Small Quantities...

[Greendan]

Ok, so I'm only just starting out with a kit, but I'm looking ahead to extract brewing.

My plan would be to have two barrels, or one barrel and some bottles, so that two brews can be 'leap frogged' so that I don't end up having dry periods of no beer!

My questions is...how do you brew less that 40 pints? It seems most cans of LME are around 1.8kg, similar in size to the 40 pint beer kits? Is it possible to brew smaller amouts that that? It say 10 litres of a brew to go in 10 litre or 20 half litre bottles? Cans of LME are not resealable, so could I brew and then 3 weeks later use the second half of the can for another brew?

Cheers All!

[GrowlingDogBeer]

You could use DME instead of LME, then you can use as mush or as little as you want.

[Greendan]

I was thinking that, but then I got confused as I started thinking DME (like spraymalt) was used instead of adding sugar? Can it do both?

[Morten]

DME/spraymalt is just dried malt sugar.

It's perfect for extract-/partial mash brewing.

[Greendan]

So, you essentially toss in DME instead of LME, can you then skip the sugar?

[Morten]

Yes. 1500 grams of DME will give you an original gravity of 1055 in a 10 litre batch.

Remember to take evaporation and loss to hops into account when calculation you batch and boil volume.

[gnutz2]

Why not brew 40 pints at a time and just do it half as often, say you go through 40 pints in a month then just do one kit or extract a month and save yourself some time.

I brew 23l at a time, if I had the equipment I would probably do 50l and save a lot of hassle, I however would make small batches for experimenting.

[Greendan]

Mainly space and storage issues. Also the size of my cooker would be more condusive to a smaller brew pot!

[Paddy Bubbles]

Small batches are the main reason I'm currently moving away from kit brewing, where I'm restricted to >20 litres. I enjoy the process of making beer so I want to brew more. At the same time, I don't want to have 40 pints of the same beer sitting around, taking up space in my bottles. I've got a few big bags of DME and i'm enjoying playing around with recipes on BeerTools and BeerSmith. Great fun.

[potatoes]

If you want to play around with small batches then have a look at mini-BIAB. Improves the taste and halves the cost!

[Greendan]

Paddy, Potatoes: Yes that's basically the reason I want to do smaller bataches: Experimenting and beer rotation.

I will start with extract and then maybe move to BIAB later.

[potatoes]

Paddy, Potatoes: Yes that's basically the reason I want to do smaller bataches: Experimenting and beer rotation.

I will start with extract and then maybe move to BIAB later.

Thats what I did, sounds like a plan. My only other advice is that when doing extract brewing is to steep grains. Steeping grains (e.g. crystal malt) will add a lot of flavour to your beer, so I recommend it. I did a couple of extracts without steeping and they were drinkable but with not much flavour. Here is a basic list of the grains you can steep and the ones you cant.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section2/chapter12-1.html