Single hop, one batch experiment. Will it work?

I've recently been buying a load of hops for various different recipes and now I have about 10 or so different varieties. I know that single hop beers are great to discover how a hop tastes. Sooooo.....

I've been thinking what's to stop me doing one simple pale ale batch of around 25 litres of wort and spliting it down to 5 x 5 litres batches. Boiling two at a time each with different hops, cooling them and putting them into the 1 gallon demijohns (jugs) that I have to ferment. I'd have smaller batches with a bit more work but much less than having to make 5 full 5 gallon batches.

For the yeast I'd reuse the yeast from my last batch having made a 1 litre starter bottle.

Is there any reason that leaving wort sitting around for an hour or two before boiling or spilitting the wort up like that might be a really silly idea? and would splitting the yeast up like that be detrimental? Any other problems foreseen? Have you tried this?

Should work out good. So what hop schedule are you thinking about doing and what is your ibu goal?

Good question beerman0001 (and thanks for fast response) I hadn't thought that far ahead. 50 IBU sounds good I think just to keep it simple I'd add at 60, 30 and 15.

i recently too a look in my "hop box" and figured out i have a couple months worth of hops in there, from when i occasionally bought an extra packet, just in case.

i figure i have enough for about 4 batches, maybe 5, so what i'm planning is to make a standard pale ale about 5 times, and give it different "hop treatments" just to learn what happens.

Before you start this, I would suggest that you check the boil off rate for the 5 liter batch sizes. You may find that you boil off 4 of those 5 liters, leaving you with 1 liter of very concentrated wort to go into the fermenter.

-a.

ajf said:

Before you start this, I would suggest that you check the boil off rate for the 5 liter batch sizes. You may find that you boil off 4 of those 5 liters, leaving you with 1 liter of very concentrated wort to go into the fermenter.

-a.

Click to expand...

A very good point and one worthy of a little experimentation. So thats exactly what I've done. I boiled on my proposed set up for 60 mins and here are the results.

For the sake of accuracy I also note that the air pressure is 1013 and I'm at an evevation of 200 ft above sea level. Not sure how much of a difference that makes but there you go.

My pot too 28mins to come to the boil. Its 26cm Diameter and 23cm deep. After a further hour boil I ended up with 4750ml (4.75L). I then lost a further 250ml after cooling through evaporation. Making the total 4.5 litres. So a total of 2.5 litres lost through bringing to the boiling, boil and evaporation process. Which is pretty considerable!

I lose roughly about 25ml per minute of boil for just boilng, which I calculate as 24%. Then a futher 5% due to evaporation.

I'm hoping that if I calculate the boil volume from boiling point at 7 litres then I should be good to get a 5 litre batch out of the wort volume.

But would it be so wrong of me to top up with hot water? I guess I'd have to make sure my OG has been calculated to compensate. Getting quite complicated this process to make things simpler!

Oh and of course I guess some of the sugars will evaporate throughout the boil too, so will I have to compensate for that too?

If you lose 2.5 liters during the boil and cooling, and you start with 7 liters, you will end up with 4.5 liters (less a small amount to trub and hop absorption). If you want to end up with a full 5 liters, I'd start the boil at 7.5 liters which should get you in the cricketground (English for ballpark).

You won't lose any of the sugars during the boil, so no compensation required there.
If you end up a bit short in the fermenter and the gravity is high, you could either top off with some water, or just accept the shortage. When topping off, some people use bottled or pre-boiled water. Others (myself included) just use water straight from the tap. There is IMO very little chance of infection from using tap water.

Good luck,

-a.

Sounds like a great experiment. Im subscribing to this thread in hopes that you update with recipes and results.

I wish I had enough patience to do this but I always end up doing something different to each batch. Next brew day I am going to limit myself to one type of hop in recipe that I have done multiple times before (mild ale). The problem becomes when I brew the next batch I never seem to keep the same grainbill. There’s always some residual grains left over in my storage that Id like to get rid of and think would be good.

Ok second part of the experiment underway and althought I too calculated 7.5 litres to get me somewhere near the right cricket pitch I forgot to calculate for the added volume for the LME. To use the correct American English at this point... Doh!

So, with a 8 ish litre at the start of the boil I ended up with 5.5 left at the end and put half of it into a steralized milk carton which I won't add back in to the fermenting wort but I will try in a week-10 day just to see how this is going.

I kept it very, very simple for this not even steeping any grains...

750g pale Liquid malt extract EBC 5
Hops
Willamette - 5g at 60min (as I want to taste as much hop as possible without being distracted by bitterness)
Willamette 7.5g at 30 mins
Willamette 10t at 15 mins

Pitched nottingham yeast 11g packet.

OG was 1.044 so hopefully I'll get a 4.4% Abv pale ale at the end. It was a lot of faff for just a few pints, but really only took about 3 hours in total and I think I could make 4 beers in a night when I do part two of the experiment. Now, to find some yeast to make a starter.....

If your splitting the batches you could just split the dry yeast as well. Id say that two packets of Nottingham split into 5 equal parts would be plenty (some might say overpitching) for your experiment.

Or harvest the Notty from this batch, wash, and split it 5 ways.