Brewing Small Batches of pumpkin stout in growlers

[durp]

Hey all,

Looking to brew my second batch of beer, and wanted to do a pumpkin imperial stout. Went to the local brew shop and talked with one of the guys about my plan. We started talking about the spices to use in the brew, and how there isn't an easy way to determine which spices and quantities would be best. He suggested using growlers to ferment smaller batches rather than a single 5 gal batch.

So now my plan is to divide the 5.5 gal recipe up into 3 1/2 growler sized batches, and then the remaining 4 gallons in a single batch. Has anyone done this yet? Any words of advice? I've got the growlers, some stoppers with drilled holes and the True Brew Oaked Imperial Stout kit.

I was looking to hybridize the kit with the following recipe for a pumpkin stout: http://captainsbeerblog.com/2009/09/08/spiced-pumpkin-oatmeal-home-brew-recipe/

The 3 different growlers would contain different spices and different quantities (and I've been told that Cloves "take off like a rocket" and to avoid them in brewing).

 

[Reno_eNVy]

That sounds like a lot of fun, albeit a pain when it comes down to bottling those growlers. You should also post the recipe so we can get a better idea of what we're looking at.

Now, down to business. IMHO, you will be just fine if you keep it all as one batch and add 1.5 tablespoons of Pumpkin Pie Spice with 15 minutes left in your boil (yup, the premixed stuff by McCormic. It's better than any combination of pumpkin spices I've made.) It ends up spectacular, the Punkin' Ale recipe in my drop-down turns out 100% perfect when using 1.5 tablespoons.

 

[durp]

Hey, thanks for the info. Why would bottling the growlers be a pain?

I was also looking around at other small batches on the forum and was wondering if the ingredients from the kit would be able to be scaled down linearly for smaller batches, or if a smaller batch would still require more of some ingredients (the one most mentioned and I can see why is the yeast).