Scaling down AG system

[MattD93]

At my current rate of beer drinking I can only get through full batches about every other month so my 5 tap keezer has some seriously stale beer in it at times and I can't brew nearly as often as I'd like.

I'm thinking about converting my 60qt Coleman tun into a dedicated swamp cooler and moving down to a 5gallon igloo tun and switching to mostly 2 gallon batches with the potential for 5 gallons of session beers. The 60qt is too big even for some 5 gallon session beers, I get terrible efficiency on small grain bills in it. The result is a keezer full of big beers that I can never seem to finish.

Any advice from small batch AG Brewers? Will my 10 gallon kettle be too big?

 

[jekeane]

Whenever I do below 3 gallons or less I do BIAB either in a 10g pot or in a small pot that fits on my stovetop and inside my stove. I personally would just make the switch to biab. You can do all but high gravity full volume biab in a 10g kettle.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I agree...small batches I'd just BIAB. I'm thinking about doing exactly that for experimenting with new recipes that might be a bit "out there". For hop variations on my NEIPA recipe...no worries, but the mango/bourbon DIPA I'm toying with, I'm not sure I want 5 gallons in case it's a total flop.

 

[Nokie]

I do my AG in a 5 gallon igloo cooler with a false bottom. Only because I've never done any BIAB, and it's all equipment I've had. I just set up a 3 tier system with a pot on the stove(as my HLT),my igloo mash tun on a stool going to my boil pot on the floor. I guess I just stick with that set up because i kinda enjoy that process of brewing. I scale all my recipes down to 3.5 gallons and I boil in a 5 gallon pot on the stove top. I did a few 2.5 gallon batches but had figured I can boil just over 4 gal on the stovetop so I bumped them up a bit just to get another gallon with the same amount of work.
It works out good being the only drinker in the house I can have a variety of brews on hand.

 

[chickypad]

I'll put in another vote for BIAB. My other system is a 3 vessel HERMS setup with a 20 gal boil kettle, so nothing really usable for small batches . When I scaled down I started out using a small 3 gal round cooler, but quickly switched to BIAB in my old 5 gal pot I had from the extract days.

I mostly do a batch size of 3 gal post boil, but have done up to 5 gal with top off for medium gravity beers. Anything over about 2.5 gal requires a quick dunk sparge since the full volume mash won't fit, but that's super simple and you can do that in any bucket or extra pot. For temp control I pop the pot in a preheated oven turned off (my oven only goes down to 170 but I find it holds mash temp well if I shut it off right before putting the pot in). Brewing on the kitchen stovetop makes the weather irrelevant, and since I'm not having to babysit anything with this system I can get other work done during the mash and boil. I brew about 3 times more often now then when I was only making big batches.

 

[Hwk-I-St8]

I'll put in another vote for BIAB. My other system is a 3 vessel HERMS setup with a 20 gal boil kettle, so nothing really usable for small batches . When I scaled down I started out using a small 3 gal round cooler, but quickly switched to BIAB in my old 5 gal pot I had from the extract days.

I mostly do a batch size of 3 gal post boil, but have done up to 5 gal with top off for medium gravity beers. Anything over about 2.5 gal requires a quick dunk sparge since the full volume mash won't fit, but that's super simple and you can do that in any bucket or extra pot. For temp control I pop the pot in a preheated oven turned off (my oven only goes down to 170 but I find it holds mash temp well if I shut it off right before putting the pot in). Brewing on the kitchen stovetop makes the weather irrelevant, and since I'm not having to babysit anything with this system I can get other work done during the mash and boil. I brew about 3 times more often now then when I was only making big batches.

How do you chill?

 

[chickypad]

I've got a smallish immersion coil that fit's the pot. I usually end up running it just a few min to get to 90ish then use an ice bath in the sink the rest of the way.

 

[Kee]

I sold off my equipment before leaving the USA. Instead of making a mash tun I now just put a bag inside a 5 gal Igloo cooler (kind of a hybrid BIAB). About 11 lbs of grain in the mash. Boil on the stovetop. I usually have around 3 1/2 gallons going into fermenter.

Brew days are so easy now I may never go back to the 5-6 gallons batches.

EDIT: I also don't use a wort chiller now. Just set the brew bucket into a water tank and pitch several hours later. Out of 7 batches done that way the worst thing that happened was chill haze in a couple of batches.

 

[MattD93]

Thanks to everyone for the ideas! I'm gonna switch to biab for the time being and then hopefully save up for the world's tiniest HERMS/ fully automated 2 gallon electric brewery in the next year or two (I understand that this is hugely unnecessary but it would be super fun and won't take up a lot of space.