Small test batches

How do you create a recipe for small batches? My idea was to mix a few different malts and hops in small batches. I was wanting to make some 1 gal batches of experiments, but can't figure out how reduce it enough to get 1 gal. Is it even possible to do a 1 gal AG batch?

Jason_Merritt said:

How do you create a recipe for small batches? My idea was to mix a few different malts and hops in small batches. I was wanting to make some 1 gal batches of experiments, but can't figure out how reduce it enough to get 1 gal. Is it even possible to do a 1 gal AG batch?

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If you use a program like beer smith you can scale down batches

I'm using Brew Target. It's taking some time though. I think I figured out my problem. Getting my mash together for a 1gal batch was apparently the problem. Once I fixed that, it is coming together much easier. Thanks!

It's possible. I have made all grain starters. One problem is the boil off percentage is very high. You may want to top off rather than mash with the whole boil volume. That can through bitterness calculations out of whack too. Here I'm doing a 2 gallon batch.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/super-simple-mr-beer-all-grain-212639/

I do all my recipes at hopville.com.

That's awesome! I never even thought about using as a starter. I just wanted to make some small batches and experiment and not spend much for stuff that might suck. I was surprised at how much grain you had in your bill. I was assuming that smaller batch= much smaller grain bill. The "recipe" I'm calculating now only has 2 lbs of grain and 1 oz of hops. Now I'm going to play some more! Thanks Conroe.

Conroe said:

It's possible. I have made all grain starters. One problem is the boil off percentage is very high. You may want to top off rather than mash with the whole boil volume. That can through bitterness calculations out of whack too. Here I'm doing a 2 gallon batch.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/super-simple-mr-beer-all-grain-212639/

I do all my recipes at hopville.com.

Click to expand...

Couldn't you just figure out the boil off is and start with and mash with enough water to hit your target volume? This is the same thing you do with a 5 gallon batch. Sure you would have a weaker wort to begin with since you'd be using a bigger ratio of water to grain, but after boiling down to 1 gallon all the water would have evaporated and you should be at your target OG.

Three pounds of grain for two gallons seems good to me. Mashing that thin seem to work alright for BIAB but if you could easily over sparge and get tannins with such a high water to grain ratio. Hopville lets me set average boil volume for bitterness calculations. It seems to work well.