Starting a 1 gallon setup. Few questions

Mashing
1

I just got into doing all grain recently and wanted to play around with one gallon BIAB batches. I have a few questions from what I have been reading.

  1. How long do I need to boil? NB kits say 45 min and I have seen people online boil a lot less.

  2. Can I just scale recipes down by 1/5 or is there something else I’m forgetting?

  3. Any suggestions on recipes I should try? I want to experiment with some SMASH brews so I got
    10lbs of 2 row and a bunch of different hops left over from previous kits to try.

Thanks

2

Hello there!

  1. If your doing your own mashes I wouldn’t go under 45 minutes. Anything less than that and you could easily notice some DMS flavors for not a long enough boil. It will also make it harder to achieve your desired bitterness without using too much hops. I’m not quite sure how much you’ve brewed, but playing with your boil time will affect your hop bitterness if you shorten (less bitter) or lengthen (more bitter) them out.

  2. Yes you can just scale down. Just be wary of your boil times and boil off amounts.

  3. I’ve been intrigued by the SMASH idea and would definitely tell you to go for that idea. Maybe consider also throwing in 1 kind of specialty malt as well? Should give the beer more character while still allowing you to really pick up on the nuances of each part.

3

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I was planning on adding some specialty malts as I go. I figure that I will always have a few things left over from recipes here and there, so this would be an easy way to test the different flavor profiles I can get.