What does this mean?

[29thfloor]

I was just reading an article about how Victory is stopping production of Old Horizontal barley wine until they can expand to a bigger location. This was the reason given:

“It’s very time consuming to produce since we can only take the first runnings of our wort,” he said.

Does that mean they only use the first runnings on all their beers? And this would require more than that so it takes too long and ties up the equipment for too long? Would that mean that they are basically doing no sparge?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but that explanation just confused me.

Here's a link to the article:
http://www.brewbound.com/news/2011/victory-brewing-up-40-percent-in-2011

 

[Rivenin]

sounds like they are gyling their barley wines from what i can derive from that article

 

[warex]

The article sounds like they need the time and space for more profitable beers.

They have had a lot of growth and this is a slower to make beer.

 

[dpittard]

That's odd, and a very good question. I wonder what's wrong with the second runnings.

 

[terrapinj]

perhaps a limitation in the size of their BK?

they need more concentrated wort so that they don't need to boil as much off?

 

[29thfloor]

Seems to me the majority of the extra time would be in fermentation/aging the beer, which is why it seemed odd that anything about the mash would be considered "very time consuming". I'm thinking the quote probably makes more sense in the context of whatever conversation they were having.

 

[david_42]

Sounds like they are limited by the size of their mash tun. They could partigyle, but they may not have storage for barleywine wort while the second runnings are being cooked. I would expect that they fly sparge most of their beers. The other problem is they may not have a stock beer that matches up with the leftovers from the barleywine.

 

[scottland]

It means they can't sparge their barleywine at all to get the gravity they want. So all that extra volume of wort you'd get from sparging, they aren't getting.

AKA, their mash tun isn't big enough.

 

[arg]

It means they can't sparge their barleywine at all to get the gravity they want. So all that extra volume of wort you'd get from sparging, they aren't getting.

AKA, their mash tun isn't big enough.

...we got a winner!