I have to admit getting a little disillusioned with brewing last year - I was starting to experiment with recipes and too many turned out different to be pretty bland. 5 gallons is a lot to drink when you know you can do a lot better. I was also getting short on spare brewing time, so I even considered selling my 10 gallon setup, until I had the idea of creating:
My new 1 gallon 3-tier brewery! I know this may seem strange to a lot of people, but let me put forward the positives:
- My brewday now lasts a mere 2.5 hours (60min mash and 60min boil) from start to finish.
Cleaning only takes minutes afterwards.
I can brew 4 recipes in 4 nights using some of the same yeast starter.
Each brew fits nicely into a demijon to ferment, then its only a case of washing and filling 8 bottles at a time.
The mash tun is a stainless steel stock pot (sold as part of a 3 part set from ebay for £14). A simple fixed sparge pipe has been fitted in the lid, fed by the HLT. The outlet was constructed using the mesh from a steel sieve from Asda:
The boiler is the larger 8l stock pot from the set with a slotted 15mm pipe outlet, powered by a burner on the gas stove:
I created a mini IC to fit into the boiler from 10mm copper, this cools the wort down to pitching temperature in about 5 minutes flat (with some frantic stirring!):
I've used this setup 8 times now (initially comparing US05 against Nottingham yeast) and I must admit its put the fun right back into brewing for me. The main advantage for me is the ability to play with recipes, knowing that if one turns out awful, its not too much time and money lost. I think this will come into its own when I harvest my Challenger hops again this year - so I can vary the bitterness across several brews. Typical though, all the brews have turned out good so far, so it's going to be a difficult choice to know which one to choose for a full batch !
Granville
