Two Hour Brewday

[John Sand]

Extract, 3 gallon batch of Irish Red. I love all grain brewing, the magic of the mash, the connection to our predecessors. But sometimes it's cold and crappy outside. And I'm revisiting one of my early successes, BCS Irish Red, extract+grains. My buddy came over at 2, I started then. Pitched my yeast at 4:15. That left time to relax, go to the store, make a giant hamburger, and watch the evening news.

[berryman]

Extract, 3 gallon batch of Irish Red. I love all grain brewing, the magic of the mash, the connection to our predecessors. But sometimes it's cold and crappy outside. And I'm revisiting one of my early successes, BCS Irish Red, extract+grains. My buddy came over at 2, I started then. Pitched my yeast at 4:15. That left time to relax, go to the store, make a giant hamburger, and watch the evening news.

Good deal John, that's exactly why I like extract brewing, fast and simple and with good yeast and temp
managements you end up with good beer. I've done a few AG BIAB and a lot of partials, my next step that now I have more time is going to start using a tun\lauter. But if I get behind I will fill in with an extract brew, if done right they will be good beer. Irish reds are great 04 yeast works good on them.

[RickBeer]

30 min to heat steep water, 30 min steep, 45 min to boil, 1 hr boil, 20 min cool, 10 till pitch yeast. How did you get down so quick?

[John Sand]

Berry, I am using S04, I expect good results.
Rick, I use an aluminum 20qt pressure cooker on a recent glass top stove. It has a "speed heat" setting that heats 3 gallons pretty quickly. For the steep I just keep the grains in from grind to 170, then pull the bag. From there the water gets to boil fairly quickly. Hot break was over by 3pm for my first hop addition. I took a gravity sample with about fifteen minutes left to estimate top off water. (Gravity is still a little high) The tap water is 52' right now, so the water I added and the double coil wort chiller cooled the modest batch to 70 in just over ten minutes. To be fair, I did take some more time cleaning up. But if I had been ambitious enough to clean as I went, that would have left only the pot and the chiller. I considered doing a 40 minute boil on this batch, but my friend has never seen home-brewing before, so I followed that procedure.

[FedoraDave]

30 min to heat steep water, 30 min steep, 45 min to boil, 1 hr boil, 20 min cool, 10 till pitch yeast. How did you get down so quick?

Seems like all of these numbers are inflated, with the exception of the one hour boil, especially for a 3 gallon batch. Also, when I do extract + steeping grains, I mix the extract and start the steep at the same time, in two different pots. Then I just add the steep water to the boil pot when it's done. That saves a lot of time.

[RickBeer]

Those are all actual times, nothing inflated. The idea of steeping in a separate pot and dumping it in would clearly save some time. I may do that next batch and see how I like it.

[Foothiller]

When I do a partial mash, I use the same approach as FedoraDave: heat the boil pot with extract in it, while the grains mash. The boil pot's temperature drops a bit when I add the wort from the grains, but it quickly recovers. I can even start boiling the hops while the grains drain. The second pot is a small fraction of all the cleaning that is in the overall process.

[FedoraDave]

Yeah, the second pot is usually washed after the first hop addition. Plenty of time for one pot.

[Yankeedag]

Heck Dave, I thought I was the only one lazy enough to do it that way.

[John Sand]

I'm brewing again today,BIAB. I timed the "Speed Heat" setting. It raised 3.5 gallons of water and 11# of grain 10 degrees in two minutes while stirring.