I’ve been thinking more and more about making the jump into all grain brewing. The biggest drawback to me right now is the time added on to a brew day to wait for the grains to steep, er, mash.

I’ve already decided on batch sparging to begin with. At first blush from reading it appears much less fussy as well as quicker. From what I’ve read it also consistently produces high conversion yields. So what is stopping me?

Besides the added hour or two, I need to find myself a decent cooler. I have a blue one … somewhere, maybe in the crawl space. I am pretty sure that cooler is still full of my “collection” of growlers that I fully intend on putting back on a shelf with the rest of my bar-ware, just as soon as I have some place to put that shelf. It would also help to have a working kegerator in the same room to justify taking up shelf space with glassware. I digress.

The other part is not having a 7 or 8 gallon brew kettle. Yes, I do have two (or three?) five gallon kettles, and sure, I could split the batch and boil on two burners, or try for a Texas two step type brew day… Ooh, I wonder, since batch sparging is done with two sets of rinsing, right? Take the heavier first run and boil that, and hop the second lighter gravity to get more usage from the hops?

Maybe it isn’t as far fetched as I thought. I do like hoppy beer.

I wonder if Midwest would like some of my stimulus money?

Yes, dear, I am kidding.

Cheers!