The Lazy Brewers Guide

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MyQul

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This is just a bit of fun but what tips do you have for making beer with minimum steps/amount fuss you can probably get away with.

No sparge: - Saves quite bit of time on brewday. No faffing around with dunking, flying or batching

No Chill: - Just chuck that wort in the cube, seal it up and let nature cool the wort down for you.

Boil starter wort for 5 mins to sanitise rather than 15 mins

Sprinkle dried yeast: - I've done this loads of times and only ever had one slow start but it fermented out fully eventually

No Rinse Saniser: - This saves so much time and faffing. Just put it in a plant sprayer and blast away

Package straight from the primary:- Dont bother with a secondary. Saves time and faffing.

Bulk prime in the primary:- Saves time and faffing racking to a bottling bucket. Just make sure your careful stirring the priming sugar in and leave for 30 mins so any disturbed trub settles back down.

Mini Kegs: - Just like big 5L bottles. Cuts bottling day down by loads
 
Not tried it yet, but hop aroma oil instead of dry hopping would be one time saver.

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30 minutes boil. Makes absolutely no difference as far as I can gather.

This is a good one. The only possible negative (that I've read about) is that amongst the various reasons for the boil is to stablise the beer for shelf life. I image the longer the boil the longer the shelf life? Not a problem if your beer lasts no more than a few weeks like mine does

You can also do a shorter mash time
 
Re-pitch from the trub, fill 1/3 of a primed bottle with trub then fill it with fresh wort and rinse it out twice into the FV. Goes off like a rocket

Good call, Larry. I'd forgotten about that. I dont even do the rinsing. I just pour some trub into a jar after racking the beer off the yeast cake, then chuck it into the wort
 
The problem with re-pitching onto old trub is the fact that the old trub contains all sorts of dead **** as well as live yeast. Do you really want that in your new brew? Rinse your old yeast, it only takes a few mins.
2 x 2li glass jars come in handy
 
True. Without a sparge you wont wash all the sugars off, but with no sparge you add extra grain (I've seen various figures, around 25% extra) to account for this.

So thats 25% cost on top of your grain bill?...So if you balance that out with the cost of heating your sparge water?
Trying to do some "back of a fag packet calculations" It probably costs £1.00 to heat the sparge liquor, as apposed to £5.00 (grain Bill) +25%
Works out at £1.25 ish
 
So thats 25% cost on top of your grain bill?...So if you balance that out with the cost of heating your sparge water?
Trying to do some "back of a fag packet calculations" It probably costs �£1.00 to heat the sparge liquor, as apposed to �£5.00 (grain Bill) +25%
Works out at �£1.25 ish

Oh, absolutely. It's going to cost more as that 25% extra grain bill is going to need 25% extra mash liquor so heating it pushes up the cost by 25% (?) But this is the, 'Lazy Brewers Guide'. Cost isnt a factor at all, just ease of brewing.Lets assume you have an infinate brewing budget. This is all about the easiest and least faffing about brew day possible. I'm quite enjoying this thread so I might start a, 'The skinflint Brewers Guide' to find out what tips everyone has got to make the most cost effective brew possible. So that wouldnt have a no-sparge 'tip'
 
The problem with re-pitching onto old trub is the fact that the old trub contains all sorts of dead **** as well as live yeast. Do you really want that in your new brew? Rinse your old yeast, it only takes a few mins.
2 x 2li glass jars come in handy

I agree, this isnt best practice but there's no doubt it works. It may not make an award winning beer but I'd definately say it has a place in the lazy brewers armoury
 
Sanitise bottle caps...always...I chuck the lot into my bottle washer thingy filled with star san ,rinse the bottles and hang them on the tree then just pick the caps out as needed when bottling.
 

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