Timetable for a double brewday

[spearmint-wino]

Looks like saturday is free for a brew, and seeing as my beer stocks are down to zero I'm wondering about making the most of my brewday and doing 2 25litre brews: probably a running beer and a keeper.

Equipment-wise I have 2 suitable vessels to use as a boiler, 1 mash/sparge tun, 2 fermenters and a bin/fermenter for cleaning and sanitising. I have an element for each boiler but only one kettle lead for the 2 of them.

One of the boilers is my new stainless one, so in theory I could heat / boil on the cooker in the kitchen but god knows how that would go and how long it would take o get a rolling boil (that's presuming it could get there).

The most obvious way I can think of to achieve this is to start bloody early, run the first brew as normal, then switch the lead at 'flameout' to get the water in the second HLT/boiler up to temp for the second mash whilst the first brew is steeping and cooling.

No doubt others have done this - how did you get around it and is there any earlier in the process I could start the second brew

[J_P]

have an element for each boiler but only one kettle lead for the 2 of them.

You could use the kettle lead that's plugged into the back of your PC always supposing it's got the correct fuse in it and that you have a "desktop" rather than a "laptop".

Perhaps a PM to Wez is in order as he's "Mr Double Brewday"

[Wez]

I think you'd need to watch the type of lead you use, the PC type 'kettle leads' as we call them aren't rated highy enough for running a boiler element you'll notice the one's that come with the boiler have a cut-out and the PC type one's don't, the cut out one's are heat resistant I think and capable of running the elements, you could risk it, but I wouldn't live mains kills don't want to scare you but.. better safe eh!

On the double brewday that I had I just had to do them back to back, which basically meant waiting till the boiler was empty post chill rinsing out and then getting the mash liquor ready for the next brew Andy posted on mine that i'd be better with a seperate HLT which is true, but at the end of the day it was as epic brewday worthy of posting and I enjoyed it, but mine was 12 hours long and I needed a beer. Make sure you have beer.

viewtopic.php?t=5044&highlight=double

J_P - there's no huff, still my usual jolly self

[J_P]

[spearmint-wino]

Alas the kettle lead I'm referring to is one of those round-plug types that as DaaB rightly states are "as rare as rocking horse shit"...

I've seen the Exserve (?) elements online, they look just like the ones I've got but I don't see any details on the leads they use... can anyone enlighten me?

[spearmint-wino]

Cool thanks for that - all the things I've seen haven't shown what lead they take and the last thing I'd need would be another element with a bl**dy round plug!

[David Edge]

We're lucky. Our kitchen has one wall fed off one ring main and another off t'other. The 66 litre HLT heats up on a timer and the grists are prepared the night before. As soon as liquor is drawn from the HLT it is heated again to 90C and refilled. Having it hot and spraying in water is enough to drive off chlorine from our supply.

The copper is 3+2.4kW (one lead to each ring) and the HLT 2.4kW, so no problems unless Elena the Cleaner switches the dishwasher, tumble drier and washing machine on (again).

We usually do two brews. Waking at 7:00 on Sunday I see I was mashed in by 7:25 and pitched the yeast into the second 40-litre batch at 15:30.

Practice. And enough kit. One of my few disagreements with Wheeler is he seems to suggest that an HLT is a bit of a luxury. Oh, and it is a tower brewery so no humping (so to speak) until it's time to take the fermenters to the back room.

[David Edge]

I had a pair of crushed velvet flares the colour of that mash tun insulation, said he descending into trivia. Must take some photos of my full tower system . It allows me the luxury of boiling the wort as well in a domestic kitchen. Try it - you'll find benefits in bitterness, clarity and stability of the finished product ;-)

More seriously, having a separate HLT and boiler is what lets you continue to start a second brew 90 minutes after you mash in the first and indeed a third should you so desire. The cycle time is simply that of the longest step but you do need to avoid contaminating cooled wort with malt dust.

[David Edge]

I'm not with you when you say Try it - you'll find benefits in bitterness, clarity and stability of the finished product

Ah. That was an attempt at Humour. I was pretending to misunderstand the layout depicted as showing the wort going straight from MT to FV - hence the above is "try boiling - you'll find benefits...".

Actually I've been to a brewery where there's a single vessel for HLT, MT and copper and I don't really understand how it worked. The pics are on the CBA site, click on historical brewing and scroll down.

http://www.craft brewing.org.uk/

[Wez]

I had a pair of crushed velvet flares the colour of that mash tun insulation, said he descending into trivia. Must take some photos of my full tower system

I had to read that twice, I thought for a moment that I had read that you were going to photograph your 'full trouser system'

Crushed Velvet eh, and the last outing for them

[David Edge]

You had me worried there! No, Bewlay Lane is in the middle of nowhere - they're just using Lacock as a marketing ploy.

The Lacock Abbey brewhouse is part of an NT property and is unlikely to be developed commercially.

[David Edge]

historically important building

You could say that of any building

on Bewley Lane, a quiet backroad in the National Trust village of Lacock

In much the way that Ryanair fly (or used to) into Frankfurt (Sohren) which is almost in France! Well perhaps not quite, but looking at Landranger 183 Bewley COurt is 1km east of Lacock in the direction of Bowden Hill, on the other side of the Avon from Lacock.

It was built as a small brewery in Victorian times

Lacock is sixteenth century.