Photos from first ONE gallon brew day...

**DubbelDach** · 01-10-2011, 04:56 PM

So I have been thinking about this for a while... Maybe it's constantly seeing Dogfish Head to "test batches in the Rehoboth brewpub" on Brew Masters... Maybe it was Appalachian Brewing Co. doing one offs in Camp Hill and Gettysburg while the main production was in Harrisburg when I worked there... But I have been wanting to build a small brewery for one-gallon test batches.

Used 6 qt buckets that I got at a restaurant store for my fermentors. Was about $4 each including the lids. I drilled them out and added grommets for an airlock. Cheap and food-safe. Also bought a 9 qt Igloo mash tun. I drilled this on my own and used the valve and pieces of my big boy manifold to create a mini-mani so to speak... Instead of my large kettles, I used my wife's 8 qt stock pot for the boil and also a 4.5 qt pot for heating water. Everything was the perfect size.

I did 45 min mashes (a friend thought that was the least amount of time you could do for conversion), and 30 min boils. Any 60 min hop additions, I moved to 30 mins and increased the amount to get the same IBUs. I overlapped the batches and was done in 4 hours. All in all a pretty nice day!

All 20 pics here: http://s281.photobucket.com/albums/kk238/shiplax27/Mini-Brew%20Day/

But here are some highlights:

The mini mash tun with cobbled together manifold...

First mini mash

Runnings... The deep sink was nice...

**DubbelDach** · 01-10-2011, 04:57 PM

Boiling...

First beer chilling, second beer mashing.

Both brews done!

HexKrak · 01-10-2011, 05:00 PM

That automatic soap dispenser over the runnings would make me very nervous!

Other than that, that's a cool little setup you've got there

.

**DubbelDach** · 01-10-2011, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HexKrak

That automatic soap dispenser over the runnings would make me very nervous!

Other than that, that's a cool little setup you've got there

.

Wow... I didn't even think about that for some reason! Holy crap, I dodged a bullet..

**Homercidal** · 01-10-2011, 05:15 PM

Christmas Story Ale! (Tastes like Lifebouy...)

**GaryJohn** · 01-10-2011, 06:15 PM

It's so cute!! lol

**Burgs** · 01-10-2011, 06:22 PM

Are you gonna bottle these small batches then? Nice setup, I like it!

**509inc** · 01-10-2011, 06:37 PM

Great pics. I think I just found my next DIY build.

**landrer** · 01-10-2011, 09:20 PM

Where did you get those plastic fermentation buckets?

dummkauf · 01-11-2011, 01:15 AM

How much boil off did you have with that small of a batch? I'm assuming the 30 min boil is to adjust for this, but wouldn't you get different hop utilizations by boiling less? Also, why the shorter mash, don't the sugars convert the same whether it's 12lbs of grain or 3Lbs?

Not bashing your methods, I'm just curious how this works and how larger batches compare when you scale them up to 5 gallons(or higher). I've been thinking about this lately too and I'm just not understanding the shorter times.