Couple of questions from new guy: hydrometers, scaling recipes, honey IPA

Hey all,

I bottled my second small batch (1g) a few days ago and in another week or so, I should have my first non-kit, all-grain beer! Thanks for answering a few questions from me last year regarding my first small batch (been a while since I've back, but I've been browsing a bunch).

Prior to this current batch, I purchased a hydrometer and I wanted to get some readings, but when I tried to use it in my 1g bottle, it sunk to the bottom. I don't think the 1g has enough height for it to properly work. Is there another (smaller) hydrometer suited better for 1g bottles? My local homebrew store only carried one kind and I haven't seen any smaller ones. Is there any other way for me to get readings from my 1g bottle and my current hydrometer.

Second question, it doesn't seem that it'd be just a simple divide everything by 5 to convert a 5g batch to a 1g batch. Is there a tool or any tips on doing this? I'm mostly interested in trying to do the White House Honey Ale, but as a 1gallon. I've seen the 5g recipe and even Northern Brewer has 5g kits for it now.

Last question, one of the local breweries has a Honey IPA that I really like. I think I have a solid IPA recipe (the one I'm making now) and I'd like to try adding honey to the recipe, but I'm unsure how much and in which stage. Are there any guidelines? Once I have an idea, then I can tweak it based on taste. Their beer has a nice honey/sweet taste, but it's also full of hoppy goodness and that's the balance I'm trying to get. I have a decent understand/grasp on how to make a hoppy IPA, but I've never used honey (other than as priming sugar before bottling).

you'll probably want to siphon some beer into a cylinder to get an accurate reading with a hydrometer: plastic cylinder

i've found that the beersmith software was probably one of the best investments i've made for brewing beer "from scratch" .. you can put all the ingredients in and it will give you gauges for the gravity, color, bitterness, and alcohol content for the category you are trying to create.. you can add whatever you want (i believe honey is included) and it'll show you the results..

krenshaw said:

you'll probably want to siphon some beer into a cylinder to get an accurate reading with a hydrometer: plastic cylinder

i've found that the beersmith software was probably one of the best investments i've made for brewing beer "from scratch" .. you can put all the ingredients in and it will give you gauges for the gravity, color, bitterness, and alcohol content for the category you are trying to create.. you can add whatever you want (i believe honey is included) and it'll show you the results..

Click to expand...

Cool. I'll see if my local store has that, otherwise, I'll just grab it online. Thanks.

Thanks for the tip about beersmith. I'll keep that in mind.

First question: take a small sample of your beer and fill the hydrometer storage tube with it. Should be about a cup or so. Then, float the hydrometer in it to get a reading. Make sure you hold it vertically so the hydrometer doesn't touch the side of the tube. You could also get a graduated cylinder or other tall, narrow vessel to do this. I'd drink the sample after you're finished rather than returning it to your fermenter to avoid possible contamination. Be sure to sanitize whatever you use to extract the beer sample too.

Second: to scale recipes, simply multiply or divide. It is as easy as that.

Third: this is more complicated. You can try adding a small amount of honey malt into your grain bill: start at 2-5% maybe. If you want to use actual honey, remember that it is a fermentable and will be converted to alcohol. You can add at end of boil, during fermentation or in secondary. I think you will get more honey flavor in end product if added in fermenter or secondary. Search for threads on honey additions for more details. Hope this helps some

if you're doing small batches a refractometer may be good as well.. only takes a couple drops to get a reading, and combined with some online tools or beersmithg, you can get your gravity readings quite easily.. currently i do all my preboil reading with a hydrometer and all my postboil readings with a refrac