Brewing small quantities of beer

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Pete789

Brewing small quantities of beer

Post by Pete789 » Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:22 am

Hi,

I'm new to the forum & hoping someone can help me.

I've brewed from kits & the like and am planning to enbark on brewing from grain (I've got hold of a boiler at a car boot & have a brew shop near that has raw ingredients).

But I don't really want to brew 40 pints at a time. In fact, I'd quite like to brew, say, 10-20 pints. So, imagine I've got a recipe for 40 pints (from 'Brewing beers like those you buy), how do I approach reducing all the quantities down to a 20 pint brew?

Is everything just halved?
Would that remain true if I dropped to just 10 pints (i.e. 25% of everything in that case)?

Any help apprecited

Thanks

Pete
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AT

Post by AT » Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:12 am

I've never brewed small batches but i'd imagine it's that simple although i would say the evaporation would be greater on smaller batches, maybe not as much of a factor on 20L as it would be on 10L
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AT

Post by AT » Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:18 am

Here's an bit on small scale brewing i hope it helps you :D

Small scale brewing
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Rookie
Falling off the Barstool
Posts: 3660
Joined: Fri Nov 23, 2007 5:30 pm
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana

Post by Rookie » Sat Mar 22, 2008 4:34 pm

At these sizes you can scale down straight, going from 5 gallons to 2 multiply by .4, same thing going bigger unless you are going REALLY big then the rate of hop utilization changes and maybe other things like % of specialty grains would need to be adjusted differently.
I'm just here for the beer.
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BarryNL

Post by BarryNL » Sat Mar 22, 2008 7:53 pm

Basically, to make a half batch you just half everything, however...

You will probably find that boiling a smaller volume means you boil off liquid faster, also you still get the same loss when draining from mash tuns, boilers etc. as for a full batch. Personally, to make a half batch I'd probably use about 55% of the measures for a full batch.
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Matt

Post by Matt » Sat Mar 22, 2008 9:37 pm

Bet you nine quid your second all-grain batch will be a 40 pinter!

Happy brewing

Matt
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john1967

Post by john1967 » Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:42 pm

Matt wrote:Bet you nine quid your second all-grain batch will be a 40 pinter!

Happy brewing

Matt
Yeh, i'll throw a wager in too!!

John
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mooj
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Location: Dorset

Post by mooj » Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:44 pm

I do small brews of around 20 pints or otherwise its a 7 -10 gallon brew. I like the small brews because it allows me to experiment without wasting loads of ingredients. The downside is that it will only take marginally less time to make a smaller brew and the beer disappears all too quickly. There's probably good reasons why a 40(ish) pint batch is the norm. Not back-breaking to lift, although yhou still have to be careful, and enough to make your efforts worthwhile.

Thing is if you enjoy beer like most you'll probably want to upgrade pretty shortly after you start and you'll end up forking out more cash than you needed to.

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your brewing. :beer:
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Pete789

Thank for all the advice

Post by Pete789 » Mon Mar 24, 2008 10:39 am

Cheers for the advice and links. Just what I was after.

BTW - Those bets about the next batch being a 40 pinter are too dangerous to consider :)

Cheers

Pete
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