How can I make a 5 gallon batch at home with no special equipment?

[Ariel]

I'm finishing up my first 1 gallon brew. My 7qt pot was just the right size to make it in. The stove I had struggled a bit to heat it up and to boil off the excess water during the hop step. I don't think it could handle anything much larger than the 7q pot. How could I still make a 5 gallon batch?

I did an all grain brew and would want to for my next one as well.

 

[BGBC]

I think you're going to need some other equipment, whichever way you look at it. Did you do BIAB for this first brew?

Where to begin...If your stove struggled to heat 7 qt, it's definitely going to have trouble heating 5+ gallons and you'd need a larger pot to boil the additional wort.

In terms of the mash, you're going to need a container that can fit the additional grains and water. Do you have a spare cooler around? You may be able to convert that into a mash tun if you don't have a larger pot, but you'll at least need a larger bag (assuming you're doing BIAB).

Finally, do you have a fermenter to fit a 5 gal batch (carboy, bucket, etc)?

If you really want to make larger batches and don't want to add equipment, you could make 5 - 1 gallon batches and combine them. It's not a great use of time, but you'd get there eventually. You'd still need the larger fermenter though...

 

[Iowa Home Brewer]

You can do extract brews. Buy a cheap 5-gallon kettle. A cheap food-grade bucket, a cheap airlock.
It's how I started and had no issues. Several shops sell extract kits.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

I'm finishing up my first 1 gallon brew. My 7qt pot was just the right size to make it in. The stove I had struggled a bit to heat it up and to boil off the excess water during the hop step. I don't think it could handle anything much larger than the 7q pot. How could I still make a 5 gallon batch?

I did an all grain brew and would want to for my next one as well.

The book How To Brew (2017), 4e, not the web site) covers many ideas, includeing how to make 5 gal extract batches on a stove top using common kitchen equipment.

BIAB Brewing (with pics) [2008] (I've only read the initial five replies) is worth a read,

 

[madscientist451]

You can do extract brews. Buy a cheap 5-gallon kettle.

The OP stated that his stove could barely handle a 7 qt pot. So a 5 gallon pot isn't going to work. Th OP also stated that he wanted to use grain, not extract.
Question for the OP:
Does your stove have multiple burners? Can you run two pots at once? What do you consider "special equipment"? Does that include buying another pot? A bigger pot might boil if you leave the lid 1/2 on.
If getting a better stove or a propane burner isn't an option, the answer is to make concentrated wort and water it down or run multiple mash/boils to get 5 gallons.
Get a cheapo 16 quart pot (or go to 5 gallon if you want) and a BIAB bag. Mash 5 lbs of grain in 3 gallons of water. Divide your wort and boil both pots, cool and add to the fermenter, repeat and you'll get about 4 gallons of concentrated wort, you'll have to add a gallon or so of water. You could even add the water when the wort is hot to make sure its sanitized. You'll have to play around with it to get your numbers right, and you'll probably have to adjust the hop additions,
your boil off rate + absorption by the grain will determine how much water to add.
Note that some large industrial brewers use the concentrated wort and add water later method. This is done to increase production and overall efficiency, but may or may not change the flavor of your beer at the homebrew level.
Of course you could use your existing pot and make 3 concentrated batches and then add water to get 5 gallons. Take a 5 gallon batch, split the grain up in thirds and go for it. Again you'll have to play around with volume and hop adjustments until you figure out a system.
If there is a will, there is a way.

 

[D.B.Moody]

I think you're going to need

I can't resist this reaction even though I brew 5 gal. batches by doing a partial boil of 1 1/2 gallons:

 

[Ariel]

My issue is that I rent an apartment. I don't have the carboys for it yet but deciding between multiple 1 gallon carboys or a 5 gallon one. Leaning more towards the 1 gallons in case I want to stick to multiple small batches.

I could use multiple burners. Id have to get another large pot to do that. I was hoping it would be something simple. Might just give up on this idea and do multiple 1 gallon brews over the span of a week

Thanks everyone!

 

[jrgtr42]

My issue is that I rent an apartment. I don't have the carboys for it yet but deciding between multiple 1 gallon carboys or a 5 gallon one. Leaning more towards the 1 gallons in case I want to stick to multiple small batches.

I could use multiple burners. Id have to get another large pot to do that. I was hoping it would be something simple. Might just give up on this idea and do multiple 1 gallon brews over the span of a week

Thanks everyone!

1 single carboy (or a bucket) takes less space that 5 singles. |It doesn't hurt to keep a 1 gallon jug or 2 around; they're always useful, but for a single batch, it's better to have it in one fermenter. A 6.5 gallon uycket is an ideal size for brewing, and they;re cheap. There are people who say you should only use a high-zoot, stainless whatever, but you can always upgrade later - and buckets are great for storage in between - when I started, everything I used, except my kettle, fit into the buckets between brews.
The hard part would be brewing all-grain in a small place - there is extra equipment that is needed for that, and only so much you can concentrate your wort during boiling.
However there are ways around, such as electric heat sticks that will boost what your stove is doing - check out the electric brewing subforum for more info on that.

 

[McKnuckle]

They make 2-3 gallon plastic fermenters, too - buckets, carboys, and purpose built ones with spigots and sealing lids with airlock holes. No reason to jump from one gallon to five. Five is a lot of beer, despite it being the old school de facto standard. If you are bottling, it makes no real difference whatsoever if you brew 1, 5, 3, or 2.37 gallons.

Instead of first aiming for a batch size and then figuring out how to fit it into your vessels, look for vessels that work for your current means and customize the batch size accordingly.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Interesting as BYO recently had an article on how a person brewed beer in their hotel room.

 

[eric19312]

A nice stepping stone from where you are to 5 gallon full boil all grain batches would be partial mash. Do whatever size mash you can in the pots you have and boil that with your hops. When boil is done dissolve dry malt extract into the wort to make up difference in sugar you need put it all into your fermentor and then top the fermentor up with cold water (either chlorine free water from your tap or RO water from the grocery store if your tap water has chlorine). Top the fermentor up to about 5.25 gallons. Nice thing about this strategy is you can pre chill the topping up water and use it to chill your wort.

Use a recipe builder like builder's friend to calculate the amount of malt extract you are going to need. I did a quick back of the envelope calcualtion in Beersmith and looks like a partial mash of 4 pounds pale malt (2-row or similar) plus 4 pounds of light malt extract would get you to 1.054 OG (5.25 gallons) SRM 3.9. I think that would make a nice APA, you could also substitute some of the 2-row for character malts to increase color and add some different malt flavors.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

I'm finishing up my first 1 gallon brew. My 7qt pot was just the right size to make it in. The stove I had struggled a bit to heat it up and to boil off the excess water during the hop step. I don't think it could handle anything much larger than the 7q pot. How could I still make a 5 gallon batch?

I did an all grain brew and would want to for my next one as well.

Concentrated boil. Top up with water. Ferment in 5 gallon water jugs?

 

[jschein]

Concentrated boil. Top up with water. Ferment in 5 gallon water jugs?

Bingo

 

[Snuffy]

You need a kettle and something to mash in. You can boil a smaller volume and top up. If you want to go all grain, the easiest way IMO is to just buy an electric BIAB unit. You will go thru more trouble trying to round up all the bits you need otherwise. Less than 300 bucks you can be in and ready to rock. A basic Mash & Boil can be had for 200 if you catch a price. I‘d brew extract if it meant trying to mash in a cooler. lots of folks do it successfully, but it’s work.

 

[BGBC]

Stalk the bakery manager at your local supermarket for empty frosting buckets. I got multiple food grade buckets (2 gal and 5 gal) from them when I first started. Drill a hole in the lid and all you need is a gasket and airlock to turn them into fermenters. I still use them today.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Bingo

What did I win? The corvette?

 

[lumbergh]

Stalk the bakery manager at your local supermarket for empty frosting buckets. I got multiple food grade buckets (2 gal and 5 gal) from them when I first started. Drill a hole in the lid and all you need is a gasket and airlock to turn them into fermenters. I still use them today.

This is exactly what I do. If you can, go in earlier in the day (or call) as the cake decorators tend to come in early and the buckets are all thrown out by the afternoon. If you get the right night person or manager, they will leave a note for the morning people to save them for you.
I worked at a grocery store for a few years.

The nice thing is that if the buckets get scratched up/broken/etc, you can chuck them (or repurpose for outside things) and get more from the grocery store.

Would you consider partial mash instead of all grain?

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Nope. Not worth the time and trouble cleaning "free" frosting buckets. I know as we had a friend that worked at a bakery. Thought I had hit the jackpot. However, I quickly discovered the amount of cleaning is not worth the time and trouble for these "free" buckets and lids.

Save yourself time and just purchase food grade buckets and lids at HD or Lowes.

 

[kgav8r]

If you’re struggling to get 7quarts to boil, 5 gallons will be a non starter, I’m afraid. My process uses a sous vide stick to get 4 gallons in a canning pot up to strike temp and maintain during my BIAB mash, then I pour over 1 gallon of water and squeeze the bag and add water after all that to 4.5 gallons. I keep the sous vide stick in to help get up to boiling temp then maintain with my electric stove top burner. The boil is never vigorous. After I chill, I dump into the fermenter (6 gallon bucket) and top up to 5 gallons depending on gravity. I’ll usually up my hops a bit in the boil to compensate. My post boil gravity is always higher so my beers never taste diluted. I am limited to about 12lbs of grain this way, but that is usually plenty. I do bigger beers in split batches that go into the same fermenter (8 gallon). I’ve got around $75 in my equipment. I’ve made some damn fine beers this way if I do say so.

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Do a concentrated boil with the amount possible. Will need more hops to compensate for the concentrated boil to achieve the same IBUs.

Cool.

Pour the concentrated wort into a fermentation vessel and top up with water.

 

[bwible]

McKnuckle beat me to it - yeah its not an absolute one gallon or 5. You can brew any size batch.

Some people a long time ago decided that 5 gallons was a good return for the time and investment of a brew day and was a manageable size. Since then the community largely revolved around a standard 5 gallon batch. A gallon is 128 oz, I always count 10 bottles per gallon. So 5 gallons should yield roughly 50 bottles. 2 cases of beer and a couple bottles.

I say all the time I brew 3 gallon batches. I use a 5 gallon carboy for a fermenter and I have 3 gallon carboys if I want to do a secondary or settling. 3 gallons is about 30 bottles, or a case plus a 6 pack.

If you wanted to do a 2 gallon batch you could do that and ferment in a 3 gallon carboy and 2 one gallon jugs if need be. Figure 20 bottles, about 4 bottles short of a case.

It really depends on how much beer you drink or how fast you go through it. 5 gallons is not a magic number or the only volume of beer you can brew. Some guys are brewing 20 gallon batches because it suits their needs.

The advantages to smaller batches are that everything is smaller, lighter, and easier to handle. A batch cools quicker. And you can have several varieties on hand without being overstocked with 12 or 14 cases of beer. In my case, I am the only one in my house who drinks beer, we rarely have parties and when we do nobody drinks beer. So it makes sense for me to brew smaller.

 

[amber-ale]

5 gallons on a stove is really hard. awkward, heavy and dangerous. its hard to stir, heavy to lift or squeeze, the bottom of the bag burns, and normal stoves struggle. you are more likely to drop the bag/pot and is is just a frustrating struggle. if you HAVE to do 5 gallon batches on a kitchen stove you will need to either split the batch in to multiple pots (BIAB), do a wort concentrate or

or just do 2.5 gallons. fast, easy, you can use a normal stock pot, easy to lift/squeeze, can be easily/safely moved, can be chilled in <15minutes in the kitchen sink , only needs a little bit of extra equipment, and your brewing supplies will fit into a cupboard. it is so fast and easy ( 4 hours from start/set up to clean up ( including a 1-2 hour mash)) that you can have MANY flavors of beer to enjoy instead of just ONE for the next six months.

 

[Dancy]

You can’t get around needing more equipment and the stove won’t cut it. Before I switched to my currently used Brewers Edge Mash & Boil, I bought a portable 1800 watt induction cooktop for $50 on sale — something up to $75 will be good as well. I used an 8 gallon Bayou Classic Kettle with a tri-clad bottom (must be tri-clad to work with induction) and I could boil 6+ gallons. It takes quite awhile to reach a boil but not much different than my Mash & Boil.

 

[bkboiler]

I'm gonna be the guy to make the off the wall suggestion here....
Stone beer!
Your oven has the highest BTU of your entire range. Get some food-safe stones and heat them in the oven, place them in to help heat the water and maintain the mash temp and keep the boil going vigorously...
Was (and still is) done this way for some historical breweries.
Either way you'll need a bigger pot or just another of the same size. Yes, I recommend a partial boil as the others posted as well. For a 5 gallon batch, I'd recommend a second 7 qt pot and do 6 qts in each pot...
You'll need to manage how many stones you add so you don't get a boil over...fermcapS is helpful here!
You will need to experiment with your efficiency doing this kind of partial boil and adjust accordingly.

 

[bracconiere]

What did I win? The corvette?

no the yugo!

 

[Tobor_8thMan]

Can't be the Yugo as Yugoslavia no longer exists...