So I am searching to get an inexpensive resolve to a mass quantity of fermenters to live out the American Dream and produce enough beer to drink for a year in a month or so. Well, I have seen that in my home area the best so far in terms of food grade buckets I can convert for the cheap to fermenters are 5 gallons at most, I would prefer six. But given this fact I would like to start brewing 4 gallon batches and pitch them into these 5 gallon buckets. I do not use a secondary fermenter and probably will never use one. When doing all grain batches if I pitch the standard pack will I be pitching too much if the recipe is overall scaled down to 4 gallons?
4 Gallon batches???
- Thread starter Tkelly32
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it will depend on what your OG is, and how fresh (viable) the yeast pack is. but in general the answer is "no". you'll still want to make a starter.
check out http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html - 4 gallons of 1.050 still requires 1.5 packs/vials if the yeast is only a week old. so no matter how fresh you get it (it's rare to get yeast that is less than a week old, even getting it at 1 week requires coordination and/or luck), one pack is under-pitching. if you use yeast that is 5 weeks old you will need a full 2 packs - or 1.28 liters of starter. make something bigger at 1.075 and you'll need 3 packs of 5-week old yeast.
Primary headspace in a 5 or 6 gallon bucket or carboy is fine for smaller 3 or 4 gallon batches. It may actually benefit the beer by providing a rich, CO2 blanket atop the beer. However, you don't want much headspace in the secondary. This is to avoid oxygenation which will be more of a risk at this stage. Because of this, many small scale brewers will either 1) buy a smaller 3 or 4 gallon secondary, or 2) never rack to secondary and rely on the primary for the duration.
Edit: I posted this in the wrong thread, oops.
Edit: I posted this in the wrong thread, oops.
good point. hopefully my text made it clear, but my last reply was in reference to liquid yeast - white lab vials or wyeast smack-packs. the calculation changes if you're using dry yeast (use the "dry yeast" tab on mr. malty).
EDIT: the OP wrote "...if I pitch the standard pack..." so i assumed me meant a wyeast liquid pack.
Tkelly32
Well-Known Member
Good looking out sweetcell, I sometimes use the smackpacks. But I will mostly be rehydrating some dry yeast. I still have to figure out how to make this damn stir plate, I need a clear example showing what to connect to what. The wikis are good and I've seen the video everyone claims is the best, but it still is not directly clear what to connect to what. LOL I have all the parts though, if I had that stir plate I would be making starters all day and night.
