Homebrewing can be very physical and, unlike commercial breweries, we don’t have employees to shoulder the burden. For many brewers, the process is manageable, but it can be challenging for a person with a disability, someone with short stature, or an older brewer with a bad shoulder or back, for instance.
Some physical limitations can’t be reasonably overcome—don’t bet on me running a 4-minute mile, for example—but making beer shouldn’t fall into that category. With a little ingenuity, we can make brewing more accessible. Think about the normal activities of brewing an extract batch: boiling the wort, setting up the fermentor, managing fermentation, and bottling or kegging. Each of those steps can be problematic if you’re of shorter stature or can’t lift heavy weights.
Spotting the Problems
At first glance, the boil itself seems fairly simple, but seeing into the kettle and reaching in to stir the wort each require height and leverage that are fairly difficult for a short person or someone in a wheelchair. Once the boil is done, the cooled wort must be transferred into a fermentor, which will likely need to be moved out of the way. Moving a full 5-gallon (19 l) carboy or bucket takes some serious muscle. Lifting the carboy or bucket to rack to secondary or to a bottling bucket is even harder. Following the typical process from start to finish involves moving a full carboy at least once and lifting it at least twice for racking and packaging. Bottling requires another bout of lifting, while kegging requires dragging the keg to your fridge. It’s a great workout that can help you burn off some of your beer calories, but let’s look at how to make this easier and reduce the physical stress.
Solutions
First of all, I’d guess I’m not the only one who’s envisioned building a pulley-based system for lifting full carboys, maybe something like an engine hoist. Those ideas are fun to kick around while sipping a beer, but we don’t need to be MacGyver to make some obvious improvements. The first thing is to put that boil within reach. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) specifies a cooktop height of 34 inches (86 cm), which is a couple of inches lower than standard 36-inch (91 cm) counters. We can combine this with a shorter, wider diameter kettle (perhaps a kettle that looks more like a roasting pan) that won’t require a stepstool to control the boil and add ingredients.
The carboys are a bigger challenge, so why not get rid of them? Switching to a conical fermentor, ideally mounted on casters, solves most of the other problems. Racking isn’t an issue, because the trub can be drained off the bottom rather than moving the full volume of beer around. Even better, it’s possible to package directly from the fermentor. Smaller 3-gallon (11.3 l) kegs are easier to move around than their 5- gallon (19 l) bigger brothers, but if you prefer bottles, then swing-tops work great and don’t require the arm strength of a capper.
Let’s say that you aren’t quite ready to invest in a conical fermentor. An alternative is to switch to fermenting in 5-gallon (19 l) corny kegs. A quick disconnect fitting on the gas inlet port can be attached to a blow-off tube. There are also replacement lids that are pre-drilled for a rubber stopper to use with an airlock. Connect CO2 to the inlet (swap in a normal lid, if necessary), and you can pump out the trub and later transfer the beer to another keg or bottling bucket. I haven’t found a ready-made dolly for moving soda kegs, but that would be fairly easy to build.
Conical fermentors and keg fermenting both offer advantages beyond making your brew space and process more accessible, namely reducing opportunities for oxidation and infection, but that’s just a bonus. The bottom line is that heavy lifting shouldn’t discourage you from brewing. Take some inspiration from these ideas and reduce the physical stress in your brew day. And please, add your own ideas to the comment section below. At 4 feet 9 inches, the Craft Beer & Brewing managing editor will thank you!