Ag Newb Question

[manaen]

I am fairly new to AG's so here is a newb question for you ..

What would happen if you just boiled say 8 litres of your runnings with the hops then added it to the sparge runoffs and wacked it straight in the fermentor?

 

[Doc]

The quick and simple answer is you'd probably end up with an infected brew because you haven't boiled the remainder of the wort to get rid of all the nasties.

Beers,
Doc

 

[manaen]

ok .. what is you boiled the full amount for say 20 mins, then racked 75% of it to a fermenter, brought the rest back to the boil and did your hop additions?

Just thinking of ways to reduce my boil time and gas usage.

 

[Trough Lolly]

Doing that would result in a substantial lowering of hop utilization because you're effectively boiling the hops in a smaller volume. You'd end up wondering why your hop bitterness was way down etc. So, you'd possibly save on gas, but you'd lose big time on hops...

The bit where you "brought the rest back to the boil" would not be insignificant - you might find that the boil would take more than an hour anyway. I don't have a monsterous rolling boil with my kettle, I get a modest boil up and running and once it's got there, I keep an eye on the flame to make sure that I'm not boiling the bejezus out of it...

Cheers,
TL

 

[pint of lager]

All of your wort needs to be boiled for at least 60 minutes. This sanitises your wort, allows hot break formation, protien coagulation for cold break formation, mailard reactions, bittering components from your hops to be extracted and probably a truckload of other reactions.

There was an excellent thread a while back, may have been a poll, something along the lines of how long do you boil your wort.

 

[manaen]

Ok .. here's another one for you .. could I spread my brewing over 2 days then pitch yeast a few days later? I know some of this is covered in other threads but just exploring possibilities of mid week brewing.

morning day 1: crack grain, add to mash tun, add water so temp is 66degC (leave overnight)
night day 1: collect runnings and sparge to desired volume in kettle
night day 2: boil wort and do hop additions as required, run off to cube

day XX: Place wort in fermentor, airate and pitch yeast.

What do you think?

 

[Doc]

Option 2

Call in sick and do a double brewday and brew 100 litres beginning to end including pitching yeast.

Beers,
Doc

 

[AndrewQLD]

Ok .. here's another one for you .. could I spread my brewing over 2 days then pitch yeast a few days later? I know some of this is covered in other threads but just exploring possibilities of mid week brewing.

morning day 1: crack grain, add to mash tun, add water so temp is 66degC (leave overnight)
night day 1: collect runnings and sparge to desired volume in kettle
night day 2: boil wort and do hop additions as required, run off to cube

day XX: Place wort in fermentor, airate and pitch yeast.

What do you think?

[post="116982"][/post]​

Leaving unboiled wort for any length of time in your kettle will leave it suseptable to wild yeast infections, and also bacterial infections one of the most common being a lacto infection which would leave the beer sour even after boiling.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[manaen]

damn .. might have to go for your option doc .. but my brewfridge will only fit 2 ferms in it .. I wonder if I could sneak 2 in the laundry

 

[Stuster]

I have done quite a lot of evening (/night/nearly morning) brewing and it is possible to do it all in an evening (just).

Crack the grain and make sure everything is ready to go the night before, then crack straight into it as soon as you get home. If you have some way to heat the water up prior to your return, like a timer or something, do that, but it'll be ok either way.

 

[Steve]

Im no all grainer but I reckon it would be more satisfying to finish what you start rather than doing it in dribs and drabs. It'd be like playing 90 mins of footy flat stick and then not having your fresh orange after the game
Cheers
Steve

 

[tangent]

once you get a good rythum going and know what comes next, it all comes naturally and i've noticed my brewday is getting quicker & quicker

i cut corners by having yeast ready to go, grain milled the night before and the water in the HLT

when i was k&k i could do a brew while the missus was getting ready to go out. (no sh!t, she goes "Whaaat? i thought we were going out?")
1 kettle of water boiled, 1 tinopener, dump, swish, top up, pitch
if you can't do that in 5 minutes, what are you doing?

 

[Trough Lolly]

I've found that doing an overnight mash is good value if you're time poor - crack the grains the night before, dough-in and leave it to mash whilst you sleep. Up bright and early, sparge, boil, chill and your finished before lunchtime - it sure beats the hell out of all night brew sessions!

According to Promash, I gained over 5% in efficiency due to the 8 hour mash...Target gravity was 1.050 in 21L and I managed to extract 1.053!!

Cheers,
TL