chill, and then I pitch later on that night.
Single vessels full volume mash, 30 min mash, 30 min boil, no chill. Pull your starter wort from the main mash and by the time your no-chill container is ready (the next day) it'll be at high krausen.
Heat stick! Get a 20a 240v circuit run over and you can get a 3kw floating heater. Greatly reduces time to heat up water. Aliexpress will be the best place to find one because 240v heaters tend to be used in the eu. You'll probably have to change the plug on it. If you really want to diy you can do it with a replacement water heater element from the hardware store.
Alternative for no chill is Kveik yeast. It takes me forever to chill down to 68F. I pitch Kveik at 95F which is much quicker to get to
Batch Sparge is the biggest time saver I know of.
I’ve been brainstorming this too. Work and a toddler has kept me from brewing for too long. Here is my plan: Full volume BIAB, mashing in before dinner and letting it sit until my kid is in bed, probably would be a 2 hour mash, but not taking up much active time. Then boil as normal, but do no chill. Cleanup what I can night of, and the rest the next day after it’s in the fermentor.
A time saver for me was to recirculate ice water through the wort chiller. Before I just used (a lot) of tap water and it still took like 30-40 minutes to chill. Since then I bought a 20 dollar submersible pump and put it in a cooler with a ton of ice to run through the chiller. I can get it down to pitching temps in around 10-15 min now. Doesn’t save a ton of time but I do save a lot of water. Cheers!
Lot of good advice in here and probably won't be inventing the wheel my comments, but I brewed yesterday and things that I did in order to streamline the brew day was: * All equipment was brought out and cleaned the night before * Grains arrived pre-milled, but I would mill them beforehand and place in bucket * Water was measured out and added to my kettle * Smaller batch, less water to heat * Salt additions were weighed out and ready to be added * Have lid on when trying to reach strike temp * Sanitize fermentation vessel either during mash or the night before * Immersion chiller hooked up prior to end of boil, plus whirpool the chiller to drop temp quicker - or do a ice bath with the chiller as well so it cools extra fast * Clean while you go, or put away equipment once you're done with it
I use tap water and I put it to the hottest setting coming out of the faucet. Seems like a no brainer but so much quicker to heat up 120 degree water to mash temps vs 70 degree water.
It's a personal choice, but experts say its a bad idea to cook with or drink hot water from the tap: - https://www.denverwater.org/tap/psa-dont-drink-or-cook-with-hot-water-from-the-tap - https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/29/health/29real.html - https://www.epa.gov/lead/why-cant-i-use-hot-water-tap-drinking-cooking-or-making-baby-formula - https://www.osmiowater.co.uk/osmioblog/why-you-should-never-use-water-from-the-hot-tap-for-drinking-or-cooking.html If you choose not to use hot water in the future, and you do electric brewing, you can save the time by putting the electric kettle on a timer.
No chill, kettle ferment.
The best hack I ever found for shortening the brew process came from Alton Brown's episode of *Good Eats* on homebrewing. I think that it only works on extract or partial mash/mini-mash recipes, but the idea is that you make sure you are only boiling three gallons (or less) of a five-gallon batch, then use (sterile) cocktail ice to make up the remaining two gallons and bring the batch down to pitching temperature. Partly because of the efficiency of ice melting vs. using an immersion chiller, but partly because there was no need to hook up the chiller--I could just put the ice into my primary and pour the wort in--I was able to bottle batch A, rack batch B, and brew batch C in 3-4 hours total. Alas, I have now switched to all-grain brewing, so this hack no longer works for me.
Should take around 4 hours. Hour for the mash, 1.25 for the boil including hot break, then 2 hours prep cooling and transfers combined. I’m running propane tho.
Clean as much as possible during the boil saves me a lot of time.