I watched the video on NB with Kristen from Pour Decision Brewery and he mentioned using a coffee press to do test batches of super mini mashes.
Has anyone tried this before? Is there any reason that you couldn’t brew a bottle or two of a receipe for experiments sake?
If you use a coffee press like a mash tun and do your hop schedule in a sauce pan then transfer to a growler for fermenting, then bottle?
Lots of work for almost no pay-off. I do 3gal batches almost exclusively, and at that amount I get a return for my time investment. If I really don’t like it, I either blend it or dump it. I probably only have $5-10 in a 3gal batch.
Can you really evaluate a beer with only 1 bottle? And my experience is the the recipe won’t scale exactly from a very small batch to a large one. Kinda sounds like it’s more of an idea than a solution. Personally, I think I’d got for at least a gal.
What do you use for a 1 gallon batch?
Good point about being able to evaluate one bottle. That would be a challenge and scaleing up your receipe would be difficult.
Maybe he was referring to just mashing grains for color, ect.
I still might consider it, as it may be just plain fun.
Tom, you mentioned that you blend batches. Is that a common practice? Sounds like a good way of obtaining consistancy.
What Kristen’s comments made me think of is that you could use a 12 cup french press to batch sparge small batches with a post-boil volume of around 2 liters. This way you could quickly, and on your stovetop, make 4 batches with slight differences in the grainbill. While it doesn’t scale up too well, uncarbonated fermenter samples could let you check out the differences between 3%, 5%, 10%, and 20% chocolate malt in your mild recipe, or you could try out 4 different maltsters of the same sort of grain. I think it would be useful for research and to better understand ingredients. It could also be an early step in recipe formulation. I don’t see it as a good way to make beer for drinking or competitions, but like tasting raw grain, it can be a tool toward better understanding the ingredients.
thats what i thought he was referring to as well. doing a tiny mash of a specific grain and then to taste and get to know the grains a bit.
This is exactly how I took it as well. You won’t have the exact profile but you’ll be able to tell what flavors that malt brings to the party.
This is exactly how I took it as well. You won’t have the exact profile but you’ll be able to tell what flavors that malt brings to the party.[/quote]
I just heat some water in the microwave for a couple minutes, then add some crushed grain. Let it steep for a few minutes to convert, then strain and taste.
I just chew on it.
[quote=“Sooner49er”]I watched the video on NB with Kristen from Pour Decision Brewery and he mentioned using a coffee press to do test batches of super mini mashes.
Has anyone tried this before? Is there any reason that you couldn’t brew a bottle or two of a receipe for experiments sake?
If you use a coffee press like a mash tun and do your hop schedule in a sauce pan then transfer to a growler for fermenting, then bottle?[/quote]
dontthink that was the intention. Althought you could.
It was more a long the ines of just seeing what the malt did, not actually fermenting a beer out
Seems like a lot of work in regard to the grain - but, I use a french press quite a bit to try out different hops in regard to getting a feel for what they would add as a “dry hop” for a beer. Just put a few whole hops in the press, pour a beer in, let it sit for 15 minutes and push the press down. Great way to try out 6 different hops on 6 different bottles and analyze the difference. Imparts a surprising amount of flavor and makes for some surprising differences to the beer.
