Pre-Brew-Ritual

Make sure I have grain weighed and my propane, RO water, starter (or dry yeast packets) and O2 in stock, and empty better bottles/speidel/oak barrels. Brew day involves weighing water salt additions, milling grain and measuring hop and kettle additions, in addition to brewing 2+ batches. I also fill an 18 gallon bucket with sanitizer and use it to sanitize throughout the day (usually doing other stuff). The plate chiller, pump and hop rocket get a cleaning with oxyclean, then water, then sanitizer with my aquarium pump during the last 30 min of the boil. Pretty run of the mill stuff.

The only real traditions I have are taking wayyyy more time than I originally told my wife, who by this point assumes I'll be brewing all day, putting up a baby gate at the back door so the dogs can hangout in the sun and sniff the porch air while I brew and getting dinner delivered and eating with wife.

Pretty boring, no pre-brew rub out sessions or ceremonial deuces, just brewing.

 

Most of my pre-brew rituals include lots of jumping around, shouting and smacking other guys on the ass.

Oh, wait, that was the last basketball / football games I watched.

 

Ha! That's pretty much my routine as well, except for the breakfast sandwich. I may add that though. I usually skip breakfast and have frozen white castle during the mash or lauter.

 

Chicken's can fly?

 

1. Treat my water the night before.
2. Open beersmith before brewing.
3. Brew

I sanitize my fermenter during the boil or while cooling the wort.

 

Not real well, which makes the haruspice part much more important than the augur part : )

 

We get started early! putt he water out the night before, and get up at 5:40Am, to start the mash water heating, so that it's all mashing before the toddler gets up. IN theory, sparging before he's awake.

 

I'm pretty good at always starting later than planned.

Grain is usually milled ahead of time in a bucket or bag, I get my water, and drag all my shit out. Normally sit down and re think if I feel like making a damn mess today..

Get up and drag more shit out. Start heating the strike water, and then measure out my water additions and hops and whatever else I'm adding and put them into my cups.

Then I sit down again, and REALLY ponder if I want to go through with it again, or just take a nap.

I usually end up brewing, but only because I'll get bored and want a beer, and then feel the need to brew.

But rest assured... if I plan to brew say.. Saturday, I'll try and get stuff Friday night out, but normally, I'll end up waiting until after noon before I even heat up strike water and mash in, and it's normally closer to 5-6 when I'm done.. pretty much wasted the whole damn day.

 

Nothing pre-brew, but we do have a ritual:

We always listen to Judas Priest's album Sad Wings of Destiny while we clean up when we're done brewing.