1-Gallon Brewers UNITE!

Leadgolem said:

Unless you WAY over carbonate, pry top caps won't come off when you pasteurize. You will pop most corks though. It's really common to do this with cider, though it's just hot not boiling. I usually only take mine up to 160f, though I keep it there for 10 minutes. IMO, the lower temp with the increase in time leaves you with a better flavor. The FDA standard for apple juice is 160f for 6 seconds. I leave mine longer so I can be confident they are up to 160 all the way through.
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/

That batch was made with apple juice, yeast nutrient, table sugar, and dried distillers yeast. It was horrible when young, and is fantastic now.

EDIT: One thing I don't remember seeing in the stove top pasteurization thread is that you don't want to set the hot bottles on the counter directly. They can cool to quickly and crack from the thermal shock. You should put them on a towel, or something similar to act as a thermal break.

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And I THINK it mentions keeping the bottles off the bottom of the pot, especially if the flame is on. A canning rack works, but so does a towel in the bottom of the pot. And they don't have to be submerged to do this.

Also, I don't think you should do it with plastic bottles. BUT I think you should do one plastic bottle as your tester, then you know when they are carbed and can stop it then.

jwalk4 said:

Has anyone tried to mix two different priming sugars before?

I have 3.5 gallons of pale ale to bottle and only 60g of corn sugar left. (which makes for 2.0 volumes of CO2 rather than 2.4 that I'm shooting for)

So can I make up the difference with Sucrose?

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You can make up the difference with sucrose. Some people say it gives a cidery flavor, but most people say you can't tell the difference, especially in an ale. Both dextrose (corn sugar) and sucrose are simple sugars that readily convert to CO2, however sucrose has about 15% greater conversion, which means you can use 15% less of it.

^ Sweet (Pun intended) ^

Yeah I figured, I went ahead and did it anyways. Lol.

I will report on the flavor in 3 weeks.

jwalk4 said:

Has anyone tried to mix two different priming sugars before?

I have 3.5 gallons of pale ale to bottle and only 60g of corn sugar left. (which makes for 2.0 volumes of CO2 rather than 2.4 that I'm shooting for)

So can I make up the difference with Sucrose?

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You can mix em, not sure what you would need to make up for the rest. But ive used maple syrup mixed with corn sugar to prime before.

Edit: I answered without noticing it had already been answered lol

ericbw said:

And I THINK it mentions keeping the bottles off the bottom of the pot, especially if the flame is on. A canning rack works, but so does a towel in the bottom of the pot. And they don't have to be submerged to do this.

Also, I don't think you should do it with plastic bottles. BUT I think you should do one plastic bottle as your tester, then you know when they are carbed and can stop it then.

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Yes to the canning rack. I've used a circular cooling rack in the bottom of the pan too. I was actually talking about putting a towel on your counter for after you remove the bottles from the hot water.

Yes to having a test bottle. Definitely do not try to pasteurize the tester. The seal on the bottle will fail and the bottle will shrink and leak large amounts of brew into the pot. Not to mention being unsealed, and the rest that's in the bottle being horribly diluted. Yes, I really did try it. Not a good idea.

Leadgolem said:

Yes to the canning rack. I've used a circular cooling rack in the bottom of the pan too. I was actually talking about putting a towel on your counter for after you remove the bottles from the hot water.

Yes to having a test bottle. Definitely do not try to pasteurize the tester. The seal on the bottle will fail and the bottle will shrink and leak large amounts of brew into the pot. Not to mention being unsealed, and the rest that's in the bottle being horribly diluted. Yes, I really did try it. Not a good idea.

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I know you meant a towel on the counter, but it also works in the pot, wadded up.

The tester might LOOK ok after pasteurizing, but might also have thin spots that could blow out. Plus you prob shouldn't heat that plastic anyway because of the chemicals on them.

After 3 long weeks in the primary and 2 in bottles, I caved. I had to try my first brews (ever). The first is Ed Wort's pale ale and the second a bitter.



When I tasted them on bottling day, the bitter was, well, disappointing. I can't place the (off) flavor, but it wasn't very good. The PA was very nice, tho.

Today the bitter was drinkable. Still green, but it cleaned up nonetheless. I figure I'll try it again in 2-3 weeks, and it should be even better.

The PA is very good; nice hop nose, nice, not overpowering cascade flavor! Nice head with good retention. Note the picture of the beers together was after drinking them a bit, hence the lack of head on the PA.

I'm so psyched! I can't wait to try the chocolate stout and caramelization experiment that are almost ready to be bottled!

It's good that I only have 3 fermenters -- it'll help slow me down (unless I start using secondaries). Since I had an empty fermentor, I went to the LHBS to get ingredients to get a jump on the summer hefeweizen. I figure it'll take a few iterations to hone in on what I think a good hefe is. Unfortunately, they didn't have most of what was needed, so it was time to experiment again.... This time, I'm using pre-fermented yeast from the PA yeast cake. It looks a bit light in the fermenter, but I can't wait to try it in ~3 weeks...

Man, this is fun!

Just out of curiosity - you're not planning on using that 3-gallon BB to secondary any of your future brews, are you? If so, I would *strongly* suggest investing in a smaller vessel. That much headspace on a fermented beer is asking for trouble - heck, even using it as a primary for a one-gallon batch makes me nervous, but you're probably OK as long as the Co2 blanket is undisturbed.

All that aside, the brews certainly *look* great!

Refresh my memory, folks: Cold-crashing before secondary to help squeeze as much brew out of the primary as possible - reasonable, or waste of time?

My first batch of Requiem Raspberry is due to be racked to secondary tomorrow, and I recall some folks talking about cold crashing before racking to help drop as much yeast and sediment out of solution as possible before racking to help boost the overall yield.

So what do y'all suggest? crash it, or just leave it be and rack as usual?

paul_111 said:

After 3 long weeks in the primary and 2 in bottles, I caved. I had to try my first brews (ever). The first is Ed Wort's pale ale and the second a bitter.



When I tasted them on bottling day, the bitter was, well, disappointing. I can't place the (off) flavor, but it wasn't very good. The PA was very nice, tho.

Today the bitter was drinkable. Still green, but it cleaned up nonetheless. I figure I'll try it again in 2-3 weeks, and it should be even better.

The PA is very good; nice hop nose, nice, not overpowering cascade flavor! Nice head with good retention. Note the picture of the beers together was after drinking them a bit, hence the lack of head on the PA.

I'm so psyched! I can't wait to try the chocolate stout and caramelization experiment that are almost ready to be bottled!

It's good that I only have 3 fermenters -- it'll help slow me down (unless I start using secondaries). Since I had an empty fermentor, I went to the LHBS to get ingredients to get a jump on the summer hefeweizen. I figure it'll take a few iterations to hone in on what I think a good hefe is. Unfortunately, they didn't have most of what was needed, so it was time to experiment again.... This time, I'm using pre-fermented yeast from the PA yeast cake. It looks a bit light in the fermenter, but I can't wait to try it in ~3 weeks...

Man, this is fun!

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dude... spend the 12 bucks on a glass carboy, or three, for your fermenters.

all that headspace isn't good

I have to respectfully disagree with those bagging on your fermentor. If it works for you, that is all that matters.

There are plenty of brewers who successfully do open fermentation and you can't get any more headspace than that.

@bleme: Open fermentation is fine, if you're going for a lambic or other sour style. Not so much with the other styles, however. And as mentioned, he's a little safer simply fermenting in that BB than he would be using it as a secondary, but still. That's a *hell* of a lot of headspace to worry about.

paul_111 said:

After 3 long weeks in the primary and 2 in bottles, I caved. I had to try my first brews (ever). The first is Ed Wort's pale ale and the second a bitter.



When I tasted them on bottling day, the bitter was, well, disappointing. I can't place the (off) flavor, but it wasn't very good. The PA was very nice, tho.

Today the bitter was drinkable. Still green, but it cleaned up nonetheless. I figure I'll try it again in 2-3 weeks, and it should be even better.

The PA is very good; nice hop nose, nice, not overpowering cascade flavor! Nice head with good retention. Note the picture of the beers together was after drinking them a bit, hence the lack of head on the PA.

I'm so psyched! I can't wait to try the chocolate stout and caramelization experiment that are almost ready to be bottled!

It's good that I only have 3 fermenters -- it'll help slow me down (unless I start using secondaries). Since I had an empty fermentor, I went to the LHBS to get ingredients to get a jump on the summer hefeweizen. I figure it'll take a few iterations to hone in on what I think a good hefe is. Unfortunately, they didn't have most of what was needed, so it was time to experiment again.... This time, I'm using pre-fermented yeast from the PA yeast cake. It looks a bit light in the fermenter, but I can't wait to try it in ~3 weeks...

Man, this is fun!

Click to expand...

Dude I'm right along with you. I started brewing about 2 years ago and it is a blast. I experiment all the time with one gallon batches. I don't have a LHBS so I order it all on line. It's fun to sit there and dream of what I could so next.
Like you said about only having three fermenters does slow you down by not having so many. But a better bottle is cheap and I would like to have a few more of them. My wife it's a little mad when I have so many going or I go buy a 12pack of beer at the store just to drink it and reuse the bottles. She always says "honey you don't need beer you are making tons at home".
I told some one last night that I'm addicted o brewing. I love it!
I can't wait to see what I make next.

dadshomebrewing said:

dude... spend the 12 bucks on a glass carboy, or three, for your fermenters.

all that headspace isn't good

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Where do you find a glass carboy for that price?

amazon or the lhbs

ok guys... i learned something today, by accident, that might be useful

cracked open a home brew that has been in the bottle for about 3 months (as opposed to the three weeks i usually wait).

oh boy, what a difference. if you want wait, it's definitely worth the wait.

clear, crisp, just the right amount of bite to it, and a head on the beer to die for.

jambalaya and home brew for lunch.

bleme said:

I have to respectfully disagree with those bagging on your fermentor. If it works for you, that is all that matters.

There are plenty of brewers who successfully do open fermentation and you can't get any more headspace than that.

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Yes, it does work.

I don't understand the comparison to open fermentation, tho. It's a carboy with an air lock. What's open about that? In less than 12 hrs, the air lock is bubbling away. At that point, all headspace is CO2 (which is significantly more dense than air).

There are plenty of people who use 6 gal carboys for less than 5 gallons of beer (which is at least a gallon of headspace, by the way). I have read a bit about the topic, and hadn't found any references to people having issues. So, if they can successfully ferment 2.5 - 4 gallons in a 6gal carboy, why not use a 3 gal for 1.5-2 gal batches?


I think it's just that others are jealous that my beers can ferment like mad, and will never make a mess, nor do I have to worry about a blow off tube!

And my secondary comment alluded to getting 1 gal glass to free up my primaries faster... :cross:

dadshomebrewing said:

jambalaya and home brew for lunch.

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I want some!

dadshomebrewing said:

......jambalaya and home brew for lunch.

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I love jambalaya specially with a nice rye ale!

@paul - If you look back to my initial comment about the size of your BB vs. the size batch you were doing, I was much more concerned with the possibility of you eventually using said 3 gallon BB to secondary a 1 gallon batch. In that case, then yeah, there *is* a problem with that much headspace. Your beer will oxidize, as the CO2 has dissipated during racking and isn't being replaced at near the amounts as it would be during primary.

JollyIsTheRoger said:

There are a bunch scattered through this thread, there is some on my blog below and my brewtoad. But mostly, just divide a 5 gallon recipe by 5 and its the same thing. The ones I have I optimized for 1 gallon, so there isn't 6.53oz of some malt, I just round them out and make the recipes from a 1 gallon mindframe.

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Where do u buy your grains?

BattleGoat said:

Refresh my memory, folks: Cold-crashing before secondary to help squeeze as much brew out of the primary as possible - reasonable, or waste of time?

My first batch of Requiem Raspberry is due to be racked to secondary tomorrow, and I recall some folks talking about cold crashing before racking to help drop as much yeast and sediment out of solution as possible before racking to help boost the overall yield.

So what do y'all suggest? crash it, or just leave it be and rack as usual?

Click to expand...

Hmm, crashing should improve your yield somewhat. If it's a batch you expect to be extremely good, or that you have expensive ingredients in I'd probably crash before racking. Otherwise, I'm not really sure it's worth the effort.

I find that crashing for 3 days to a week helps compact the sediment so it doesn't get stirred up as much when you have to move the carboy prior to racking.

dadshomebrewing said:

ok guys... i learned something today, by accident, that might be useful

cracked open a home brew that has been in the bottle for about 3 months (as opposed to the three weeks i usually wait).

oh boy, what a difference. if you want wait, it's definitely worth the wait.

clear, crisp, just the right amount of bite to it, and a head on the beer to die for.

jambalaya and home brew for lunch.

Click to expand...

Leadgolem said:

Hmm, crashing should improve your yield somewhat. If it's a batch you expect to be extremely good, or that you have expensive ingredients in I'd probably crash before racking. Otherwise, I'm not really sure it's worth the effort.

I find that crashing for 3 days to a week helps compact the sediment so it doesn't get stirred up as much when you have to move the carboy prior to racking.

Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzcWwmwChVE

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What is cold crashing?

Jbird said:

What is cold crashing?

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Cooling your brew down to refrigerator temperatures. At those temperatures, most of the yeast will go into a kind of metabolic shutdown. Very much like hibernation. IE: they sleep, or "crash". When they do, they tend to fall out of solution. That clears the brew up if what you have in suspension is live yeast.

paul_111 said:

I don't understand the comparison to open fermentation, tho.

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I've had open fermentation on the brain since last week when I read a thread about how a guy gets more banana flavor on his Hef's when he does open fermentation.

I figure you can't get more headspace than a whole room of headspace. It still makes a CO2 blanket and they still do fine. I'm guessing that those complaining about too much headspace have only brewed "by the book" and don't have any real experience with 70% headspace.

BattleGoat said:

@bleme: Open fermentation is fine, if you're going for a lambic or other sour style. Not so much with the other styles, however. And as mentioned, he's a little safer simply fermenting in that BB than he would be using it as a secondary, but still. That's a *hell* of a lot of headspace to worry about.

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This is false. Why is open fermentation only ok for those styles?

There are lots of breweries out there using open fermentation for all kinds of beers. Open fermentation is very popular for large scale breweries in UK and Germany. If you've ever had anything from ringwood or wychwood breweries, all there beers are open fermented. Everything from blondes to bitters.

Perhaps I need to clarify once again. My *original* comment to @paul_111 expressed concern that using his 3-gallon to *secondary* in would cause problems. That's my main issue. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in subsequent comments. All I know is that in *most* cases, when you open-ferment a beer that's not specifically meant to be fermented that way, you're courting infection. After all, if open fermentation was totally safe and appropriate across the board, why do any of us use closed fermenters or airlocks in the first place?

BattleGoat said:

Perhaps I need to clarify once again. My *original* comment to @paul_111 expressed concern that using his 3-gallon to *secondary* in would cause problems. That's my main issue. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in subsequent comments. All I know is that in *most* cases, when you open-ferment a beer that's not specifically meant to be fermented that way, you're courting infection. After all, if open fermentation was totally safe and appropriate across the board, why do any of us use closed fermenters or airlocks in the first place?

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Good point.

A week ago today, I opened and sampled a 12oz bottle of dopplebock that had been bottle conditioning for 1 week at ~61 degrees. I drank roughly the neck of the bottle. Not enough carbonation. I recapped and placed it back where it came from. I put that bottle in the fridge last night and am going to try it this evening. What do you think I can expect?

muleskinner90 said:

A week ago today, I opened and sampled a 12oz bottle of dopplebock that had been bottle conditioning for 1 week at ~61 degrees. I drank roughly the neck of the bottle. Not enough carbonation. I recapped and placed it back where it came from. I put that bottle in the fridge last night and am going to try it this evening. What do you think I can expect?

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Little to no change....'1 week at about 61 degrees' is not even close to enough bottle conditioning time. Minimum is 2 weeks at 68 to 70 degrees...my basement is about 64 degrees and it took about 6 to 8 weeks to get the right amount of carbonation for some of my beers. Then maybe a sitting a cold fridge for a week before opening.

I would wait at least another month before trying another bottle unless you can't wait and don't mind drinking the beer a little flat

BigRock947 said:

Little to no change....'1 week at about 61 degrees' is not even close to enough bottle conditioning time. Minimum is 2 weeks at 68 to 70 degrees...my basement is about 64 degrees and it took about 6 to 8 weeks to get the right amount of carbonation for some of my beers. Then maybe a sitting a cold fridge for a week before opening.

I would wait at least another month before trying another bottle unless you can't wait and don't mind drinking the beer a little flat

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Will I have off flavors if I move them to 64°?

No, moving them up to 64 won't give you off flavors. As mentioned, they should be carbonating at 71, so you're still way under that even if you bump 'em up a bit from where you are now.

BattleGoat said:

Perhaps I need to clarify once again. My *original* comment to @paul_111 expressed concern that using his 3-gallon to *secondary* in would cause problems. That's my main issue. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in subsequent comments. All I know is that in *most* cases, when you open-ferment a beer that's not specifically meant to be fermented that way, you're courting infection. After all, if open fermentation was totally safe and appropriate across the board, why do any of us use closed fermenters or airlocks in the first place?

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I fully agree

Don't worry, I wouldn't use a large secondary. I meant to say if I bought 1 gal secondaries, I'd free up my primaries, thus allowing me to make more beer than I can drink! But I do love the experimentation of making it.

Now If only I could find 1.5 gal secondaries...

So I got a question, the 3 gallon water bottle I saw at walmart earlier, can I use it for a secondary?
I have a food grade 5 gallon I'll prime in and the transfer to secondary in there?
I guess two questions, anyone else use them? How to tell if safe?

If it's a water bottle, it's safe to ferment beer in. And as far as using it to secondary, presuming that you're doing a one-gallon batch, that's a hell of a lot of headspace to have sitting on top of a finished beer. I'm no expert, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with more than a half-gallon of extra headspace, let alone two gallons.

BattleGoat said:

If it's a water bottle, it's safe to ferment beer in. And as far as using it to secondary, presuming that you're doing a one-gallon batch, that's a hell of a lot of headspace to have sitting on top of a finished beer. I'm no expert, but I wouldn't feel comfortable with more than a half-gallon of extra headspace, let alone two gallons.

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I've only done 5 gallon batches so far. I'm going to shoot for a 3 gallon batch. I'm not trying to prime in it just use it for a secondary after most of the active fermenting is done. I'm tossing around ideas right now of a big billed beer that's oaking in the secondary, so I think it would be perfect. Now to just figure out the beer part of the idea.

Tabb said:

I've only done 5 gallon batches so far. I'm going to shoot for a 3 gallon batch. I'm not trying to prime in it just use it for a secondary after most of the active fermenting is done. I'm tossing around ideas right now of a big billed beer that's oaking in the secondary, so I think it would be perfect. Now to just figure out the beer part of the idea.

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It's probably fine. If you do something like cider, red wine, or a high IBU beer it is going retain some flavor and aroma though.

Ah, yeah - if it's a 3-gallon batch, then go for it.

Leadgolem said:

It's probably fine. If you do something like cider, red wine, or a high IBU beer it is going retain some flavor and aroma though.

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Never thought about that at all. Thanks. The 22nd is going to be a busy night.

paul_111 said:

I fully agree
Now If only I could find 1.5 gal secondaries...

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Try a wine superstore. Wine bottles come is some many sizes beyond the standard...including 1.5 gallons and 2.25 gallons. They have crazy names like Imperial, Methuselah and other biblical names. Google them or if you find a respectable wine seller, they will know what your talking about. It will either be really good wine and expensive or really crappy wine and cheap. Best part is that most will have punted bottoms so the trub will settle down the sides of the bottom