How Long Does It Take to Make a Batch of Beer?

As a home brewer, there is one question that almost every non-brewer asks me: "How long does it take to make a batch of beer?" This question might mean any of the following, or all of them:

How much time and effort goes into brewing and bottling a batch of beer?
How long does it take to go from grain, water, yeast, and hops to a finished glass of beer?
How long does the brewing and bottling process take, end-to-end?

They might even be asking a combination of these questions.

The unfortunate part is that you can't give a single answer to the question. Brewing effort is affected by:

The brewer's experience and skill level
The brewer's equipment
Whether the recipe is an extract brew, all-grain brew, mini-mash, or extract with steeping grains
The temperature in the brewing area (e.g, if it's cold, it takes longer to heat water)
The recipe being made
The yeast strain being used
The availability of temperature control during fermentation

What I usually tell people is that "for me, for a typical beer, with a typical recipe, using my usual equipment and processes, it will take me about 5-7 hours of effort and 2-4 weeks of elapsed time to produce a 5-gallon batch of beer. This varies a bit depending on the style, the complexity of the recipe, and so on."

If you have a friend or family member who brews, they may give you a very different answer. Don't make the mistake of thinking that they are lying to you. Someone with an automated brewing system like the Picobrew Zymatic might only have a couple of hours of effort involved in a brew and be able to go from grain to bottle in 2-3 weeks. Someone else, with a heavily manual setup, a low-wattage electric heating element, and a complex all-grain recipe might tell you it's an 8-12 hour process and takes months of elapsed time to produce a single beer.

I think the fastest I've produced an unfermented beer with my current setup was about 5 hours. That beer took a week to ferment and a week to bottle condition before it was drinkable.

The slowest a batch has taken was a 6-7 hour brewing process, followed by two weeks of fermentation, a month of secondary fermentation, 90 minutes of bottling, and a full year of bottle conditioning. (That beer won't be ready until April 2017.)

Comments

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