Best Fermenter / Process for Small Batches

[jamina1]

Hello! I am relatively new and I have one batch under my belt. It's in the fermentor right now (2 gallon plastic bucket) so I'm not sure if it has turned out yet.

However, I experienced some issues with my first batch because it was such a small size, and I'd like to continue to brew small batches so I'd love some suggestions. (Actual questions are in bold)

To start with, I got a 5-gallon starter kit and supplemented it with a 2 gallon fermentor because it came with stuff like a siphon and mash paddle, thermometer, and hydrometer (but no hydrometer tube, wtf?)

I also purchased a wine thief to take sanitized hydrometer readings, but 1.5 gallons isn't "tall enough" to get enough liquid to make a reading, so this batch is flying by the seat of my pants. Is there a way to "suck" more liquid into the thief from the top? Would this defeat the purpose of trying to take a sanitized reading? Am I better off just using a turkey baster or something?

Secondly, the 2-gallon fermentor is opaque so I can't see what's going on and it's driving me mad. I actually put about 1.5 gallons in there, so a 1 gallon growler won't do for primary fermentation unless I further reduce my batch size. What do you use for small batches as primary fermentor?

Thirdly, I siphoned directly from brew pot to fermentor, but still picked up a lot of hop residue and crap from the bottom of the pot. Is there a way to install a filter (wrap muslin around the bottom) of the siphon - is that sanitary? Should I just pour directly from the pot into the fermentor through a sieve instead?

Finally, I COULD NOT get the wort to cool down. After boiling for an hour, the ambient temp in my kitchen was 79 degrees, and I used up all the ice in our ice maker for an ice bath in the sink (twice!) and only got the wort to about 85 degrees, and that in itself took about an hour. A wort chiller for such small batches seems like overkill, but I know going forward an hour is not ideal, nor is pitching yeast super hot. Suggestions? Ideas?

Thanks for any suggestions you can provide!

For further clarification, this was an all-grain BIAB batch, just on a very small scale.

 

[mrgrimm101]

1.) For smaller batches, I would just use a turkey baster. It might take a couple baster fills to get enough for a sample, but that's never been an issue for me.

2.) I've always read that a growler shouldn't be used as a fermentor..the glass isn't strong enough to take the pressure from fermentation. I would get a smaller 2-3 gallon glass carboy to use. I only say glass because I've read that smaller volume plastic buckets don't seal very well. Is your 2 gallon fermentor functioning properly and you just dislike that it isn't transparent? I used to use buckets and now I use clear plastic so it is nice to see active fermentation..however it is obviously not necessary in making great beer.

3.) The method I prefer is to pour through a metal mesh strainer (or sieve as you call it). This limits the amount of hop material that transfers. Or you can put a muslin bag around the bottom of the siphon to limit the amount of trub that transfers. Sanitize the muslin bag in star san before you do this. Sometimes I pour the whole batch in, trub and all. I can't tell a difference, other than I may have some volume loss due to all the break material.

4.) If an ice bath does not work, and you do not want to get a wort chiller, you can try putting the covered kettle in the fridge to drop the temp..I know people who do this successfully. You can also look into "no-chill" brewing..I personally know nothing about it other than it is a thing that people do. Otherwise, just get a wort chiller. It used to take me over an hour to chill my 5 gallon batches down to pitching temps and now with a simple 25' 3/8" copper immersion chiller it takes 20 minutes at the most.

 

[wanderlost]

Hi! I'm new to homebrewing too, but I've been brewing in small and larger batches using the instructions from Brew Better Beer which specifically give 1-gallon instructions -- so helpful!

I have no answers to your first two questions. Maybe others can help you out. Those are both issues I find annoying -- for the wine thief one I just keep pulling a little wort at a time until I fill the hydrometer tube but I bet your turkey baster idea is a better solution.

For your third question -- yes, you should pour from brewpot to fermenter through a sieve. That's what's recommended in Brew Better Beer, and this is better anyway because more oxygen in the wort at this point is a good thing for the yeast. In fact, after you do this and pitch yeast, you could pour back and forth from brewpot to fermenter to increase oxygenation.

And fourth, what I have done is freeze a soda bottle full of water, sanitize it like crazy, and put that bottle directly into the wort in addition to the ice bath. I saw this recommended on a forum when I was searching for solutions. My first batch took forever to cool and I got impatient and pitched yeast at 85 degrees. This developed some fusel alcohol taste that I don't love in an otherwise good beer. The soda bottle trick plus ice bath got my most recent wort down to 75 in around 30 min at which point my impatience won over and I pitched at that point. I'd rather have waited until 70 degrees, but c'est la vie.

Ok, that was from one newbie to another. Others may have better ideas but hope this helps!

 

[jamina1]

4.) If an ice bath does not work, and you do not want to get a wort chiller, you can try putting the covered kettle in the fridge to drop the temp..I know people who do this successfully. You can also look into "no-chill" brewing..I personally know nothing about it other than it is a thing that people do. Otherwise, just get a wort chiller. It used to take me over an hour to chill my 5 gallon batches down to pitching temps and now with a simple 25' 3/8" copper immersion chiller it takes 20 minutes at the most.

I was looking at no-chill as well. From what I have seen the premise is that you leave it in the kettle until cool, or you throw it into the fermentor, seal it and wait until cool to continue. Either of those would work for me as I could just take the fermentor to my basement sealed and deal with it later.

My main concern with small batches and a wort chiller is the waste of water.

 

[Kent88]

I do small batches as well, and when I only do 1 gallon, I say the heck with gravity readings once I pitch yeast. I just can't afford the loss, so I avoid brewing very strong beers as I don't know how long the yeast will take with those and I want to be absolutely sure it is done at 15 days. I've never had bottle bombs brewing low to mid gravity beers and letting them ferment 14 days before bottling. I use 1 gallon glass carboys/jug because I've heard that plastic is hard to keep clean and that you have to be careful about scratching, although I am thinking about using a 2 gallon bucket like what came with a fruit wine kit for some lagers.

I keep out a lot of hop sludge by planning my recipe for about a quart more than I need, let the (cooled) kettle sit for about 15 minutes at the spot it will be when I siphon, and I keep the siphon off the bottom. I just leave the sludge behind.

85F is not ideal, but I've pitched yeast at around that temp many times and I would not call it detrimental. I've caved and I usually end up grabbing a bag of ice from the gas station when I brew. It still takes a while, but it will get you there. If you live in a part of the world where it snows for several months of the year, you can always use snow, too, if you're careful.

 

[Kent88]

My main concern with small batches and a wort chiller is the waste of water.

Saw this after my first post. Are you willing to build your own wort chiller? You could customize it to your kettle, and I would think you could connect it to another "chiller" you make yourself, fill the whole thing with water, place the 2nd "chiller" in a bucket of ice water, and use a small pump to make something that wastes very little water.

or you could just collect the spent water and use it for watering plants, doing laundry, etc, etc.

 

[SanPancho]

1- go to google and look up hydrometers from non-home brew shops. there's a scientific supply house- cant remember the name- that i order short hydrometers from. 1.0 to 1.070 and its only like 5-6 inches long. should work with wine thief.

2- for 1gallon-ish batches, you either use a 2 gal bucket, order 5 liter jug/carboys off internet (try uline) or you just use good old 1 gallon glass apple juice jugs. if you're going 1.5gals , then just buy a 3 gal plastic carboy from homebrew shop. usually about $20. kind of alot of headspace, but it'll be fine.

3- +1 on the sieve/strainer bag method. look on amazon for 100/400/800 micron strainer bags. (duda energy is vendor i think) they're used for biodiesel, have a big opening, and are pretty large. only ~$5 or 6 bucks. cheap. when you only make a small batch, losing beer to trub/hops sucks. i always strain now.

4- get a pond pump on amazon, and either buy a immersion chiller or make one out of 3/8 or 1/2 copper tubing from hardware store. i take another big pot, fill it with cold tap water, and pump it from the pot into kettle/chiller. once that heats up, i dump that water, refill with some cold tap, and then dump ice so the chiller has ice water pumping through it. works very well. pump is like $10 on amazon. copper is more expensive, but maybe you just buy a used one or invest in one from homebrew shop in case you ever go full 5 gallon size. im in CA, with our drought, and i feel this uses much less water than just letting tap water flow thru and pour out for 20-30 minutes.

 

[mrgrimm101]

If you live in a part of the world where it snows for several months of the year, you can always use snow, too, if you're careful.

Here in Michigan this is my method during the winter months. I move the kettle to the sink and start the chiller. Then I go get handfulls of snow and pack it around teh kettle in the sink. Works well.

 

[mrgrimm101]

My main concern with small batches and a wort chiller is the waste of water.

When I use my chiller, I put the kettle in my sink and put the chiller's "out-hose" in the sink (after it cools a bit..it's really hot at first) so the water flows out and circulates around an ice bath to help chill the kettle further. Sure, I still end up wasting the water, but I get a double use out of it as opposed to letting it just go down the drain.

 

[Biscuits]

I won't comment on everything else because it seems like you've already gotten some pretty good advice from the other posters in this thread, but I will make the obvious statement (maybe someone has said it already and I just missed it)...but why not, after you have transferred from kettle to fermenter, you just put the bucket in the fridge for 2 or 3 hours. This will most definitely bring it down to proper pitch temp.

I also do primarily 2 gallon batches and since I have a dedicated fermentation chamber, I usually get it cooled with my chiller to around 80* and then put the bucket into my ferm chamber until it is cooled to pitch temp...usually takes 2 or 3 hours for me.

 

[GHBWNY]

Is there a way to "suck" more liquid into the thief from the top? Would this defeat the purpose of trying to take a sanitized reading? Am I better off just using a turkey baster or something?

Since you say you don't have a hydrometer tube, I'm wondering what you're using to sample in? If you can pick one up somewhere, or something exactly the same size --- say, a graduated cylinder --- it would be worth having. My hydrometer tube with the hydro in it fills to the brim with just shy of 100ml of liquid. I bought a 100ml plastic syringe and use a 12" ridgid (plastic or SS) tube that fits snuggly over the tip of the syringe. Sanitize it, stick it down the airlock grommet hole and draw off a perfect 100ml to sample.

 

[dsaavedra]

I've brewed a few 1 gallon batches.

1. Refractometers come in handy when working with small batches because there is virtually no waste (I guess you could return a hydrometer sample to the batch if you are careful).

2. In addition to the other suggestions (3 gallon carboys) check out 4L Carlo Rossi wine jugs as fermenters. They are slightly larger than 1 gallon so they give you a little bit of headspace. I have had blowoff 100% of the time when filling it to the 1 gallon mark though so expect this.

3. I always dump everything from the kettle into the fermenter. The way I see it, beer will always get left behind with trub, so I minimize this by only separating beer and trub once (when racking from primary to bottling), instead of twice (racking from kettle to primary, then primary to bottling). I used to pour from the kettle through a stainless strainer into the primary, but this clogged with hop trub so fast that it quickly became a pain to do it this way.

4. I use my home made 25' immersion chiller in 1 gallon batches. It is not overkill, it's great actually. While it would normally take 20-30 minutes to chill down a 5 gallon batch, it takes 10 minutes or less to chill a 1 gallon batch. I would recommend dropping the $30 and making one. Plus you can use it on larger batches if you ever brew them.

 

[mrgrimm101]

I've brewed a few 1 gallon batches.


3. I always dump everything from the kettle into the fermenter. The way I see it, beer will always get left behind with trub, so I minimize this by only separating beer and trub once (when racking from primary to bottling), instead of twice (racking from kettle to primary, then primary to bottling). I used to pour from the kettle through a stainless strainer into the primary, but this clogged with hop trub so fast that it quickly became a pain to do it this way.

True enough. This is a great article that explores the dump it all in vs trying to leave some trub behind.

http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/

 

[Subdivisions]

Since you're using a bucket you can put the hydrometer right in the beer once the foam dies down. Sanitize it first obviously. No waste. It's a little trickier to read from an angle but it's doable.

For chilling, I usually only get my 5 gallon batches down to around 80F then I'll dump it in the fermenter and put it in the swamp cooler. Get yourself a bucket or rubbermaid tub that's bigger than the fermenter then put it in there. Fill with water to just below the beer line (don't want to float it) and drop a couple bottles of frozen water in. It'll get down into the 60s within a couple hours. Keep it in there during the first week of fermentation to keep your temperatures stable. Swap out an ice bottle a couple times a day.

 

[jamina1]

It still takes a while, but it will get you there. If you live in a part of the world where it snows for several months of the year, you can always use snow, too, if you're careful.

Yes, Michigan, so it will snow here. In the winter it will be nice to keep the kitchen warm with brewing and just be able to take the pot outside and put it in the snow

... after you have transferred from kettle to fermenter, you just put the bucket in the fridge for 2 or 3 hours. This will most definitely bring it down to proper pitch temp.

That's a great idea, I'll just need to ensure there's room on brew day!

Since you say you don't have a hydrometer tube, I'm wondering what you're using to sample in?

That's what I purchased the wine thief for, but the hydrometer went straight to the bottom because the sample wasn't large enough! I will check out your suggestion - and I'm also looking at inexpensive refractometers on Amazon / Ebay.

 

[C-Rider]

True enough. This is a great article that explores the dump it all in vs trying to leave some trub behind.

http://brulosophy.com/2014/06/02/the-great-trub-exbeeriment-results-are-in/

If you are doing small batches in a 2 gallon bucket you want to screen as much hops and trub so you can get as much wort into the bucket and still have a little head space.

 

[mrgrimm101]

If you are doing small batches in a 2 gallon bucket you want to screen as much hops and trub so you can get as much wort into the bucket and still have a little head space.

Ok. I was just trying to say that transferring the trub isn't always a bad thing. If you rig up a blowoff hose there shouldn't be an issue with a smaller headspace.