5 different varieties out of a 5 gallon batch

[Franzi]

Being relatively new to the homebrew scene, I want to become familiar with a variety of different hops, but don't want to make 5 gallons worth of something I might not like.

The idea (probably not original and tried before):

• Brew a 5 gallon batch of a base wheat beer, adding 6 or so pounds of wheat DME and bittering hops of some sort at 60 minutes (perhaps steep some grains, who knows)...standard procedure extract brewing.
• After cooling, I will fill 5, one-gallon wine jugs up about 3/4 of the way
• Add equal portion of liquid yeast to each of the 5 jugs, aerate, and plug with an airlock.
• Ferment 1.5 weeks
• 3 days before bottling - dryhop, adding proportional amount of hop A to jug 1, hop B to jug 2, and so on
• prime/bottle, condition, sample my 5 new wheat varieties

Has this approach been attempted with positive results?

Please enlighten me with your comments, insights, and thoughts!

 

[Revvy]

Look at the basic brewing podcasts.... they've do stuff like that all the time..

http://basicbrewing.com/.

 

[Tommish]

• Add equal portion of liquid yeast to each of the 5 jugs, aerate, and plug with an airlock.

Just a tip: You should aerate the wort before pitching the yeast.

Otherwise, sounds like a great idea. With 5 airlocks bubbling at the same time, it'll sound like a mad scientist's lab! Muhahahaha!

 

[Funkenjaeger]

Should work, however it doesn't seem that dry hopping is the area where you'd need to do the most experimentation - after all, you can get a pretty good idea of the aroma by just sniffing the hops. Where the real experimentation comes in is with the potential as bittering and flavor hops, which is something you can't tell by just smelling them.

 

[TwoHeadsBrewing]

I was thinking about doing something similar, but with full 5 gallon batches. As mentioned before, I think the biggest difference in flavor for hops would be the amount added and time in the boil. It would be interesting to take the same ingredients of a very basic pale ale and modify the amount of hops used and/or how long they are in the boil.

Another idea I had would be to keep everything else the same, but use different steeping grains and/or utilizing a mini mash. Since I don't have much desire to have 5-10 batches of a some what identical beer, I don't know how I can accomplish this. Maybe I can convince some friends to contract me out to brew them up a 5 gallon batch and I'll use theirs to experiment.

 

[SRFeldman79]

The "contracting" out idea is a good one. Or if you know other brewers. Or, kind of like the 08/08/08 beer you guys did, only with this difference: everyone agrees on the same malt extract or grain bill or what have you, only they get to pick the hops and hop schedule on their own.

 

[maltMonkey]

I'm getting ready to try the same thing (splitting 5 gal batch into 5 1 gal batches), only with 5 different yeasts. I only have 4 good candidates on hand for the style (English Pale Ale), so I'm going to try something crazy with the fifth batch--a Hefeweizen yeast.