Getting too comfortable brewing!!

[ZmannR2]

So this is a new problem I have come across. I’m now too comfortable brewing. My system has finally reached peak level of ease and comfort. It’s my dream system that I envisioned for so long and after a few brews into it, well frankly, IM SUPER COMFORTABLE for the first time!!!

So comfortable, it almost feels boring hahahaha. I know that’s a good thing but it’s just a weird feeling being completely RELAXED during a brew day. It’s sooooooo smooth and perfect I love everything about it, BUT upgrading and finding easier ways to improve your brewday is half the fun in brewing.

I guess now is time I focus on the recipes rather than the equipment.

But has anyone else experienced this? Lol

Here's a thread showing my current setup:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/video-of-my-current-ebiab-setup.646162/

 

[DonGavlar]

I'm yet to experience the feeling of complete satisfaction. Every time I make a nice expensive shiny upgrade that make the brew day that much better, there seems to be a newer, shinier more expensive upgrade that catches me eye. My Mrs is a bit worried where I'll stop!

But.. that's what I love about brewing.

 

[Redpappy]

Im not sure if this helps or not, but, I am too new to even be close to being comfortable. My thoughts is if you are that comfortable with your process and if you haven't started yet, its time to start experimenting. Or, you could enjoy the nice relaxing brew days and just enjoy what comes after it that much more.

 

[Kyle]

I've recently been having that same feeling and I love it! I still have to make adjustments and all that during brew day to keep me busy but there is no more panic mode when i think I forgot something or anything. Just going at a nice pace walking instead of running around and just relaxed.

It took a few years to get the equipment I have now and I find myself sometimes just staring at my brew stand making up things to change for the heck of it. If only I can get my kids to do the clean up after brew day ill be in heaven [emoji16]

 

[filthyastronaut]

I'm pretty comfortable with my primitive equipment! My process improvements are usually smaller, and either cost me 5 bucks (like a garden hose sink adapter for indoor chilling) or don't cost anything at all. Eventually I want to get nicer stuff, but my one kettle and plastic crap makes good beer and I have fun doing it.

 

[Zimm9]

Saturday I managed to have a brew day after an almost 3 month lapse. Kept thinking to myself that I must be forgetting something because it went so smoothly. I have some upgrades planned so that will surely shake things up for me, though.

 

[mattdee1]

After 3 years of brewing, I'm still using the same core setup I started with: 15gal kettle, Blichmann propane burner, 10gal Igloo cooler mash tun, and plastic bucket fermentors. I'm at a point where I'd be willing to spend a fair bit of cash, and even my wife would happily support ways of making things smoother (such as my recent entry into kegging,) but if I do, the upgrade better do at least one of the following without sacrificing anything else or causing storage/space headaches:

1) make some painful/annoying aspect of my process much less so

2) make my brew day shorter

3) make my beer better


I have sniffed around at ways to "graduate" out of my low-brow setup, but I keep stopping myself because when I step back and look at it objectively, I feel like most of it just amounts to spending hundreds of dollars on "bling" without much true added value per the above criteria. For example, I could build a single tier keggle rig but it just doesn't seem to be money well spent for my purposes. I am just fine moving fluids around manually as I've been doing, and adding new chillers and pumps to clean is probably the absolute worst thing I could do for my enjoyment factor.

Basically what I've come to is, the only "true" upgrade for me would be one where I can move to all-electric, in my basement so I can brew year round with much less hassle. Until I'm ready to spend the money to make that move -- which will be significant, because it will require lots of new gear and reworking parts of my basement as well -- then I'm staying primitive.

As a stop gap, I'm working on building a "brew cart." It will cost me only about $100 for materials and a few hours to build, but setup and teardown are 2 of my least favorite aspects of a brew day, so the cart should ease the pain on those fronts (see criteria #1 and #2).

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

I'm pretty comfortable when I brew... My system isn't automated, but it's a single-tier system with pumps. I find myself being bored sometimes when I'm brewing because there's not enough to do.

Oddly enough, I still procrastinate regarding scheduling brew days, regardless of how comfortable it is.

 

[MaxStout]

I get that way on brew days. But it's usually an hour of complacency, then I suddenly realize I need to do something...pronto. Long periods of inactivity, punctuated with a few hectic moments.

But when the process becomes a little too second-nature, time to challenge yourself, maybe with some more complicated recipes.

 

[day_trippr]

I was pretty comfortable the last year having figured out how my new 3v2p rig performed and getting my BS2 equipment profile dialed in. Brew days had become routine.

Then...I submitted to the Spousal Unit's desire for a bigly home remodeling job, which displaced my brewery from early September to this week.
Firing up for the first time in six months I was tripping over myself constantly. Stuff that was virtually automatic suddenly required actual thought before doing.

And there was getting accustomed to my new brew space, which is best described as a galley. The old space was quite square and movement was fairly unrestricted, I could spot a bucket or a hose coil pretty much anywhere and have plenty of room to not trip over them. Now they need to be strategically placed, which took some stumbling over them to figure out.

Finally I had a couple of infrastructure issues. My exhaust blower suffered a thermal shutdown as I was finishing up the pre-boil on my brewing liquor, which was due to an imbalance in the ducting between the BK side and the HLT side. Made an adjustment that brought the blower back to life, then immediately had a pump fail to start due to my failure to clean them thoroughly before leaving them alone for six months. So I had to stop everything, pull pump heads, clean them up and put them back on before continuing.

Woof.

Anyway...I got the 10 gallons put up but checking the clock I added almost two hours to the brew day. Hoping to knock that back to "normal" on the next brew this weekend...

Cheers!

 

[Hammy71]

Brew day is just another day anymore. After 10+ years and 100+ of brews on my system....it's a breeze.

 

[zonkman]

Know what you mean. Split batches (with notes / recipe development) and sours is where I'm heading, soon.

 

[ZmannR2]

Thanks guys! I think I really do need to use this new found comfort to focus on refining my craft and experimenmting with crazy beers for sure

 

[kh54s10]

I'm very comfortable with my traditional 3 vessel gravity rig. Not nearly so automatic but I have done enough brews that it is pretty much without thought.

You have a lot of crickets, I hope outside.

How is pouring boiling water on your grass working out?

 

[ZmannR2]

Here's a thread showing my current setup btw:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forum/threads/video-of-my-current-ebiab-setup.646162/

 

[ZmannR2]

I'm very comfortable with my traditional 3 vessel gravity rig. Not nearly so automatic but I have done enough brews that it is pretty much without thought.

You have a lot of crickets, I hope outside.

How is pouring boiling water on your grass working out?

Hahaha It's created a bit of a dead spot but my plan is to make that spot out of rock that will allow the water to sink down into the earth without killing the surrounding grass

 

[Jtk78]

I'm not there yet. I'm usually doing 2 batches at once, so something usually needs to be getting done. I feel like I do good through the boil of the first batch, then the day seems to take forever to finish up. Every time I brew though, I usually find some small thing to improve the day.

 

[Smellyglove]

tbh any lifting or pulling of anything would be too much for me during the actual brew. Set and forget, come back when my timer on the phone says it's time for changing config on two hoses, then get the wort into the boil kettle. For me the real hassle is to weigh out the hops, especially if it's from a new bag, because the vacuum-sealer cant re-seal those bags, so i have to make new bags which it can seal. Cleaning is ok, that's sort of post-brew. Takes a few minutes of actual work.

But when doing hefe's I need to up the flow of the pump once during the session and actually be there and reconfigure the hoses twice.

 

[seatazzz]

I started feeling fairly comfortable with my brewing once I got my brewday down to less than 5 hours start to finish, including cleaning. Doing MIAB helps immensely both with the mash and cleanup. To the point that when I'm done, especially after an early morning brew, I almost feel let down. So I'm thinking my next move will be to partigyle so I can do two batches at once, or at least buy enough ingredients to do two full brews in one day. Maybe then I'll be satisfied....nah.

 

[BrewMan13]

I find this happens to me as well...a smooth brew day is almost like "...that's it?" So I intentionally try new techniques and processes, etc. This year I'm going to try my hand at lagering, decoction mashing, and parti-gyle brewing to keep things interesting

 

[beersk]

I'm comfortable after almost 10 years of brewing, but there's still the stress of making sure my fermenter is clean and sanitized and also since I use the low o2 method, there's the stress of making sure I don't splash or mess up the mash in, etc. Then there's the clean up after the wort is in the fermenter. That's my least favorite part.
Some days, I'm just not in the mood for brewing, as easy as it is.

 

[springinloose1]

Not sure if you already do this or not, but when I found myself bored with brewing because I knew my set up and either bought or built all the gadgets I needed, I embarked on water chemistry and started keeping track of pH and trying to emulate different water profiles so I could get my beers as close to the style I'm brewing as possible...not just simply adding some gypsum and calling it a day... like really studying the different water profile spreadsheets available to look for similarities/differences and go from there. I found a whole new level of O.C.D with brewing and it's fun again! I feel as if I took one more step in the right direction to brewing the best beer I can.

Cheers!

 

[brewcat]

I'm comfortable with my system. Brew days are usually smooth. Fine by me. Now my main focus has been keeping an inventory of ingredients. It's pretty cool to have a yeast bank.

I think the next equipment upgrade will be a motor for the grain mill or better chilling system. Then maybe do some things with the bar.

 

[cmac62]

I'm definitely comfortable on brew days, but It would be nice to make fewer trips from the brew shed to the yard where I do the brewing. I am planning a brew stand. My LHBS makes and sells great single tier stands with pumps and recirc, but that seems like overkill to me. I think i'm going to go with a gravity system so I can fly sparge. We'll see

 

[myelo]

For brew day, get yourself some cheap underwear that doesn't fit well. Problem solved.

 

[bronzdragon]

I'm in a status of flux right now, as far as brewing goes. At one point several years ago, I had hit your phase of being in the groove with my brewing system, then I upgraded to a SABCO. I had to completely relearn a new flow of brewing. While the basics of brewing were the same, it was done differently. After brewing for several years on the system, I never really got completely comfortable with it. I recently purchased a Grainfather in the hope that I can cut down on my cleaning time, etc and make my brew day go a little smoother. So, there is another brew flow to learn. I am also downsizing my batches, so that I can brew more often (gasp, I know, but my wife and I can't drink it fast enough, and I would prefer to brew more often.)

Anyway, that's my two cents, also make sure that you don't get lax about your cleaning/sanitizing flow. I have found that it's an easy thing to have happen and you'll end up regretting cutting corners on sanitizing.

/cheers

 

[aprichman]

I went from a 3 vessel gravity fed setup to BIAB. The process is so much simpler And faster. I doubt I will ever switch back.

I don't really think there's any need for recirculating the mash. I have a 6 gallon PID controlled electric recirculating setup. I found the temperature variation to be significant between the mash return (this is where the probe is setup) and the middle of the mash tun. Throwing a thick fleece blanket over my propane driven 10 gallon BIAB setup gives me more consistent temperatures and the efficiency is the same at 75%.

 

[ZmannR2]

Not sure if you already do this or not, but when I found myself bored with brewing because I knew my set up and either bought or built all the gadgets I needed, I embarked on water chemistry and started keeping track of pH and trying to emulate different water profiles so I could get my beers as close to the style I'm brewing as possible...not just simply adding some gypsum and calling it a day... like really studying the different water profile spreadsheets available to look for similarities/differences and go from there. I found a whole new level of O.C.D with brewing and it's fun again! I feel as if I took one more step in the right direction to brewing the best beer I can.

Cheers!

Dude, this! That's a damn great idea and something I have yet to even touch. I just simply filter my water first before brewing. Thanks for the idea!