Questions before for the first 1 gallon all grain brew

[burrowsbrewery]

Hello all
I very keen to crack on brewing some ale, I have chosen to go 1 gallon because it will be easy to experiment with and I have acquired some kit already. I have read Graham Wheelers brew your own British real ale, the books good but still have a few things I’m not clear on:-

Fermenting
I was going to use a 5 litre demijohn with a bubbler like I have seen in pictures on forums. The book only mentions brewer’s buckets and advocates leaving the lid off, I thought I was supposed to keep the air away?
There is also mention of skimming off the top? I wouldn’t be able to do this with demijohns though.
How much yeast would I use for a gallon batch? I assume I could over do it.

Conditioning/Casking
I understand the beer needs to go in a cask and the air needs to be kept away but the smallest keg/plastic barrel I have seen is 2 gallon. Am I supposed to use co2 or something? The book doesn’t go into any detail on the subject.

Parts
Where does everyone get ball valves, fittings and plastic pipe at a decent price?
I have picked up from somewhere that they have to be ‘food grade’ but didn’t get anything of Google using the term. Do they have to be a particular material?

Thank you in advance

[daddies-beer-factory]

Hi Burrowsbrewery,
I ferment in a 5 gallon bucket but i dont have the lid on at all, however it is in a fermenting chamber(a converted fridge) so it restricts any flies/ particles getting in - that said it is left alone for 2 weeks without a lid and i dont have problems.

I dont bother skimming - i think it is best left alone ( I dont rouse/stir it either)

If i was you i would get an 11.5g packet of yeast (standard size for 5 gallons) and divide it into 5 bags

I wouldnt bother cask/conditioning to start with as Graham states - I would leave alone to ferment for 2 weeks, then transfer into a bottling bucket, then bottle adding sugar to the bottles . (then keep the bottles warm for a week, then cool at garage temp 13 C)

but start drinking after 3 weeks (2 weeks in fermenter and 1 week in bottle)

after a dozen brews or so then you could experiment with cask conditioning as Graham states.

hope this helps DBF

[jaroporter]

i haven't made many gallon batches, but i've definitely UNDERpitched by using yeast calculators (suggesting 1/5th of a packet), and would now sooner use 4g minimum regardless of batch size. be interested if this is just me though..

[Rick_UK]

Welcome to the forum mate. As has been said an airlock isn't necessary but is a good idea to keep any bugs out so feel free to use it if you desire. It's also a useful gague for where your fermentation is at depending on the speed of the bubbles.

No need to skim the yeast head unless you are harvesting yeast for another brew.

You can buy ball valves, pipe, connectors and fittings from a plumbers merchant or diy store such as B and Q, though I find the latter cheaper and the staff more knowledgeable. I think all plastic and copper pipe suitable for domestic water is food safe, obviously any solder or fittings that contain lead are a no go.

Rick

[Fil]

+1 to the above,

cover the demijon top with a bit of sterile foil just to stop anything falling in,,

Bottling is the easy way to start, 5l steel minikegs exist but i would stick with bottles..

what is it you want to fit a ballvalve to? screwfix/plumbase for brass n copper plumbing bits bes or ebay for stainless steel.

if your considering making a 1 gallon brewkit with valves tho i would hold off for a bit, 1 gallon is small enough to allow you to tip n sieve the beer through the process, and once you have tasted the beer you may then set sights on a larger brewday volume at which point any kit you have invested in will become redundant..

[burrowsbrewery]

Thank you all for your replies, very helpful.

The reason I am going 1 gallon is I want to experiment and create recipes that produce 'sellable' beer to my tastes before committing a recipe to an 18 gallon brew length. The 1 gallon system is supposed to replicate as closely as possible a future 18 gallon system that currently only exists in my mind; the mash and sparge need to be very close in principal. When I have an 18 gallon system I still want to use the 1 gallon for further experimentation. I'm sure there would be differences sure such as efficiency, but I reckon once I know these factors I will be able to consistently mathematically upscale recipes form 1 gal to 18 gal without any problems

Going by the book, it says you should cask condition before bottling anyway, which is why I was not going to bottle; it’s another operation.

By bottle conditioning only in place of cask conditioning will I still get the consistent results I need?

If it produces varying results or I end up with a recipe that’s not the same coming out of a 9 gallon cask then the concept kind of falls apart.

[daddies-beer-factory]

With regards to bottle conditioning only instead of cask conditioning as well - no need - when I started out I read Grahams book, and all due respect to him as he is probably one of the greatest brewers of our time. But I did the cask conditioning then bottling and it is a lot more work if all you want is to make some decent ale !

the consensus on this forum is to ferment for 2 weeks, then bottle condition for a minimum of 1 week. I have followed this and you get very drinkable beer. (just get the temperatures correct)

with regards to batch size, your idea is fine and you are supposed to get better beer the bigger the batch (or brew length as they say) - not sure why it probably hides any small errors made ?

[basswulf]

with regards to batch size, your idea is fine and you are supposed to get better beer the bigger the batch (or brew length as they say) - not sure why it probably hides any small errors made ?

Maybe it's just that you end up with more drink inside you?

I've been doing small brews because I don't want to invest in the equipment to go larger and also because it means I get to try more different recipes out. However, rather than brewing for a particular end volume, I've been scaling recipes (from Wheeler's book) to use 1kg of pale malt. That yields anywhere from 4.5l - 6.5l to bottle, so just a touch larger than 1 gallon and it is also easy to buy the primary malt fresh in batches of that size (or multiples of 1kg to use over a fairly short period). I have the other grains stored uncrushed and use a grain grinder that produces a fairly floury finish but I don't think that matters when the quantities are so small.

Wulf

[burrowsbrewery]

I will just bottle it and have done with it then. I think that’s all my questions answered for now, I will post something for my first brew day.
.
The mini kegs with co2 look interesting; I will probably experiment with them one day.

Things have started arriving in the post! Just need to need to acquire a few more things now including bottles, caps, crimper, bucket and a bottling stick/cane.

[Padalac]

I've used a mini keg without adding C02, just using natural carbonation and it worked great (and is inexpensive).. its like using a bottle - you just prime it with sugar and let it condition in there. There is a replaceable part (the rubber bung thing at the top, but these are small and cheap) and there is a built in tap.. I found it gave me a nice creamy carbonation with small bubbles.

http://www.leylandhomebrew.com/item2602.htm

[burrowsbrewery]

just swatted up on google, I had forgoten the difference between keg and cask

looking at the website there are two without co2, yours with the bottom tap and this one http://www.leylandhomebrew.com/item2986.htm.

how long does the beer keep once the seal is broken?

Kind Regards

Ant

[Padalac]

without co2, you kinda have to drink it up straight away once the seal is broken. it's effectively a mini-cask. maybe you'd be good for a day or 2? that's the main drawback.

[Jocky]

All my batches up until now were fermented in two 1 gallon plastic demijohns.

You can stick a bung in the top with a bubbler airlock quite easily, although if I'm fermenting more than 3.5 gallons I instead add a blow off tube (1/2" tube through a bung that has had a larger hole bored into it, with the other end in a container of water) as I have had some yeasts climb out the top. When the yeast drops back I switch to a standard airlock.

For yeast volume I generally use 1/4 to 1/2 a packet of dry yeast per demijohn, rehydrated prior to pitching.

After fermentation I wait for a week or two to clear and then bottle my beer. You can't really get small enough kegs for a batch that size, and I can bottle 2 demijohns worth into 12-15 500ml bottles in an hour from start to cleanup.

The only thing about small batches is that you always want to squeeze out every drop of beer, so you inevitably end up sucking up a bit more trub/yeast at parts of the process. Additionally the beer is exposed to more air overall in the process, so doesn't tend to last as long.

Once you have found your small batch recipe you will have to re-tune it for larger scale kit and process - it won't immediately come out an identical beer when scaled from 1 gallon to 18.

[burrowsbrewery]

My first brew day

Mistakes:-
1. Bought half as much pale malt as I should have done, ended up halving everything.
2. Should have boiled water the night before it took forever.
3. The mash tun was undersized; it wouldn’t have done a full batch anyway.
3. If I want to crush my own grain I should really get a proper crusher, bashing it didn’t work, the food processor either dusted it or left it whole.
4. This lead to terrible efficiency, OG 1.020 should be 1.058!
5. The biggest problem was that I realised I didn’t really know how much water to use for the mash. I used beer engine to scale down a book recipe from 19l to 4.54l by fixing OG and EBC. It gives two figures Total Liquor 7.9l, mash liquor 2.9l.

I just filled the mash tun. After the 90 min boil I ended up more than the half measure I expected, no doubt contributing to the weakness.

On a plus note it’s the right colour, fermenting and smelling ok. This next time I will buy the right amount of CRUSHED grain and change mash tun or go BIAB.

Questions:-
How much water do I mash with to get the expected OG?
Am I right in saying I can only decrease OG by watering down and not increase it when i cock up?
Where can I get a good but cheap grain crusher?

[burrowsbrewery]

Shameless bump