1-Gallon Brewers UNITE!

[divrguy]

I was off for about 2 minutes to reconnect to my wifi, back now. Everyone tries right after I go offline for some reason.

Hey jolly, it's working now but I can seem to comment because I don't have a Facebook account. I was on break at a meeting so ill try again with cellphone

 

[cheesecake]

You should be able to setup a account with out using facebook

 

[HopHoarder]

Yeah U guess I muxed things up a bit as my process was more akin to BIAB but I brought my mash/ sparge habits with me and sort of merged the two which was why my results werent quite what I expected.
Still a bit of a learning process and Im refining my system. Good thing about these small batches is more frequent opportunity to fine-tune.

 

[cheesecake]

The 2 kits I ordered from Brooklyn brew shop came in today. And my pump for my 2.5 gallon setup came in also.

 

[rawkstar320]

The 2 kits I ordered from Brooklyn brew shop came in today. And my pump for my 2.5 gallon setup came in also.

Did you do that $5 deal? I totally missed it....otherwise the kits they sell are quite pricey IMO.

any pics of your setup?

 

[cheesecake]

Yeah I got in on the 5 dollar deal. I will post pictures of the setup when its up and running. Right now its just a bunch of parts. Still waiting on a bunch of other parts

 

[Yooper]

Yeah I used wort to sparge. It was more for the purpose of hopefully filtering some of the trub out by running it through the grainbed.

I know there were lots of responses between this post and mine now, so if it's repeated please forgive me, but you don't want to sparge with wort. Oh, sure, you can filter through the grainbed that way. But then you still should do a sparge with plain water (even cold water is fine) to rinse the grains. The reason is that the sugars from the wort will actually "stick" to the grain, and give you worse efficiency! So either don't sparge (which is ok if you take the lower efficiency into account), or sparge with plain water.

 

[cheesecake]

couldn't wait.....brewing one of the 5 dollar beer kits

 

[divrguy]

The 2 kits I ordered from Brooklyn brew shop came in today. And my pump for my 2.5 gallon setup came in also.

Cheese I wish I had been a little quicker. That's a great deal on those kits!

 

[cheesecake]

they came out to about 10 a piece after shipping wasnt terrible....

 

[HopHoarder]

Next time my plan is to use just enough mash water to cover my grains and do my 6) minute or whatever amount of time I need depending on what my beersmith recipe tells me and theme in a separate container sparge with the remaining water I need so it will be more akin to my larger batch mashtun system than BIAB. Should work better for my setup that way.

 

[rawkstar320]

they came out to about 10 a piece after shipping wasnt terrible....

Not terrible...I feel like that should be the normal price though, I'm pretty sure my batches are around $5-7.

 

[cheesecake]

I agree. Im not very pleased with the kits. Lack of instructions really gets me. I figured with the style of kit they send out they would help the beginer a bit more. I screwed up on my final hop addition because of the chart they use. It was supposed to be at 15 minutes but I couldnt see the one so it went in at 5.

 

[rawkstar320]

I agree. Im not very pleased with the kits. Lack of instructions really gets me. I figured with the style of kit they send out they would help the beginer a bit more. I screwed up on my final hop addition because of the chart they use. It was supposed to be at 15 minutes but I couldnt see the one so it went in at 5.

Yeah, I think they have good intentions...and they got me into actually making all grain beer. Even the starter kit isn't totally outrageous. maybe I'll start selling kits....lol.

 

[hoppyhoppyhippo]

Hello all, I'm an extract brewer, and I'm sorry if this has been answered, but if I was doing a 1 gallon all-grain (yay apartment living) how much water would I need? Assuming I use say 2.5 pounds of grain.

 

[bellmtbbq]

Hello all, I'm an extract brewer, and I'm sorry if this has been answered, but if I was doing a 1 gallon all-grain (yay apartment living) how much water would I need? Assuming I use say 2.5 pounds of grain.

Depending on the beer style, 1.25 qt/lb. I'm too lazy to do math. Expect slightly lower efficiency then 5 gallon all grains

 

[hoppyhoppyhippo]

Depending on the beer style, 1.25 qt/lb. I'm too lazy to do math. Expect slightly lower efficiency then 5 gallon all grains

Thanks a bunch, I remembered there was a rule but I forgot to write the amount down. Won't make that mistake again. I have heard of the efficiency lost and I'm also doing BIAB with it as well which I also hear that that hurts the efficiency so I'm gonna have to tinker around a bit with my weights to get the right results.

 

[JollyIsTheRoger]

Thanks a bunch, I remembered there was a rule but I forgot to write the amount down. Won't make that mistake again. I have heard of the efficiency lost and I'm also doing BIAB with it as well which I also hear that that hurts the efficiency so I'm gonna have to tinker around a bit with my weights to get the right results.

For full volume biab, I use between 6-9 qts. Depending on how much grain is there to soak up water.

 

[divrguy]

Hoppy, if you have a recipe in mind, try to put it into one of the online recipe makers and it will help you figure it out or you could post your recipe and we could run it through beersmith or pro mash and help.

 

[Calichusetts]

Depending on the beer style, 1.25 qt/lb. I'm too lazy to do math. Expect slightly lower efficiency then 5 gallon all grains

Why does batch size factor into efficiency?

Also, along what bell said. You can do anywhere from 1.25 to 1.5 per pound when calculating your water. I tend to do more towards 1.5 since I like longer boils.

If I had a 2.5 pound grain bill I would probably do a 4 quart mash along with a 5 quart sparge...this should give you around 2 gallons in the boil. But like I said, I do longer boils, if your doing 1 hour and are boiling off only .5 gallons, you will have a lot left over...trial and error will be apart of figuring out your system early on.

 

[cheesecake]

.......3rd page you guys are slacking ive never seen this post fall that far


well my 2 northern brewer kits came in....woohoo i ordered the honey porter and the honey ale. and 6 of there 1 gallon jug screw caps so i have extras.


Also i put my mash tun up for sale.
OMG GREATEST THING EVER

 

[JollyIsTheRoger]

About to rack my english barleywine to secondary. Hopefully it went ok, back in a bit with the update!

 

[cheesecake]

About to rack my english barleywine to secondary. Hopefully it went ok, back in a bit with the update!

yum i still need to brew the barley wine i planned

 

[JollyIsTheRoger]

12.3% A bit hot, but damn does it taste good. There was also more yeast in that little bucket than I have seen in some of my 5 gallon batches, haha.

 

[bellmtbbq]

Cool! I'm doing one around Christmas to give away next Christmas. Probably 4 lb of 2 row, and 4 ounces of Biscuit or Amber.

 

[divrguy]

12.3% A bit hot, but damn does it taste good. There was also more yeast in that little bucket than I have seen in some of my 5 gallon batches, haha.

How do you describe a barley wine? I've never tried one and can make a batch for the cost of a bottle. Any way to describe it?

 

[JollyIsTheRoger]

How do you describe a barley wine? I've never tried one and can make a batch for the cost of a bottle. Any way to describe it?

Basically a really strong, really flavorful, really malty beer(at the English one is). Mine is really light for a normal barleywine, so its getting called a blonde barleywine. There were 4.75# of grain and 5 oz of corn sugar in mine and looking at it now I probably should have left the corn sugar out because of how far the yeast attenuated. I was anticipating the yeast slowing down earlier and wanted to thin it out a bit, but they kept chugging at its at 1.019 after two weeks, down from 1.106.

 

[divrguy]

Basically a really strong, really flavorful, really malty beer(at the English one is). Mine is really light for a normal barleywine, so its getting called a blonde barleywine. There were 4.75# of grain and 5 oz of corn sugar in mine and looking at it now I probably should have left the corn sugar out because of how far the yeast attenuated. I was anticipating the yeast slowing down earlier and wanted to thin it out a bit, but they kept chugging at its at 1.019 after two weeks, down from 1.106.

Sounds deeeelish! Another one to brew thx

 

[dadshomebrewing]

hey divrguy... barleywine also has an incredibly long ferment time, and time in the bottle (think months, not weeks).

it's worth the wait, but it's a LONG wait

 

[cheesecake]

Just picked up my first set of buckets. 18 of them to be exact