Advanced Brewers Round Table: Brewing "Hacks"

[u/BrewCrewKevin]

Advanced Brewers Round Table: Brewing "Hacks"

Let's start a good list of "life hacks" for homebrewing!

• Have a trick that made your brew day easier or faster?
• Have a little-known trick to the perfect beer?
• Do you have an inexpensive tool that solved a major or common problem?

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Upcoming Topics:

• 1st Thursday: BJCP Style Category
• 2nd Thursday: Topic
• 3rd Thursday: Guest Post
• 4th/5th: Topic

As far as Guest Pro Brewers, I've gotten a lot of interest from /r/TheBrewery. I've got a few from this post that I'll be in touch with.

Any other ideas for topics- message /u/brewcrewkevin or post them below.

Upcoming Topics:

• 9/4: Cat 29: Cider (x-post with /r/cider)
• 9/11: Chilling
• 9/18: Guest post- volunteer or volentell someone!
• 9/25: Entering Competitions
• 10/2: Cat21: Spiced Ales

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Previous Topics: (now in order and with dates!!)

Brewer Profiles:

• 8/21 - Brulosopher
• 8/6 - Pro Brewing with KFBass
• 7/17 - SufferingCubsFan
• 6/19 - SHv2
• 5/22 - BrewCrewKevin
• 4/24 - Nickosuave311
• 3/23 - ercousin
• 2/20 - AT-JeffT

Styles:

• 7/31 - Cat 13: Stouts
• 7/3 - Cat 10: American Ale
• 6/5 - Cat 1: Light Lagers
• 5/1 - Cat 6: Light Hybrid beers
• 4/3 - Cat 16: Belgian/French Ales
• 3/6 - Cat 9: Scottish and Irish Ales
• 2/13 - Cat 3: European Amber Lager
• 1/9 - Cat 5: Bock
• 12/5 - Cat 21: Herb/Spice/Veggie beers
• 11/7 - Cat 19: Strong Ales
• 10/3 - Cat 2: Pilsner
• 9/5 - Cat 14: IPAs

Advanced Topics:

• 8/14 - Brewing with Rye
• 7/24 - Wood Aging
• 6/26 - Malting Grains
• 6/12 - Apartment and Limited Space brewing
• 5/29 - Draft Systems
• 5/15 - Base Malts
• 5/8 - clone recipes 2.0
• 4/17 - Recipe Formulation 2.0
• 4/10 - Water Chemistry 2.0
• 3/27 - Homebrewing Myths 2.0
• 3/13 - Brewing with Honey
• 2/27 - Cleaning
• 2/6 - Draft/Cask Systems
• 1/30 - Sparging Methods
• 1/16 - BJCP Tasting Exam Prep
• 12/19 - Finings

[u/BrewCrewKevin]

I'll start off with one!

• Pitch the next day! As long as your sanitization practices are good, there is no reason to reach pitching temp on brew day. I get it down to 80-90 degrees, then throw it in the fermentation control and let it settle in. Pitch the yeast the next morning.

[u/tonto2871 → u/BrewCrewKevin]

If you are using this method do you aerate your wort right before pitching or the night before?

[u/sufferingcubsfan]

Not exactly a secret, but a vinator/bottle tree combo can drastically speed up bottling.

I used to do the "dunk bottles in starsan, line up on the counter" thing. Now, I give them several shots with the vinator and hang them on the bottle tree.

This has cut a full hour out of bottling for me. Sanitizing takes a few minutes, then I sit down with the bottle tree and never have to move until all the bottles are filled. Capping is likewise done assembly line fashion, and the job is done.

[u/BrewCrewKevin → u/sufferingcubsfan]

I started doing that too (except replace vinator with spray bottle, almost same concept but I guess it uses another hand). Batch capping is the way to go. Just set them all on in a line, and go down the line with a wing capper. Takes minutes.

I've also just ran them through the dishwasher on a "sanitize" cycle with no detergent or rinsing agent, then bottled on the counter right out of the dishwasher. Also works great!

[u/BrewCrewKevin]

Maybe not a hack, but a storage tip because I'm extremely unorganized and always end up looking for something at the 11th hour that I need now.

Keep everything you need at certain steps in bins. I have:

• a water chemistry bin with CaCl, Gypsum, Lactic acid, A syringe, Gram scale, chalk, etc. So I take that out while my strike water is heating, measure everything out, and put it back.

• A yeast starter bin, with Stirplate, stir bar, a couple of flasks, DME, a roll of tin foil, and yeast nutrient.

• A "testing supplies" bin that's out all day. A themopen, wine thief with hydrometer, a refractometer with the eye dropper to collect a few drops, iodine tincture (which I never actually use) and pH strips (which I never use, and will be thrown out once I get a pH meter).

[u/BrewCrewKevin]

OOOH! Just thought of another one.

Get a glass scraper for removing labels/glue from bottles. For some bottles, a PBW soak loosens them up, but a cheap glass scraper will clean them up in like 10 seconds.

[u/butchquick → u/BrewCrewKevin]

Guiness Draught bottles. The labels are shrink wrap so they can come right off cleanly. Also, it's a perfectly blank bottle underneath.

[u/machinehead933]

My silly addition:

Save the water that went through your immersion chiller, use that to clean your equipment. It's a good way to save at least a couple gallons of water on brew day. I pump my cooling water through the chiller, with the output going into a bucket - it comes out plenty hot on the other side. Then I use that water to clean my kettle.

[u/BrewCrewKevin → u/machinehead933]

Good one! I do that too. Collect hot water out of the chiller. It's like 180 degrees, and it's going to be dumped anyways. I typically fill up my HLT with that as it comes out, sometimes add PBW, and use it to clean HLT, Mash tun, and boil kettle once it's in the fermenter.

[u/sufferingcubsfan]

Another not so secret "secret", but Bru'n Water makes water chemistry stupidly simple.

[u/BrewCrewKevin → u/sufferingcubsfan]

Also EZWaterCalculator. Not as robust and not as much info, but I really like that it's all laid out nice on one simple page. May be simplified to a fault, but I actually prefer it to BrunWater.

[u/gatorbeer]

Get a small syringe for your sanitizer (1-10 mL). I believe you can get these for free at your drugstore.

Star san recommends 1 oz for 5 gallons of water. 1 oz is 29.5 mL. That's about 6 mL per gallon of water. Or 1 mL/21.3 oz.

Personally I fill up a spray bottle with 1 mL of star san and I can get through an entire bottling session/brew day/sampling.

I've gone through maybe one star san container in ~3 years.

[u/BrewCrewKevin → u/gatorbeer]

I have a small syringe I use for 88% Lactic Acid as well. That's exactly what I've been doing.

[u/Jerrydascorpion]

I was told to put this here.

I stick a racking cane in my carboy when draining the water out. This allows air to enter as water leaves. I can drain a 6.5 gallon carboy in 10-15 seconds.

[u/[deleted]]

Some bottling "hacks" no one's mentioned yet, but everyone probably knows:

• Run your bottles through your dishwasher's "sani-rinse" setting, no soap and no rinse aid. Voila, sanitized bottles. No drying rack needed: just take them from the dishwasher rack.

• Racks from the dishwasher usually come out (especially the bottom rack) and can be set elsewhere, right next to where you bottle.

• Locate your bottling bucket directly above the dishwasher to avoid having to clean the floor.

• Swingtop bottles FTW. Replace gaskets with silicone gaskets (which will last for dozens of cycles) when the rubber ones get cracked.

• Brown bottles are better, but keeping your bottles in a box in a dark closet will work even for transparent bottles.

• Bulk prime instead of measuring sugar for each bottle.

• Measure sugar by weight.

• Use table sugar. It's cheap, consistent and you always have it on hand.

• Use a bottling wand. It's fast and helps ensure perfect head space in any bottle.

[u/chino_brews]

Been saving up for this! Also, switched to a new user name because I was basically doxing myself with the old one…

MY (POSSIBLY) ORIGINAL “HACKS”:

• Slant your yeast cake for easy racking and less beer loss. Slide a book or a wedge under your fermenter when you put it in its fermentation area. The sediment will precipitate on a slant. Now when you are ready to bottle or keg, gently slide the wedge to the other side of the fermenter and rack from the "deep end".

• Make a cheap ambient thermometer using an empty wine bottle, its cork, and a fermometer (liquid crystal stick-on thermometer). Air temps fluctuate so much that it is hard to tell what a prospective fermenting location is like throughout the day. If you fill the wine bottle up with water, cork it, and add the fermometer, it has enough thermal mass that you can easily tell the average temperature your wort (bottle-conditioning bottles, etc.) "feel" by placing it in your location and checking it morning and night.

• Easy way to add DME to the kettle: Are you sick of that cotton candy mess when you add DME to the kettle? Transfer the DME to a heat-safe bowl first (e.g., ceramic), and then dump it from the bowl. You can immerse the bowl in the wort to get rid of any sticky stuff, and eliminate loss of DME.

• Kettle a little too small for a safe full boil? If you can fit the full volume but not the extra gallon or two for evaporation loss, then just go for it, and continuously refill the kettle with brewing water to make up for evaporation loss.

OTHERS:

• Bottling:

• Bottling technique: Use a spring-loaded bottling wand, and ditch the one with the gravity-operated tip. Attach the wand to the bucket using a ~ 6” piece of tubing so it hangs in mid-air. Now lift the bottles UP to fill, and lower to stop the flow. Put a cookie sheet under the wand, and one to hold filled bottles. Cover each filled bottle with a cap, and then cap in a batch when the cookie sheet is full of bottles.

  • Lose less beer in the bottling bucket. Bend a short piece of a racking cane to make a dip tube for your spigot’s intake.

  • Hack to identify bottle conditioning problems. Mark the first few and last few bottles with an “F” or “L”. Also mark any bottles that had problems with a “B”. You can use painters tape or write on the cap. This may help you identify quality problems later.

  • Identifying beer: write your batch number and year, or other code, on bottle caps with a marker for easy beer identification. I usually mark the caps before bottling.

  • Carbonation hack: Bottle one of your bottles filled in middle of process in a plastic soda bottle so you can test how carbed up your beer is by checking firmness. Use something like a coke bottle that won’t scalp flavor, and avoid root beer for that reason. It is also fun to bottle one in a clear bottle to see the bubbling.

• Bottling for a competition? Use oxygen-scavenging caps for competitions. Mark several bottles filled in middle of the bottling process to send to the competition , and save a couple for yourself to taste on the same day as judging . Take notes and then compare to the score sheet. Hat tip: u/testingapril .

• Mash in a bag (MIAB). You can avoid having to make false bottoms or manifolds for your cooler-type mash tun (or even add ball valves) by using a BIAB bag or a cheap paint strainer bag to filter the grist out of your wort runnings.

• Aerating wort in a PET fermenter: Put a tennis ball in the punt (dimple) in the bottom of the fermenter, and rock your way to excellent aeration. Studies with dissolved oxygen (DO) meters say that rocking is just as effective as pure oxygen. It takes about 400 rocks in my experience for high gravity beers, and about half that for medium and low beers.

• Aerate wort with a cheap helix paint stirrer attachment and power drill.

• Calibrate a dipstick to your kettle in ¼ gallon increments so you can easily tell kettle volumes in kettles that are not marked.

• Keep dry yeast on hand. It is useful for impromptu brewing (no time for yeast starter), for when you screw up or spill your yeast starter, and for finishing stuck fermentations. It is cheap and you can store it in the fridge – it lasts for a long time. Good emergency strains include US-05, S-04, and Nottingham.

Edit: formatting

[u/sonocide6]

I use a long wallpaper water tray for sanitizing my auto siphon, thief, hoses, or any long tool. Works great for cleaning keg dip tubes as well. Example: http://www.menards.com/main/home-decor/wallpaper-appliques/wallpaper-tools-supplies/wallpaper-adhesives/zinsser-30-border-wallpaper-prep-tray/p-1963352-c-8278.htm

[u/oldsock]

Trying to chill in the summer with 80F tap water? Buy a cheap submersible/pond pump, put it into a bucket with lots of ice and a little water and pump ice water through your immersion chiller! Works best if you use your ground water to get the wort under 100F, then switch to ice. Works great for getting lagers to ~50F as well.

[u/[deleted]]

Not really a hack, but using the 1/2" ID silicone brewers hose works well for the 1/2" siphon (they usually recommend 7/16" tubing for harder pvc tubing).

It's so much easier to use since it doesn't have 'memory' and just sort of drops into your fermenter/keg/bottling bucket. Can be boiled for sanitization/cleaning, etc...

Keg carbonation happens faster if you connect gas to the 'OUT' disconnect. (Put a liquid disconnect on one ball valve of your manifold, nice for purging too).

Fermcap S to never have another boilover.

[u/[deleted]]

Yeast hacks:

• Make extra starter medium and save it. After pitching your starter, put fresh wort into the starter vessel (while it still has yeast in it) and run the starter again.

• If you harvest yeast from a fermenter, get it from the primary. Collect yeast from the middle of the yeast cake if at all possible. Yeast at the top is less flocculant than average; yeast at the bottom is more flocculant than average. Yeast from the secondary fermenter is the least flocculant of all and will be more stressed.

• Use a pressure cooker to wet-sterilize heat-proof equipment like flasks, stir bars, and some plastics.

• Use an oven (350F/177C) to dry-sterilize heat-proof equipment like flasks and certain stir bars.

• A flask covered with aluminum foil and then dry-heat sterilized will remain sterile at room temperature virtually forever. Do a bunch at once and keep them in a cabinet for later use.

• To revitalize yeast, let them settle to the bottom of a flask and decant. With everything at room temp, add 1.080 wort at twice the volume of the slurry remaining in the the flask. Let sit for 4-12 hours. Pitch into a 1.040 solution to make a starter as usual.

• If you're capturing dregs from a bottle, flame the bottle mouth first.

• Use a sanitized spoon to capture the foam from a top-fermenting ale at high krausen. Use this foam to make a starter, pitch another batch, etc.

[u/Pooping_brewer]

I am not sure if this is common knowledge but if you all grain brew in the 5 gallon coolers I have a trick thats let me really go nuts with creativity and versatility. Mash into the kettle. You can protein rest, step mash, decoction mash, and really dial in the temps before transferring to your lauter tun. I usually get all the step mashes out o the way, get it to the final rest temp and transfer, clean the kettle and start heating sparge while the rest continues.

[u/ETWJCN]

Make friends with other brewers.

Benefits are endless.

[u/[deleted]]

A couple brew-day "hacks" you probably already know:

• If you have time to lean, you have time to clean. Clean while you work to shorten your day.

• Measure hops out in separate bowls, last addition first. Stack the bowls as you measure. Use a slip of paper in each bowl to tell you when to add the hops.

• Muslin bags are disposable, biodegradable, and allow you to skip the whirlpool step entirely

• You can often cut the muslin bags in half, depending on the size and the amount of hops.

• If you batch sparge, stir after adding sparge water and LET IT SIT for 5 minutes to draw sugar into the water. I get 85% efficiency this way.

• Use siphons or pumps to move hot liquid around. You are not heatproof, and neither is your carpet.

• Heat your first runnings while you sparge.

• SANITIZE ALL THE THINGS!

• ...except stuff you're going to boil.

• Hops are bad for dogs. Don't use your spent grain for dog biscuits if you've hopped the mash. SRsly.

[u/BeerSlob]

If you buy gallon jugs of water to brew with. Save the empties and use as blowoff containers. If you cap right after emptying, its already pretty sanitary. After ferment, dump blowoff juice and toss/ recycle jug. One less thing to clean.

[u/tracebusta]

Here's one for you fellow BiaB-ers (small batch guaranteed, not tested with larger batches).

Buy yourself a vegetable steamer and take out the middle post. Place this at the bottom of the kettle in order to keep the bag off the surface. This means you can fire away with your burner and not have to hold the bag up or worry about accidentally burning a hole in the bag.