Brewer's Friend one gallon equipment profile

[happyduke]

I'm a newbie one-gallon brewer (done 4 batches as for now). I tried several recipe sources and now I'm trying out the Brewer's Friend. The thing is that most of the recipes are 5+ gallon batches so I'm going to use Scale function which as I understood requires Equipment profile to be properly configured (at least mash and sparge water volumes change up to 0.5 gal). Could someone recommend what the optimal settings should be? Or maybe you could share what do you use for your equipment.

Here's my setup:

• 10-quarts wide stainless steel boil kettle
• 2-gallon Igloo cooler mash tun
• I do sparge/lauter by just pouring out all the stuff on the strainer
• Simple one-gallon glass fermenter.

Thanks. I would really appreciate it.

 

[IslandLizard]

I think you can eyeball and guesstimate a lot of the equipment variables. For example, your mash tun's deadspace is 0, because there's nothing left after you dump it all into the strainer. Your mash efficiency should be fairly high too if you batch sparge. Like dumping the grain back into the mash tun, add hot water, stir well, then dump into the strainer again. I don't even think you'd need to sparge twice with such small mash volume.

Have you considered doing BIAB in your kettle?

If not using the kettle to mash, think about using a voile bag (ala BIAB) inside your cooler mash tun to mash in and strain through. You'll get much clearer wort than using the (shallow) grain bed in a strainer. After the mash, to lauter, just lift the bag with grain, let drip out a bit (or squeeze) and keep in a spare bucket while pouring the wort from the mash tun into your kettle. Toss the bag back into the mash tun, add sparge water, stir, lift, drip, and squeeze. Add the wort to the kettle. Done!

I'd brew a batch and measure every parameter you can closely, such as gravity from each running, pre-boil OG and volume, post boil OG and volume, etc. Take it from there.

When I do small batches in a smaller pot, I still evaporate about 3 quarts to a gallon per hour, vs. 1-1.5 gallon/hr in my 8 gallon kettle. So keep that in mind, evaporation is not solely dependent on volume.

 

[IslandLizard]

On a side note, how much headspace do you leave in a gallon jug? I sometimes ferment 3-3.3 quarts of leftover or reclaimed wort in a gallon jug, and feel I need close to that quart of headspace. A pint would be too small, IMO. It depends on the yeast too.

 

[happyduke]

Thanks for the reply! I kinda try to figure out the optimal average of my equipment configs, e.g. in my best batch evaporation loss was only 0.5 gallon, in my first batch it was about a gallon so I had to add water to the fermentor. Maybe it will come with experience but right now this Scale tool is bothering me since for different configs the total water volumes vary significantly.

The idea of using bag in cooler is interesting, I should try it out, thanks.

On a side note, how much headspace do you leave in a gallon jug? I sometimes ferment 3-3.3 quarts of leftover or reclaimed wort in a gallon jug, and feel I need close to that quart of headspace. A pint would be too small, IMO. It depends on the yeast too.

I leave very little space due to fermenter volume, it sometimes blows-off like a hell but I kinda like it