Need help!!!

Hello! I'm an American who currently lives in Sweden and I need your help! I'm new to the home brew scene but am in desperate need of good beer, so I've decided to attempt to make it myself! Here comes a list of questions
- I need to scale it down due to space so I want to make 3 gallon batches, how to best convert all the tasty 5 gallon recipes?
- Should I just cook up 3 gallons of wort or split it? If so, is there an easy way to calculate the amount of wort water? How will that affect the amount of ingredients?
- Any other suggestions or thoughts in regards to scaling down?

I will be using extract, seems the best way to learn. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thank you for your time

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Recipes are generally scalable. Multiply everything by 0.6

Alternatively you could easily split a 5 gallon batch into two 2.5 gallon batches. I guess your best approach would depend on your equipment setup.

Welcome. I'm only a few steps ahead of you on the experience ladder, but I've done a fair number of batches, all extract, in a couple of different batch sizes. The easiest way to scale down from 5 to 3 gallons is to multiply everything by 0.6. This will definitely get you in the ballpark. You can do either partial or full boils for 3 gallon batches. If you want to do full boils bear in mind that some of the water will evaporate during the boil so you will have to start with more than 3 gallons, depending on your equipment and boil time. You can always top off to 3 gallons later, as well.

Scaling is generally pretty easy and I recommend that as a simple way to get going. There are brewing software programs out there that might be of help in the future if you want to create your own recipes. I use BeerSmith myself, but there are several popular ones out there.

Thank you for your quick response
One more question:
None of the recipes I find specify how much yeast to use, will a software figure that out as well? I assume there is such a thing as too much...
Thank you for all your help

Sent from my HTC One using Home Brew mobile app

swexican said:

Thank you for your quick response
One more question:
None of the recipes I find specify how much yeast to use, will a software figure that out as well? I assume there is such a thing as too much...
Thank you for all your help

Sent from my HTC One using Home Brew mobile app

Click to expand...

1 packet of dry, or one vial/pack of liquid will be good for a half-batch. It's a lot harder to overpitch, than it is to underpitch.

That said, there ARE software programs online that can help you determine the proper amount of yeast.

mrmalty.com and yeastcalculator.com are two that I know off the top of my head.

It seems you are really new to homebrewing altogether. I highly recommend you check out the beginners forum here at HBT, and you may want to pick up a good book on homebrewing, like John Palmer's "How to Brew", CHarlie Papazian's "The Complete Joy of Homebrewing", or "Homebrewing for Dummies" (It's actually a pretty nice homebrewing book!)

Palmer's "How to Brew" is also available for FREE online at www.howtobrew.com. It's the first edition and there are a few things that he's changed in his instructions these days, like use of a secondary, etc. in general it covers the hobby well, but for the best information, I recommend updating to a newer version on book.

I will definitely looking into your recommendations!
Thank you so much

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