One gallon beer kit - normal fermenter?

[adamgm]

Hello all,
I'm hoping to start a belgain saison from brewers best.

I went and got myself a 1 gallon glass carboy so that I can do these smaller kits, but now I'm noticing that it's calling out a 2 stage fermentation.
The instructions specify a 1 gallon carboy as the second stage but is silent about the first stage.

Can I use a normal "big" bucket that I've used for larger amounts, or is this a problem?

 

[Kent88]

Should be fine.

The biggest issues I could maybe see with a small batch in a big primary fermenter would be sanitation (much more surface area to clean) and contact with air. During active fermentation the extra air in the closed fermenter should be fine.

If it was me, I'd rack it to secondary a little earlier than what they are probably telling you to do.

If you could provide a link to the instructions or the product description we might be able to give you better advice.

 

[jan_b19]

I usually do my primary in bucket's ( about 5 gal in a 8 gal bucket). As long as you sanitize well they don't really give to much problems as long as the fermentation isn't stuck. Yeast produces CO2 and that's heavier than air so it pushes the air out of the airlock. then again i wouldn't put a 1 gal brew in a 8 gal bucket...
If you have two 1 gal carboys I'd use a carboy for both fermentations. Else you could carefully siphon it from the carboy into a clean sanitized bucket and back into the carboy once it's clean. BE VERY CAREFUL to not oxidize your beer like this tho.
If i'm correct saisons usually go for one and a half months or more in secondary. You could transfer the beer a few days after the krausen drops if you really want to play it safe.

 

[Moosey]

Ive been brewing exclusively with two 1 gallon jugs so that I can get my processes dialed in with more repetitions, and of of the 8 brews I've run so far I only racked to a secondary once to see how it affected the clarity of my beer only to find that it really didn't matter since I was bottle conditioning my beer, as I'm guessing you will be doing unless you have a mini keg setup.

My recommendation would just be to let it ride single stage in your glass carboy for ease unless (just keep it there a couple days past final gravity and then cold crash if you can to get everything nice and compact at the bottom) you are planning on keeping it on the yeast for an extended period.

 

[Thorrak]

Hey there. I started out doing almost exclusively 1 gallon kits, and found that my local homebrewing shop sold 2 gallon plastic buckets with drilled lids that work perfectly as fermenters for 1 gallon batches. You miss out on the ability to watch the fermentation take place, but you gain a massive amount of additional room for krausen and vigorous fermentation in addition to a much easier time cleaning up once all the fun is over.

If you need to age for a long time (I've heard >6mos) then you can rack from the bucket to a glass carboy -- but for all of the batches I've done, the bucket was sufficient.

 

[swampbrewcrew]

I have one of the brew demon fermenters someone gave me as a gift. It has been working well for 1 gallon brews. I bought one gallon glass jars from AiH that are almost a true gallon to use for secondary and conditioning. There seems to be a lack of optimally sized fermenters for one gallon recipes that aren't expensive. Anything I have found that's readily available is either too small for primary, or too large to condition in.