Smallest Batch in 45g kettle

[Stretch1991]

So some friends of mine and I have the same pipe dream a lot of you have of opening a brewery. While it may never happen the welder of the bunch is building a 4 kettle 2bbl system and we plan on putting 45g kettles on all of them.

But since this is another 2 years or so in the making (assuming we follow through with it and it's not the homebrew talking) we don't really plan to start brewing batches that big just yet. However if we pick up the 45g kettles we are looking at what would the smallest feasible size batch be? The kettle is approx 25" wide so I feel we could do 10 gallon batches without issue but could we do smaller? Or do we need to do larger? None of us have placed an order on a kettle yet for what it's worth. We are still tossing around the concept but even if it never leaves our garage I still think we are gonna go through with building the 2bbl system and just brewing 2 different 1bbl batches at a time

 

[ChelisHubby]

I would imagine that 2 barrel is to small for a pro brewery and too large for most of us amertures. that said the heights of your ports to the kettles and your attention to boil off rates should determine how small you can go. I would think with 20 gallon batches would be simple to brew in that large of a kettle. I would think that 10 gallon batches would experience darkening of the wort from high temperatures,

 

[yeahfairly]

So some friends of mine and I have the same pipe dream a lot of you have of opening a brewery. While it may never happen the welder of the bunch is building a 4 kettle 2bbl system and we plan on putting 45g kettles on all of them.

But since this is another 2 years or so in the making (assuming we follow through with it and it's not the homebrew talking) we don't really plan to start brewing batches that big just yet. However if we pick up the 45g kettles we are looking at what would the smallest feasible size batch be? The kettle is approx 25" wide so I feel we could do 10 gallon batches without issue but could we do smaller? Or do we need to do larger? None of us have placed an order on a kettle yet for what it's worth. We are still tossing around the concept but even if it never leaves our garage I still think we are gonna go through with building the 2bbl system and just brewing 2 different 1bbl batches at a time

Good Luck with your venture! I just read about a 2bbl brewery in a very small town. They did extremely well and within two years they upgraded to a 7bbl system. There are several success stories out there from startups that started on a small scale Frankenbrew type system (extremely low startup cost). I hope you end up being one of them....

Cheers!!!

 

[Stretch1991]

Two of my favorite breweries actually run on 1bbl systems. 1 Barrel in Madison WI and Black Rocks in Marquette MI, so I know it's possible

As for the boil size, since the kettles are "skinnier" than some for the type, more tall than wide, I was thinking I could possibly go as low as 10, I figured 5 was out of the question all together