Well I just bottled my first 1 gallon batch (not my first batch of beer). I’m not sure it is worth the trouble. I only got 7 12oz bottles out of it. I would have thought I’d get at least 10 12oz bottles from it.
Oh well, I’ll just do another one and see how that goes.
JamesKB
That is my issue with the 1g kits. If you actually put 1g in the fermenter, you will have a blow off mess.
1g = 128oz = 10.66, 12oz bottles. The best you can hope for, IMO, is 8 bottles. More likely the 7 you ended with.
It would be cheaper to make 2 gallon kits with a 2.5 gallon plastic pail. All the ingredients can fit in the pail. So shipping would be less expensive.
I’ve done three 1 gallon kits to this point and that’s my experience as well. I’ve had as little as 6 bottles and as many as 9 1/2. A lot of it depended on how well I managed the trub. It’s one of those things that the biggest pro is you get to try a beer before you dive in to a 5 gallon kit. However, if you’re doing a 1 gallon kit, a 2.5 gallon kit, or a 5 gallon kit, you generally have the same amount of time in wort production and clean up through all stages. The only difference is you have few bottles to fill. I figure that if I’m doing all of this work, I might as well get the most beer for my time which is moving to all 5 gallon kits.
One gallon brewing is a relatively new thing in the world of homebrew so the pros and cons are now really coming to the surface. I brew one gallon batches because I like to experiment way more than I like to copy or reproduce a recipe and because it saves money and space and saves on bottling time. Yes you get only 7-10 bottles and yes you still have to spend time on mashing, sparging, boiling etc. but what it comes down to is what are you brewing for?
I absolutely plan on going to 5 gallon batches but not till I am certain a recipe I made is something I can share with people and bring to competitions and I will probably keg it because I dread bottling 50 bottles, especially if I can’t get anyone to help out.
I’m glad no one is really knocking the one gallon brewing and just sharing their thoughts and experiences with it. It has been a godsend for me so I can enjoy homebrewing and so I tend to get a little defensive when someone might say it is worthless.
Anyway, it is all about the beer and sharing so cheers and brew your hearts out!
So I am sort of new to this. I have brewed 2 batches and both were not very good. So I am thinking about a 1 gallon batch. Can I use the same 5 gallon brew bucket to brew a 1 gallon batch as I can a 5 gallon batch?
Can you give any description as to why they weren’t very good, and/or maybe an overview of your process? I hate to say it, but if the 5 gallon batches weren’t very good, without tweaking some things, 1 gallon batches won’t be that good either.
The good news is, you’ve come to the right place. There are lots of brewers on here who make great beer, and give even better advice (just ask them/us about how good their/our advice is!). In addition, many have minimal equipment/gear/financial investment in the hobby, and still make awesome beer.
As far as knocking 1G batches, to me, its the equivalent of making a half-rack of ribs. Nothing wrong with it, but if I’m going to get all my $#!+ out, fire everything up, and invest time, I may as well make 10 racks and have some people over :mrgreen:
1G batches also were not a readily-available thing when I started a few years ago either. I can see how it might make sense to some people, so good on ya for making beer! :cheers:
Can you give any description as to why they weren’t very good, and/or maybe an overview of your process? I hate to say it, but if the 5 gallon batches weren’t very good, without tweaking some things, 1 gallon batches won’t be that good either.
The good news is, you’ve come to the right place. There are lots of brewers on here who make great beer, and give even better advice (just ask them/us about how good their/our advice is!). In addition, many have minimal equipment/gear/financial investment in the hobby, and still make awesome beer.
As far as knocking 1G batches, to me, its the equivalent of making a half-rack of ribs. Nothing wrong with it, but if I’m going to get all my $#!+ out, fire everything up, and invest time, I may as well make 10 racks and have some people over :mrgreen:
1G batches also were not a readily-available thing when I started a few years ago either. I can see how it might make sense to some people, so good on ya for making beer! :cheers: [/quote]
Looks like a new topic.
I’m almost exclusively a small batch brewer. Over the years I’ve gone from 5 gallons down to 3 gallons for several years, then 2.5 gallons for a couple years. Now in the past 6 months I’ve resolved to making just 1.7-gallon batches. Or 1.67 gallons, to be exact… Exactly 1/3 of a regular 5-gallon recipe. This gets me more than a 12-pack which is still worth the effort IMHO. And last batch my OG was too high so I diluted and got like 17 bottles out of it. Dilution is sometimes the solution.
But yeah… 1 gallon and 7 bottles… not really worthwhile, eh. I wouldn’t go that low. 1.7 gallons was as low as I would be willing to go. Yes, it disappears fast, but I like it that way. Drink it fresh and keep on brewing, as often as I want.
“Can you give any description as to why they weren’t very good, and/or maybe an overview of your process?”
Well to be honest the reason why my first batch wasn’t very good, was because I used Hop Pellets and no strainer. So there was always a little bit of a surprise at the bottom of each beer. That was a beginners mistake. Of course I tried to remedy that in the second brew by not pulling from the bottom and I tried to not pull in the hoppy mess, and I was only slightly more successful. MY problem with the second batch was my darling wife loves Abita Strawberry blonde and Sam Adams October fest. So I tried to give her a best of both worlds situation by making a strawberry October fest. The flavors didn’t mix well.
Not having many beer drinking friends (I know, it hurts), I found brewing 5 gallon batches to be way excessive. I finally dropped down to 2.5 gallons and I’ve been happy there. I’ve been eyeing the 1 gallon kits, but don’t know if that’s for me. I get a case out of each 2.5 gal batch.
With 2.5 gallons, I was drinking a beer a day just to cycle through my stock so I could try some other brews. If you can keep that up, you can brew a batch every month. That’s enough for me. I tend to chain them together and repitch yeast, then relax and enjoy the brews for a few months before starting again.
So my original question was never answered. Can you brew a 1G beer recipe in 5G equipment?
You certainly can ferment smaller batches in 5-gallon buckets, but the results can vary and I really don’t encourage it. If you think you’ll be brewing in small batches from time to time, it might be better to purchase smaller glass or better-bottle carboy fermenters to limit exposure to oxygen and wild critters. Otherwise you can occasionally (NOT always) run into oxidation, sourness, or contamination problems. How do I know this? Because it happened to me. Dozens of times. I have since switched to appropriately sized glass carboys and don’t expect any similar problems for as long as I live. An ounce of prevention…
Agreed. Getting the appropriate size for brewing will help you out. My LHBS carries one gallon fermenters that are $5-$7. If you are stuck on using buckets for fermenting you might get lucky and could carry 2 gallon buckets as well.
Though your question is related to the topic, it’s best to start a new thread rather than contaminating someone’s discussion. And having your question lost.
With out your location listing in your profile it’s difficult to point you in a specific direction.
In an area surrounding Iowa, there is a gas station chain called Casey’s General Store. They have a kitchen where they make their own donuts/rolls. They ship ~2 gallon pails of frosting to the stores. They give the pails away for free when empty.
Check with your local “quick stops” to see if they have something similar. The pails also hold ~10lb of grain perfectly.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/2-gallon ... d-lid.html http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.a ... &catid=752Using a 6 gallon/carboy could be used for a 1 gallon beer. I think you would run into issues with such a small amount of liquid when you go to siphon it out.
I only brew 1 gallon batches when I want to test new ingredients. I can chain together a series of 1-gallon all-extract brews in a short amount of time. They only net me about a 6-pack or so, but that’s enough for my purposes.
My small batches end up with about 2.7-3 gallons in the fermenter and net me about a case of bottles (depending on quantity and type of dry hops). I think that’s enough where it’s worth my time for an all-grain batch.
I’ve only done a couple of 1 gallon batches, but I’ve gotten 10 beers out of both of those batches. Those who are only getting 7 bottles, did you have 1.25 gallons at pre-boil?
And I agree with Nighthawk on the icing buckets. For those wanting something bigger than the 1 gallon glass jugs, call around the local bakeries or bakery departments in your local supermarkets. I got four 2 gallon buckets, and a 3 gallon I use as a small bottling bucket. All of them were free from my local BiLo supermarket. The only thing I had to get were the grommets, airlocks, and spigot for the bottling bucket.
Has anyone tried to do an all grain attempt with only one gallon of water? I would like to start experimenting with all grain and want to use my one gallon jug as the tester but was unsure if anyone else has done this yet?
I do one gallon all grain. Just scale recipes down and I collect 1.75 gallons preboil to account for boil off and trub.
Thanks for the reply, its great to hear people out there experimenting with the 1 gallon jug. That is something I would like to do down the road once I learn how to downsize or recalculate 5 gallon recipes for 1 gallon recipes.
I am curious on second fermentation. Has anyone done second fermentation on 1 gallon kits or do you immediately bottle after two weeks? I am thinking of doing a second fermentation to give it more time which I was told that sometimes the longer you wait the better the beer gets.
With one gallon all grain you will want to do a secondary fermentation for around 5-7 days. The amount of trub you get with one gallon is considerable so it will help clean up your beer when you rack into secondary. When you rack into secondary you will notice a drop in volume of your beer, hence why I always put 1.1 gallons into the primary.
