aging beer?

[idiot]

I need about 5 kegs a month of beer. I currently only have 2 fermenting buckets.

I am really having a hard time with this aging conditioning beer thing.

So lets say next time I go to the store, I buy 3 buckets.

I brew 5 batches in one week and fill 5 ferment buckets.

So I am going to keg one after one week 2nd after 2 weeks 3rd after 3 weeks etc. I only have one keg, and yes I can drink it in a week.

I use these crazy dry ale yeasts and the airlock stops bubbling in 2-3 days most of the time.

What happens in the next 4 weeks you're supposed to ideally ferment it 4.

Is there like a chart week one, week two. Will this be a good experiment to conduct?

I am not a troll, I'm a novice brewer that only recently bought the proper equipment. Before this i used to brew, but the equipment and sanitation was terrifying. Aging beer in leaking broken dirty pet bottles just didn't seem like a good idea, my buckets were used too and pest would get in them.

 

[TheMadKing]

Not one to judge, but man you drink a lot of beer...

The only way to get ahead is to get more kegs and have a pipeline going where you have 2 full kegs and 2-3 beers in primary. It will help a ton

Yeast is still cleaning up byproducts like acetaldehyde and diacetyl for a few days after the bubbling stops. Kegging after 1 week is probably slightly too soon, but may be ok.

 

[jschein]

You seriously need to up your game. 10 gallon batches will get you there fast. Get yourself 6 buckets and a 15 gallon kettle and you will be there soon enough

 

[Lefou]

For me, a typical 5gal batch takes two to three weeks in primary. I bottle on the first immediate weekend. Carbonation takes 3-4 weeks. Turn-around is slow.
I don't have the bottling or drinking capacity to turn around beers once a week. It isn't favorable to my 52 year-old head or my wallet.

 

[idiot]

The original plan was use my 2 buckets and give them 10 days to ferment. So potentially I can get 6 done in a month. I might get a couple more buckets if i have 4 buckets, 5 batches a month with 10 fermentation time. I'll be all set. As for getting more equipment, 15 gallon kettle, my stove will take about a week to boil that. Second keg might be nice I still don't know how am I going to fit the first one in i mean that are groceries in there. I also find it hard to believe that someone good at brewing would use bottles. The bottle are absolutely disgusting. One blows up the other one doesn't have enough carbonation in it. I stopped brewing because of the bottle fiasco.

 

[Sadu]

I do something kinda similar to what you are talking about, but 1 gallon batches and a mini-keg.

Here is how I would approach it. Let's say you want to turnaround 1 batch per week.
You need 3x fermentor buckets and 2x kegs, plus a kegerator/keezer that holds 2+ kegs. If you have 3 kegs, you get more variety on tap at any time.

Starting situation - beer in all kegs and fermentors

Saturday process...
- Take whatever is leftover in keg1 and bottle it (suggest counter-pressure fill into PET bottles via carbonation cap since it's easy)
- Clean empty keg1
- Fill keg1 with contents of fermentor1, put into fridge until chilled
- Clean fermentor1
- Brew new batch in fermentor1
- Once keg1 is chilled, shake for 2 mins @ 30psi then leave for 3+ days at normal pressure to carbonate
- Start drinking from Keg2 which should be fully carbonated
- If keg2 kicks early, start drinking from keg1 (should be ready from Tuesday onwards)

If you brew every week at any given time you should have this...
Fermentor 1 = freshly brewed wort going through primary fermentation
Fermentor 2 = 1-2 week old brew, primary fermentation is done and beer is cleaning up
Fermentor 3 = 2-3 week old brew, add your dry-hops, keg this at your leisure
Keg 1 = 3-4 week old uncarbonated beer, being force carbed, ready towards the end of the week
Keg 2 = 4-5 week old beer, fully carbed and good drinking
Bottles = a variety of leftovers from past batches, gives extra capacity for those "heavy weeks"

I run this system with 2 plastic primary fermentors, 5 glass secondaries and 1 mini-keg. The extra secondaries let me bulk age the beer for months at a time if I want (I do lots of lagers). I don't mind a bit of downtime with my keg, so I'll transfer to the keg on Monday and it's nicely carbed by the weekend.

You basically end up with a bunch of brews sitting in primary/secondary and you can pick which one to move into the keg. Hoppy ales you turn around quicker, high gravity lagers you leave for longer.

 

[Sansnom]

You seriously need to up your game. 10 gallon batches will get you there fast. Get yourself 6 buckets and a 15 gallon kettle and you will be there soon enough

Get you where? To liver failure?

 

[jmartie13]

Troll.

 

[idiot]

ipe: every 6 month somebody dies in my building i'm drunk now but i want to cry that is all i want to do i'm crying right now someone died yesterday

 

[FatDragon]

Bottling's fine. It's more work and I'm always having to track down more bottles, but it doesn't take a lot to get and keep bottles clean, and a little effort and technique makes it pretty easy to get relatively consistent carbonation across a batch of bottles.

For your situation if you're not trolling: like others said, a couple more buckets and another keg or two will allow you to go through a keg a week without running out or sacrificing quality. Ten gallon batches on the stove are a possibility if you get a heat stick and use it to help reach your boil, and that would save you having to brew every week. Then again, remember that if you're in the States, the rarely- (if ever-)enforced law is 100 gallons/year if you live alone or 200 gallons/year for households with more than one adult, so a keg a week would put you over that threshold.

 

[Sansnom]

i'm drunk now

Not surprising....

 

[Gravity]

For your situation if you're not trolling: like others said, a couple more buckets and another keg or two will allow you to go through a keg a week without running out or sacrificing quality. Ten gallon batches on the stove are a possibility if you get a heat stick and use it to help reach your boil, and that would save you having to brew every week. Then again, remember that if you're in the States, the rarely- (if ever-)enforced law is 100 gallons/year if you live alone or 200 gallons/year for households with more than one adult, so a keg a week would put you over that threshold.

This is where I was heading with this. It sounds like you have aspirations of going commercial or selling booze to people in your building or to your friends, or selling it in general (which who cares), I think we all need you to come clean about your intentions that way we can give you the best advice. If you're a new brewer, I personally believe you are in over your head and with all due respect to your potential drinking habit (or drinking habits of others) you should probably focus on quality over quantity, then when you are ready for an upgrade do so.

Going off the fact that you are a new brewer and what seems impatient as hell (not trolling just call it what it is) you will probably make a alot of rookie mistakes (infections, equipment failures, bad beer..etc) and the time frame in which you want to produce your beer will not allow for corrections and learning.

Why do you want to produce so much beer? I do not believe its for self consumption, and I do believe there is a underlying aspect to the information you're trying to get out of the group that you're not sharing; again, who cares, we're here to help

If you're aim is to sell your beer (under the table or otherwise ) it would not be smart to rush the process as you could potentially put people in danger. Its one thing to get yourself sick off of homemade beer, however its another when you are getting others sick. , not that anyone ever gets sick of homemade beer..lol..however its irresponsible and the law will get you at some point.

Are you in the States? because as mentioned by Fat Dragon, what you are doing can not be done.

As home brewers we all want to help and can hide behind forum handles and the all rest of it, however i'm sure we all get annoyed when there's something fishy going on.

 

[madscientist451]

I need about 5 kegs a month of beer.
I only have one keg, and yes I can drink it in a week.

The only logical solution is to cut back on your drinking.
The truth hurts, I know, but you are going to put yourself in an early grave.

 

[idiot]

Colin died. I live in subsidized housing, I drink the equivalent of 5x5 gallon kegs it's costing me I want to save up some money. No I don't think i can make enough to sell. I can make less, I just started this $800 spend on equipment so far. First batch started on Thursday 4-5 days ago. It looks okay but probably needs another 5 days. Tastes okay, I drank the gravity measuring sample.

 

[FatDragon]

Colin died. I live in subsidized housing, I drink the equivalent of 5x5 gallon kegs it's costing me I want to save up some money. No I don't think i can make enough to sell. I can make less, I just started this $800 spend on equipment so far. First batch started on Thursday 4-5 days ago. It looks okay but probably needs another 5 days. Tastes okay, I drank the gravity measuring sample.

- Want 5 gallons of beer a week? Do what I suggested and get a couple more fermenters and another keg or two. Do 10 gallon batches either by doing a 10 gallon boil or doing a smaller boil of stronger wort and then top it off in the fermenters. Get bulk ingredients and devise a cheap and simple house recipe for bi-weekly brewing. Reuse your yeast from batch to batch.

- Want to improve your life? Cut back on the drinking or give it up entirely if you can't drink in moderation.

- Trolling? Get a life.