Scaling to small scale for experimental

[dayman]

Planning on inoculating some beer with non-conventional yeast species, but I would obviously like to do this on a much smaller scale. How would you go about scaling down a brew? I'm thinking just divvying it up amongst one gallon carboys to ferment. Or do you think it would be better to individually brew each for each species? Same recipe will be used re: hops, yeast, etc. Any other suggestions?

 

[day_trippr]

It's not that "out there" to divy up a five gallon batch across five fermentors (usually glass jugs topped with "air locks"). Usually it's to trial different dry hops or dry hop combinations, but there's nothing against using different yeast strains with a common wort - which is probably the best way to trial anyway

Cheers!

 

[dayman]

It's not that "out there" to divy up a five gallon batch across five fermentors (usually glass jugs topped with "air locks"). Usually it's to trial different dry hops or dry hop combinations, but there's nothing against using different yeast strains with a common wort - which is probably the best way to trial anyway

Cheers!

I appreciate the response! Thanks for your time.

 

[CascadesBrewer]

Brewing a batch of wort and splitting it into multiple fermenters will likely give you a better evaluation of the yeast than trying to brew several batches. How many yeasts to you plan on trying? What size batches do you have in mind? I often brew a 5 gallon batch and then split that into a pair of fermenters (3-gallon Fermonsters). I also recently made a 3-gallon batch that I split into 3 fermenters.

If you are just trying to do a rough evaluation to see if the yeast might made a good beer, you could use a small container (like a canning jar, 16 oz to a 1 gallon size) and evaluate the resulting flat beer.

 

[Drewch]

Two-gallon food-safe buckets are widely available and cheap. They easily accommodate one-ish-gallon batches with reasonable ullage.