1-Gallon Brewers UNITE!

Nice link, just what I was looking for, a nice selection of 1 gallon recipe kits and reasonable shipping cost too. Thanks.

 

Big fan of 2.5 gallon batches. The 3gal better bottles are my fermenter of choice. Square shape is convenient too.

 

Do you mind posting a link to the Negro Modelo clone or the scaled down recipe here?

Is the clone pretty close to the original? Negro is one of my favorite Mexi-beers if not my favorite.

 

once i get all my recipes scaled down i will try to post some if anyone is interested .

 

I issued a temporary ban to Revvy for the above comments. While MrGrumpy's post wasn't exactly supportive or positive, and the conversation didn't necessarily benefit from his opinion, it wasn't outright rude - simply a member voicing an opinion. Forums are about sharing ideas and opinions, not crushing them. Carry on...nicely.

 

Please do! Thanks.

 

have not made it yet it is from the clone brews book.
am away today thru sunday at my daughters college parents weekend will try to type in and post it from my iphone. once home will also try to post several i scaled down as well

 

I'm seeing a lot of recipe scaling questions in the past few pages, and I know that people have already mentioned the advantages of brewing software, but seriously, having good brewing software solves so many of these problems. Maybe it would help if people would posting the software they use, a link, and maybe the cost?

I use Brewmate, its a free download, and its right here: http://www.brewmate.net/

I scale the recipes, then just round off or adjust the useless decimal places til I'm back in the OG range, and am ordering grains in a nice round number so my LHBS doesn't get exasperated.

 

I'd like to know how much liquid yeast to use in 4.25L with let's say regular OG around 1,060. Mr.malty tells me 0.5 packs of vial. That seems to be way too much seeing as I use 1 pack (either wyeast or white labs) for 23L and always had enough even at a 1,090 OG. I bought a California Ale (whitelabs) for a 1,060 OG ill be brewing sunday or monday... I'll seperate the quantity I need when its still cold (less risk of contamination..) So, how much ml should I use? I was gonna go with 1/4 of the pack wich is about 9 ml...

I brewed my first 4.25L batch 2 weeks ago... I used dried yeast (s-o5) mrmalty said 4g and it seems perfect.

I will be brewing again sunday or monday, but will be getting a 2g cooler by then. Mashing on the stove is not stable at all! I'll be posting pics in the next few weeks when I've got my low budget set-up all in place how I like it.

 

I agree. A good brewing software can make life easier. I use Promash, I bought it years ago before I was aware of any other systems. It work well for what I like to do. I can scale recipes, it tells me my mash volume, strike water temps and lastly the amount of total water I will need. I mostly take notes in a brew log but I do use Promash as a tool.

 

I'm using beersmith to scale my recipes.


I woke up this morning to some very active fermentation.

Citra hops for a citra SMaSH

 

I'm thinking about adding a heating element with pid and ssr to the pot and insulating it so I have better mash control with temp. I did hit my Target gravity yesterday and the brewday took about 3 hours

 

have a cheap 4 gallon pot from a 35$ set from harbor freight, a 1500 watt 110v element from our local ace insulated the pot with foiled adhesive insulation from lowes and just plug it in to heat/boil no pid etc works really well

use ibrewmaster
and sometimes prewpal
usually 3 hrs start to finish including cleanup a little more (not more than 30 min)for all grain

 

I was thinking about doing that but I really like the control with the PID I can set a mash temp and it will hold it with no worries. I guess ill have to think about what I'm going to do.

 

I may go this route as well. When I do 2.5 gallon batches, the 3 gallons of mash water and 5 lbs of grain would keep a steady temperature. I'm having trouble maintain mash temps with just 1.5 gallons of water and 2 lbs of grain. My last batch, I lost 8 degrees even though I put around insulation my mash pot.

 

Thanks very much UnderThePorchBrewing...you rock my man!

 

Hey menerdari, let me know if you have any questions and we can get you hooked up brewing some tasty small batches! Cheers!

 

Have you guys tried maintaining your mash temps in the oven? I've heard of people having success with setting their ovens to 150-155F and throwing the brewpot in there for an hour or so.

 

Bottled my BBS Cranberry Wheat today. I was a little short of a gallon on brew day, so I only got eight bottles. The sample had a nice tartness to it, but the flavor is closer to grapefruit than cranberry. Maybe some conditioning and carbonation will bring out the cranberry.

 

Yes, please

 

I brewed a cranberry wheat and it has absolutely no cranberry taste, just extremely tart,
2 weeks in the bottle now and I am thinking this batch my get dumped, (5 gallon batch too)

 

This is what i do and i'm using a 5 gallon pot! It's a very tight squeeze but setting the oven on a hair lower than 'low' (how is that possible?!?), it stays a steady 150 in there and the mash stays within 1 degree of whatever mash temp is at the time its placed on the rack. You 1 gallon guys should have zero problem doing this as well.

 

I tried the oven but the lowest temp I can get is 170. I may try popping the door open a bit and see what temp I can get

 

Id experiment with getting it to 170, turning it off, wait 10 minutes, and then put the mash in. That could easier on your wallet.

 

I did a quick unscientific test tonight. I set my oven at its lowest setting which is 170 and placed a pot with hot tap water for 30 minutes. I checked the water before placing in the oven and after and I didn't find much change in temperature...ie 130 degrees. Then I left the pot out of the oven for another 30 minutes without any heat applied and the water dropped 5 degrees.

So thanks jwalk4 for the suggestion:rockin: I going to try putting my mash pot in my oven. May need to experiment with turning off/leaving the oven on.

 

Yeah, turning it on and letting it preheat and then turning the oven off when you put it in will keep the heat in there, but won't heat it up. Basically just an insulated hot box. My warm setting it about 160 so I just leave it on with my 3gal pot in there.

 

It may not be a bad idea to stick a reliable oven thermometer in your oven with it set on it's lowest setting, and see what the holding temperature really is. Oven thermostats are frequently unreliable.

 

I mash in the oven too. I set an alarm on my thermometer with the oven set at 170F. On smaller grain bills, I usually have to turn the oven off for about 20 minutes in the middle of the mash. On my bigger beers it held at 152F all the way through.

I think propping the door open would just keep the burner running more and might make it even hotter.

 

minikeg

or bump your recipe to 1.5 gallons and use:

TAD

 

so, is there anything like the aroma that comes from Crystal Malt steeping, and the subsequent boil, inside the house?

oh boy, it's almost like smelling cookies baking

 

It's the best smell......everyone knows when I'm brewing in my building

 

made a cranberry pale ale today... first time ever i hit the target OG on the number... really nice red tinge to the color, and an acceptable taste on the sample out of the hydrometer...

now it's in the jug, and the tube is in, and i'm watching notre dame.

3 hours, 10 minutes, from starting the checklist to finishing the dishes.

kinda cool

 

How much cranberry did you use and in what form? Did you just add them to the boil, or do you plan to use more fruit later on?

My cranberry wheat has no red in the color, and is tart but more like grapefruit.

 

I used about 3/4 cup of whole fresh berries, and crushed them just enough to break the skins... Added them at flameout for 10 minutes, right before I put it on ice.

I was worried about whether, or not, any of the juice would make it out, but that seems ok.

Like I said... Nice red tinge... Slightly sweet taste.

Btw... This was an extract brew with fairly light hop additions.

 

hey guys! new here and to the home brew world
I found a starter kit from smallbatchhomebrew.com and it came with the drapers alley ipa kit (http://www.smallbatchhomebrew.com/Drapers-Alley-IPA_p_10.html)
the brewing process was fun and will put it in the fridge by wednesday.
everything went smoothly with the exception that i didn't have a hydrometer.

now what my real question is, if i dont want to order more of the small batch kits from that website and either order my own ingredients or find different kits....where do i go? or do i simply need to buy a 5 gallon kit and divide it into 5? i really liked the idea of making many different small batches at a time vs one huge batch.

 

I'm envious! I did my second brew today, and it took me over five hours, just like the first one.

 

What alot of people do is just divide a recipie by 5 to get a gallon batch.
There are programs like beersmith that help you do this and make shopping lists.
Im looking for a free program to help with it
I have a question though how sturdy are you buckets? my lhbs has beffier buckers for around 7 bucks ea

On that note im looking to make a trip to my lhbs and pick up 2 fermenters an use my glass jugs as secondaries.
Ive got a generic all grain american ale recipe and am looking for an all grain generic stout recipie. I like sweeter and not bitter stouts somewhat like guiness or yeti.

 

they seem sturdy enough, the lhbs near me isn't the cheapest and i dont know many around me in my area, i only accidently found mine while out to eat with my wife!

i'm a hop head for sure, the beer i made was a triple hop ipa and i dry hopped with a full ounce of citra hops. tasted it while i was bottling and while it was flat and warm it was VERY good and it seemed very strong just how i like it.....now i just need to get my hands on a pliny the elder recipe.

 

I have been searching for hours for proven one gallon batch recipies. It seems like there would be alot of support for a small batch section. So I did suggested it http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f22/we-need-small-batch-brewers-section-365395/#post4557091

please click and show support Id like to see it get off the ground so we dont have to hunt for hours, buy expensive software or sit doing calculus to put a recipie togather. Maybe if we make enough noise we will get our own little section

 

I think I understand your question about 1 gallon recipes. Any proven recipe can be an 1 gallon batch, I've been taking larger recipes and down sizing them for a couple of years now. A 5 gallon recipe can be divided by 2 for 2.5 gallons or by 4 for 1.25 gallons. The ingredients will just be divided evenly but the procedure will remain the same such mash times and boil times.

Brewing software isn't really that expensive and there is plenty of free software plus some HBT users have set up some awesome spreadsheets to help too.