Making side by side comparo batches

For my next home brew project I've been thinking about doing some side by side comparisons. I have a good palate for distiguishing one beer from another and describing them qualitatively, but I'm not familiar with how individual ingridients lend character to the finished product. Though I've heard and read plenty about what each ingredient contributes, I've never really tasted it that way.

What I want to do is make several 1 gallon batches at a time and vary each brew by one ingredient. I'll start with hops, since I know the least about its flavors. I'll make a 4 gal batch and pour it evenly in 5 jugs. Then I'll boil the hops in 5 separate batches and add one to each jug. I'll finish them all off, treating them as equals; same yeast, same fermentation time, same temp, same bottles, etc.

I don't think there should be too many problems:

The small batches shouldn't affect the taste much.
I'll have to be 5x as careful about sanitation.
I'll have to buy 5 new 1-2 gal jugs, stoppers, and airlocks.

Can anyone think of a cheaper system or improve upon the setup?

Buy 5 1-gallon jugs of apple cider, make Apfelwein. Process as planned.

I don't think I could ever do that sort of thing. I would rather make full batches with the same idea behind the process. It just takes longer.

Good Luck

The downside about small batches - apart from it being quite a bit of work - is that if you beer turns out good, you only get a few bottles of it. Personally I'd split five gallon batches in two and vary one thing between each half. I've done that to see the effects of different yeasts on the same wort, to see the effect of dry hopping vs not, and next up to see the effects of using Burton salts vs not. But if you can be bothered with a lot of small batches, then I think it's a great idea.

A certain someone in my house is already on over load because I use 4 sqft of pantry space to brew. If I have 2 x 5 gal setups, she might kill me. I think I can squeeze 4 x 1 gallon jugs in my fermentation box, so no extra space requirements.

Perhaps just doing two at a time would be a good idea. 4-5 is starting to sound mighty ambitious. And maybe I can get two 3 gal Better Bottles in my fermenter.

4 sqft, huh? instead of spending all that money on jugs and stuff you should probably just get a new wife/gf! seriously though, i'm actually doing the same thing right now. i decided to start with malts instead. i have a 2gallon igloo cooler that i converted into a MLT with a spigot and a braid. i've been mashing 1.5lbs of 2row with .5lbs of the variable malt. i'm doing only .25lbs with some of the darker more flavorful grains, but at 12.5% of the grist it'll still be a pretty dominant flavor. they all get hopped to about 18IBUs. right now i have straight 2row fermenting as a control, and i also have munich and vienna going. next i'm going to start with the darker grains and work my way to the lighter ones, to give the darker flavors time to mellow out a bit.

I for one love the idea, and have been planning to do something similar for a while. One thing worth thinking about is whether you want to hold the quantity of hops added constant across the different varieties, or add the appropriate amount of each to reach a uniform IBU for each batch. Seems to me that if you are trying to understand the flavor profile of 2 different hops you need to be drinking them at equivalent IBUs.

Im particularly curious to do the same with yeast strains, as I have no understanding whatsoever of what a given yeast adds to a beer.