2.5 Gallon Kits?

Is there any hope for 2.5 gallon extract kits? I am a total noob, and am totally enjoying this, but brewing 5 gallon batches doesn’t allow me to brew as often as i’d like to. Not to mention the limited selection i’m able to store. I’ve done a few 1 gallon batches, which I like, but is just a little bit too small. Would love to have something right in the middle there at 2.5gs.
Thanks,

I love the 2.5 gallon batch size. I do that or three gallon batches all the time but do them all grain BIAB style. You could easily rock a 2.5 gallon extract batch. No reason not to.

Take a five gallon kit that you like and cut it in half? Add dry hops or fruit or honey or almost anything to one of the halfs (different yeast?) and have two different beers.

I’ve been brewing for 13 years. Started out with 5-gallon batches. That was too much. Cut back to 3 gallons. Still too much. Then I did 2.5-gallon batches for several years. Still too much. So…

I am currently making 1.67-gallon batches. Exactly 1/3 of a 5-gallon batch.

Screw the 5-gallon standard. I enjoy homebrewing and craft beer as much as anyone on these forums, but to perhaps state the obvious, I am not a big drinker, averaging maybe 2 beers per week. I’m starting to think even 1.67 gallons might be too much for me to brew at one time. I have another dozen recipes that I just can’t wait to brew, but I already have 5 or 6 cases of beer, cider and mead in the basement. So maybe 1.25 gallons is the way to go. I’m still thinking about it. I probably will change to 1.25 gallons soon. Yeah, probably.

Thanks for the feedback…Just to make sure i understand what you are saying, should i split the kit and do 2 separate boils, or split the entire 5 gallons of wort into separate carboys?
Also, i have a NB Phat Tyre kit that i’m thinking about brewing this weekend, any suggestions for changes/adds to make to 1/2 of it? I apologize if it’s a dumb question, i’m still a total noob and i haven’t figured out how to best modify the easy recipes yet.
Thanks!

Thanks for the feedback…Just to make sure i understand what you are saying, should i split the kit and do 2 separate boils, or split the entire 5 gallons of wort into separate carboys?
Also, i have a NB Phat Tyre kit that i’m thinking about brewing this weekend, any suggestions for changes/adds to make to 1/2 of it? I apologize if it’s a dumb question, i’m still a total noob and i haven’t figured out how to best modify the easy recipes yet.
Thanks![/quote]

I’d say split the ingredients in half brew half save the other half for another day. That would give you the opportunity to make changes to the other half of the kit if you want. Or if you loved it as is brew it again later.

Thanks for the feedback…Just to make sure i understand what you are saying, should i split the kit and do 2 separate boils, or split the entire 5 gallons of wort into separate carboys?
Also, i have a NB Phat Tyre kit that i’m thinking about brewing this weekend, any suggestions for changes/adds to make to 1/2 of it? I apologize if it’s a dumb question, i’m still a total noob and i haven’t figured out how to best modify the easy recipes yet.
Thanks![/quote]

Either way works.
The easiest thing to do is ferment each half with different yeasts like an american and a belgian. You’d have two pretty different beers.

Get beer smith, you can convert any recipe to 2.5 gallon or whatever size you want. Theres no need to buy kits

Thanks for the feedback…Just to make sure i understand what you are saying, should i split the kit and do 2 separate boils, or split the entire 5 gallons of wort into separate carboys?
Also, i have a NB Phat Tyre kit that i’m thinking about brewing this weekend, any suggestions for changes/adds to make to 1/2 of it? I apologize if it’s a dumb question, i’m still a total noob and i haven’t figured out how to best modify the easy recipes yet.
Thanks![/quote]

I’d say split the ingredients in half brew half save the other half for another day. That would give you the opportunity to make changes to the other half of the kit if you want. Or if you loved it as is brew it again later.[/quote]

Another great thing about Northern Brewer is that they have pdfs of all their kit recipes so you don’t have to actually buy the recipe in kit form. Look at the recipe and halve everything.

Hey Dave: Do you have a blog/tutorial/articles or any info on how you brew? I am very intrigued in your process and what a brew day looks like for you.

I used to brew 5-gallon batches and like a lot of other brewers, I have acquired quite a collection of fancy equipment (keggle, propane burner, pumps, polarware pot, cooler mash tun, grain mill, better bottles, carboys, kegs, etc). I enjoy brewing but after spending the time required to get a typical brew day off the ground, the brew itself, and the cleanup I’m not likely to want to repeat it again for a few months or more. I kept acquiring equipment thinking it would make things easier, but in reality it’s only made the brew day longer. This means I have NEVER been able to actually streamline my brew day or refine my brewing skills because I just never brewed often enough. Then, like Dave, I found myself with too much beer around for too long as I am not a huge drinker. I enjoy maybe a few beers a week.

So like the original poster, I also want to start brewing smaller batches. The 1 gallon batch sounds interesting but I would like to make use of the few 2.5 gallon cornies I have to avoid bottling so I am considering switching to the 2.5, stovetop, BIAB technique. Time to make this hobby fun again!

Ed

Thanks for the inquiry. I have often thought about putting together a blog or webpage about keeping things simple, but haven’t bothered to take the time to do it, not yet anyway. For my small batches, I basically just do a 40-minute steep on my stovetop at 150 F (BIAB). At the same time I heat up my infusion and/or sparge water on the side on another burner. Then I pull the bag and often rinse just by dunking the mash bag into the next pot – I think that’s what I’ll do in the future to keep my efficiency in the 80s. Then of course after a couple minutes pull the bag again, maybe stir and run a small colander through the sweet wort to sift out small chunks if any (usually not an issue though), then bring to a boil and brew as normal. With a smaller batch, your boiloff percentage will be very high, as much as 30-40%, because you still boil off about a gallon in an hour if you boil hard like I would recommend. So if you’re only making a small 1.7-gallon batch or something like that, relatively speaking you need to add a TON of infusion and/or sparge water and start the boil with as much as 3 gallons since so much of it boils off. If you use sparge/rinse water, this ends up having the effect of increasing your efficiency considerably – you can easily achieve efficiency in the 90s if you crush the grains a lot and do a good rinse of your grains, especially with “small” beers. So anyway… once you achieve boil, from there you add your hops and continue as normal. Chilling to pitching temperature is also a cinch using a cold water or ice water bath in your sink or whatever – only takes maybe 20 minutes. No need for a copper chiller coil! In the winter, I’ll fill up my sink with a bucket full of snow, then add cold water to liquify it somewhat, then put the hot kettle in there to chill the wort. No need to waste ice cubes! The entire process from crush to cleanup takes as little as 3.5 hours. It just doesn’t get any easier to brew an all-grain batch. And if your grains are crushed in advance and ready to roll on brew day, you can brew a small batch very very quickly indeed.

I am definitely an advocate of keeping things simple and fast and easy. You don’t need any fancy equipment, really. A grain bag, a few pots or kettles, a spoon, a stove… what am I missing? It’s so friggin simple, even a caveman could do it, if he had a decent grain bag he could use.

I feel like I hijacked this thread now and if so, I apologize!

Thank you for the response Dave. I have a few follow up questions. The articles I have found on BIAB suggest mashing with your total volume then raising the temp to 170 for about 10 mins. Have you tried that method and find using a separate vessel for sparge more efficient? For your crush, are you just running things through twice or setting the gap smaller than usual? Out of curiosity, what do you find your absorption to be? What are you using to scale recipes? Software or another method? I’m assuming with such small batches you are bottling?

Sorry for all the questions! It’s just that you seem to be doing exactly what I’d like to do!

Ed

Not a problem, Ed. I am happy to help.

I wouldn’t use the full boil volume for the mash, because it might inhibit the molecular mechanics of the enzymes. I have heard it said that the maximum water to grist ratio should be 3.0 qts water per pound grain, otherwise the enzymes are too dilute, and thus the results of your mash less predictable. Might turn out fine, might not; I have not run any experiments to know for sure. I always mash at about 1.2 to 1.4 qts/lb, then after the mash is completed I add hot infusion and/or sparge water to make up the rest of the necessary boil volume. Usually this water is between 190-195 F, which brings the mash towards the appropriate mashout temperature of 168 F. This is determined using an Excel spreadsheet and based on formulae I found somewhere or other (I can’t remember where exactly). Comes pretty close to 168 F. Mashout really isn’t necessary anyway, especially for small batches, since you can bring the sweet wort up to a boil in a few minutes, so there’s no reason to “lock in” the fermentability. It’s not like where in a commercial brewery, you’ve got this mash sitting in the 150s or 160s for an hour or three before you can get it up to a boil.

As for the crush, I always crush pretty hard. I use the same settings for both BIAB and for mashing in a cooler, and I get very similar efficiencies with both. But you can certainly double crush or crush harder with BIAB because there is no concern for a stuck mash if you are just pulling a bag out.

Water absorption for me is roughly 0.1 gallons per pound. This does vary based on your own storage conditions, humidity being the key factor. In a dry environment, your grain is more thirsty at maybe 0.12 gallons per pound or more, but in a highly humid environment, your grain might soak up less than 0.1 gal/lb.

I used my favorite brewing software for scaling recipes. I use StrangeBrew 1.8, which is the best and easiest I have seen. Most good softwares out there have scaling functions available. If I had to go with a more popular software, I believe I would pick BeerSmith – that was always my second choice if StrangeBrew support were to go belly-up.

I do bottle most of the time, although I have also dabbled in kegging in the Heineken mini-kegs – see thread at viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90461.

Thanks, Dave! One last question. What are you fermenting in? I was thinking a batch of this size would be too small for my 6-gallon buckets, but not too sure.

Ed

I fermented in 6-gallon plastic buckets for years, but recently I’ve had nothing but problems with contamination and oxidation, so I recently purchased a couple of 3-gallon glass carboys. I expect I’ll never have these issues again. If you can find 2 or 3-gallon plastic containers (depending on your batch size), these will work fine for a few years, but eventually you might pick up on some contamination issues. This can be fixed of course by replacing the containers periodically, or just get glass and be done with it. In either case, get the smallest size that your batches will fit into. If I could buy a 2-gallon carboy, I’d do it, but I think 3 gallons is the smallest size they make, so it will have to do.

Thank you for all of the info Dave!