Trying to figure out half-size brewing

[Hoochin'Fool]

Complete newb here, but looking for some advice on getting started with small-batch (2 to 2.5 gallon) recipes, and anyways, some web-searches sucked me into the rabbit-hole of these here forums!

So far, I've just been playing around with recipes that sound like they might be easy and turn out half-way decent using BrewTarget. But then I plugged same recipes in to BrewFather.app, and noticed that while most things look identical, the IBUs differ pretty significantly! I hadn't heard of Brewer'sFriend before now, but I'll take a look at that, if it has a free trial.

Anyways, what I'm REALLY hoping to learn is how to know when I've got the right usage of bittering hops. Can missing either side of desired bitterness be fixed post-boil? I assume one could make a "hop tea" and adjust to taste, but having never tasted wort before, am hoping my first attempt isn't too far off the mark!

The kinds of beer I'd like to be able to brew: A nice, SIMPLE (aka SHaME) balanced amber ale, around 5 to 6% abv, but also a nice strong stout, not too sweet, not too roasty, and not too hoppy.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Wow, I already love this website! Checked out the Brewer's Friend tab, and saw I could sort recipes by size, and sure enough, there's a dozen or so recipes for the size I'm looking for.

 

[friarsmith]

I have used Brewer’s Friend since 2013 and love it. Totally worth the annual fee if you brew frequently.

BeerSmith is also really good per some brew buddies that have used it for a long time.

 

[DBhomebrew]

Any recipe can be easily brewed at any volume.

Software is reliant on your inputs. Each brewer's system has its own figures for various volumes and water losses here and there. Changing batch volume affects the ratio of those losses compared to final volume.

Things to take from a recipe...

Original Gravity
Grist makeup by percentage by weight
Mash temp/time
Boil time
Hop schedule
Bittering hops by IBU contribution
Late hops by IBU contribution and/or weight per volume
Dry hops by weight per volume, time, temp
Fermentation temp
Carbonation target in volumes
Any special processes such as a 1st running boil down or decoction mash.

Examples of things to measure and use from your own equipment (recipes assume the author's or publication's default numbers)...

Target volume in fermenter
Volume loss during packaging
Loss to transfering to fermenter
Boil off volume / hr
Mash tun volume
Kettle volume
Loss to transfering from tun to kettle
Loss to grain absorption
Mash efficiency
Lauter efficiency
Brewhouse efficiency

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Any recipe can be easily brewed at any volume.

Software is reliant on your inputs. Each brewer's system has its own figures for various volumes and water losses here and there. Changing batch volume affects the ratio of those losses compared to final volume.

Things to take from a recipe...

Original Gravity
Grist makeup by percentage by weight
Mash temp/time
Boil time
Hop schedule
Bittering hops by IBU contribution
Late hops by IBU contribution and/or weight per volume
Dry hops by weight per volume, time, temp
Fermentation temp
Carbonation target in volumes
Any special processes such as a 1st running boil down or decoction mash.

Examples of things to measure and use from your own equipment (recipes assume the author's or publication's default numbers)...

Target volume in fermenter
Volume loss during packaging
Loss to transfering to fermenter
Boil off volume / hr
Mash tun volume
Kettle volume
Loss to transfering from tun to kettle
Loss to grain absorption
Mash efficiency
Lauter efficiency
Brewhouse efficiency

Thanks, my equipment is about as basic as you can get: 4 gallon stock pot on an electric stovetop, at this point, not even considering doing anything more complicated than steeping grains! I guess until I know how much water evaporates during a timed boil, everything would be a wild guess when it comes to bittering.

 

[DBhomebrew]

I BIAB in a 5 gallon pot. I'm recently doing extract only batches in the same kettle for the shorter brewday. Even simple systems generate the numbers you need to adjust a recipe to your own usage.

 

[ncbrewer]

I guess until I know how much water evaporates during a timed boil, everything would be a wild guess when it comes to bittering.

Don't let that get in your way. Just do a boil with water using your planned volume and boil intensity, then measure post boil volume.

 

[Miraculix]

There is also n problem with adding water in between or at the end.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

I finally got around to doing a boil test on my 4 gallon pot last night, and the results were very disappointing.

With 2.5 gallons of water (I want to be able to do make 2.25 to 2.50 gallon size batches), my lousy stove refused to make the water do more than bubble a little, even with a lid on the pot. And thinking back to the last time I made spaghetti in a 2-gallon pot (with not quite 1 gallon of water), it never gets more than a very gentle boil at max heat.

What are my options?

• No boil? It's definitely a near boil. I'm just going to be doing extracts and steeping grains, so I think all I actually need a boil for, is bittering. How well does bittering happen with just a near boil?
• Do a concentrated brew (ie, stick with my 2-gallon spaghetti pot, boiling a max 1-gallon of liquid and diluting afterward)
• Get a propane burner
• Get an induction cooktop (are there ANY cheap ones that will work on a 12-inch wide at the base pot? Or are there any 4+ gallon pots that are not more than 10 inches wide?)

Thanks for any input!

 

[Zambezi Special]

Yep, sounds like your electric stove does not have enough power.
You already mention your options pretty well
Buy something that can boil those amounts (maybe even look at an urn or electric kettle)
Do smaller batches or more concentrated batches
Do extract

How are you going to mash?
That is what decided my amounts, although you can do a more concentrated mash as well.
I put my whole pot into a cooler box lined with an old duvet. Easy and no investment as I had one already.
I biab and make 5 to 10 ltr batches

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

Yep, sounds like your electric stove does not have enough power.
You already mention your options pretty well
Buy something that can boil those amounts (maybe even look at an urn or electric kettle)
Do smaller batches or more concentrated batches
Do extract

How are you going to mash?
That is what decided my amounts, although you can do a more concentrated mash as well.
I put my whole pot into a cooler box lined with an old duvet. Easy and no investment as I had one already.
I biab and make 5 to 10 ltr batches

I'm definitely planning to stick with extract brewing (plus steeping grains). While I'd love to get an electric kettle (the Digiboil looks good to me), I can't justify that expense at this time. Is a 2.5 gallon batch made with 1 gallon water (and later diluted) going to be weird? I've seen conflicting info on diluting extract brews turning out some weird tastes (and my whole reason for wanting to brew my own beer, is because there are SO many commercially available beers that I think could be tweaked [less hoppy, more abv, more malt, less roast, gtfo with that coffee bs, etc] to be way better).

 

[Miraculix]

Yep, sounds like your electric stove does not have enough power.
You already mention your options pretty well
Buy something that can boil those amounts (maybe even look at an urn or electric kettle)
Do smaller batches or more concentrated batches
Do extract

How are you going to mash?
That is what decided my amounts, although you can do a more concentrated mash as well.
I put my whole pot into a cooler box lined with an old duvet. Easy and no investment as I had one already.
I biab and make 5 to 10 ltr batches

As long as you are doing only extract, there is no problem here. Boil the hops in 1/3 of the final volume of water (no extract in the water at this point!), at the end remove the hops, throw in the extract and dissolve it as good as it gets. It won't dissolve fully but that is no problem, time will dissolve it in the fermenter.

You have to recalculate your ibus, plain water will extract much more ibus than wort, so use for example the brewers friend ibu calculator and calculate your ibus. Type in 1.0 as the og, as you are boiling in plain water, hack in the amount you are boiling in and, important, type in the final volume so that the calculator knows the dilution factor.

After you are done boiling and the extract is in there, add the remaining water. Big plus, the remaining water is probably cold, so it will chill the brew.

 

[Miraculix]

It is beneficial to add the extract as late as possible, as it has already been boiled during the manufacturing process. Further boiling time will darken it and deteriorate the flavour. Also, boiling hops in plain water does not make problems, you will read this from time to time, but it is simply not true. The only thing you have to take care of is that you will get more ibus per hops this way.

Am I the only one with this weired text typing glitches here in the forum?

Edit: glitches not visible on other device... Must be my laptop.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

You have to recalculate your ibus, plain water will extract much more ibus than wort, so use for example the brewers friend ibu calculator and calculate your ibus. Type in 1.0 as the og, as you are boiling in plain water, hack in the amount you are boiling in and, important, type in the final volume so that the calculators knows the dilution factor.

After you are done boiling and the extract is in there, add the remaining water. Big plus, the remaining water is probably cold, so it will chill the brew.

I'm either too tired or too tipsy (prob'ly both) to understand how to do this. Would I be too far off base if I started a new recipe that was actually nothing but a hop-tea? And adjusted those IBU's to my real recipe's targeted IBU/GU profile?

> Am I the only one with this weired text typing glitches here in the forum?

Time to reboot!

 

[Miraculix]

I'm either too tired or too tipsy (prob'ly both) to understand how to do this. Would I be too far off base if I started a new recipe that was actually nothing but a hop-tea? And adjusted those IBU's to my real recipe's targeted IBU/GU profile?

> Am I the only one with this weired text typing glitches here in the forum?

Time to reboot!

This is what you can do, yes. To simplify it, you can just use half of the water during the hop boil, add the extract after the boil, add the remaining water and be done. For ease of calculation, you can pretend in the calculator, that you are boiling the hops with the full volume of water. It is important that the calculator knows that you have a boiling gravity of 1.0, so the og and fg should be 1.0 in the ibu calculator.

 

[Hoochin'Fool]

This is what you can do, yes. To simplify it, you can just use half of the water during the hop boil, add the extract after the boil, add the remaining water and be done. For ease of calculation, you can pretend in the calculator, that you are boiling the hops with the full volume of water. It is important that the calculator knows that you have a boiling gravity of 1.0, so the og and fg should be 1.0 in the ibu calculator.

Thanks, that makes sense now!