Saving Ingredients

I am a new brewer and am starting off with a 1 gallon fermentor. All of the recipes and ingredients I see being sold are for 5 gallon batches. Is it ok to just take 1/5 of a recipe and save the rest of the ingredients for another day?

 

Go for it! Just make sure that you seal all your ingredients back up to avoid oxidation and your ingredients to begin staling.

 

I've always been told and presumed so. Except for yeast which doesn't store.

My local brew store told me to keep my hops in a freezer but I see yeast guides say that you can store them at 20 degree Centigrade for 6 months and calculate the acid loss and adjust quantity for that. Someone more experienced probably knows more.

I've also been told you want to err up on yeast. i.e. use 1/4 to 1/3 a package?

But yes, I've been told ingredients (other than yeast) scale darn near perfectly. (However I'd boil the full gallon of water and recover only the steam rather than boiling a fraction of the water and topping off.)

 

Suggestion for the yeast, pitch the entire thing, and then just brew on top of the yeast cake for each of the subsequent batches! Save you money and no chance you'll introduce baddies into the yeast.

 

generally yes, but if you are using grains - crushed grains have a shelf life that would be about as long as a loaf of bread (so I've read at least). If you're going this route, you may want to purchase your grains uncrushed and find some way of achieving this at home so that you can use the remaining portions later.

 

I store grains,crushed or not,in there sealed bags in the fridge for a month or more. I noticed midwest,for instance,sends smaller amounts of grains in tall narrow zip lock bags, I put them in a zip lock freezer bag in the fridge with the air burped out. They've been keeping just fine.
Other folks store their grains in tupperware containers in a cool,dry place with good results also. Some sites do have 1 gallon kits,like Brooklyn Brew Shop,& I think Northern Brewer.

 

I've been storing crushed grain in Kilmer jars in the cupboard for a few months at a time with no noticeable changes. Hops need to be frozen once opened however, make sure to break them up before freezing them though so that they're easy to split while still frozen so you can take just what you need.