Recipe Experimentation

[Bfelt]

I was looking into starting to create my own recipes and was wondering how you guys go about experimenting with new recipes?

I have used Beer tools pro to play around with some recipes and I know some people just go straight into making full 5-10 batches, but I was wondering if anyone makes 5, 5 gal batches or 2, 2.5 gal batches at the same time to experiment?

I was looking into doing this to take one recipe i like and tweak it five different ways and see which one i like the best.

I know some people might say making smaller batches is harder to do, but I do not really care how much time it takes...I just want to make many different types to accelerate the process of finding out what tweak tasted good.

Anyone advise for or against this or have any tips?

Also if you have done this before, how do you go about scaling the yeast?

 

[HollisBrewCo]

I have 2 3 gallon carboys that I use to do experimental stuff. Usually my experiments consist of doing a secondary with the 3 gallon carboys adding an ingredient ie. dry hopping or oaking or pitching more and or different yeast. with my most recent brew, a spiced holiday ale, I secondary fermented my initial brew in 2 ways, one carboy with a buckwheat honey/ molasses mixture the second with grand mariner. The experiments turned out better than the brew and I ended up blending some of the remaining brew with the secondaries. In short my advice would be to pick up some smaller fermenters and split a normal size batch to do your experimentation.
I have not scaled yeast differently as I have not done an experimental primary but I would think if you did a 2.5 gallon batch you could pitch a wyeast smack pack or a white labs tube directly without worrying about under pitching. or you could make a small starter separate from your main brew in a small sanitized vessel maybe a mason jar ? just speculation here I'm sure someone more experienced will have good advice here.