Brew Day Checklist

I was listening to a recent episode of The Session on the brewing network about Faster Brewing techniques. The guest was Chris Graham from Morebeer and he had some great suggestions for speeding up a brew day. Some I already implement like batch sparging but there where others that caught my attention and I wanted to share one here.

The idea that most intrigued me was the idea of a brew day checklist. This is something I haven't used before but I immediately thought it would be useful. I mean who hasn't had that Oh Shit moment while brewing because you forgot to do something? Usually for me this moment is realizing I forgot to add metabisulfite to the water to get rid of Chlorine and Chloramines before mashing or I forgot my salt additions during the mash.

So I decided to create my own checklist and this is what I came up with. Maybe it will be useful to someone else.

Brew Day Checklist

• Heat Mash Water and add Campden Tablet, Acidify If necessary

• Weigh and Crush Grains

• Add Salts to mash water and dough in

• Heat Sparge Water

• Wash Lauter Tun

• Vorlauf and Batch Sparge

• Start Boil

• Prep Hop Additions

• Clean Mash Tun and Lauter Tun

• Sanitize Fermentor, Airlocks, Aeration Stone or Wine Degasser and Hose

• Add Immersion Chiller or hook up pump and Plate Chiller and Circulate to Sanitize

• Add Whirlfloc

• Whirlpool if necessary

• Chill

• Aerate

• Add Yeast

• Clean Boil Kettle