Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

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A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.

Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.

Some starting points for beginners:

Introduction to Beer Brewing

A basic mead primer

Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine

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Has anyone scaled back from 5gals to 3gals or 1gal? (lemm.ee)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm thinking of scaling down. When I started brewing, everything was 5 gallons. After having made some terrible beers over my time, and with so many options I want to try out and compare, I was thinking of scaling down. For example, if I wanna compare yeasts, maybe I make a SMASH beer but 2x1 gal. Use yeast A in the 1st gal and yeast B in the 2nd gal.

Also, I enjoy the act of brewing, but I only drink 1 beer a day, so that takes me 1.5 months to get thru 5gal a batch.

Has anyone scaled down? Did anything change or surprise you?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Yeah I make smaller batches to test out recipes and when I'm making beer styles that only I'm interested in. I have a kegerator but it's at my in-laws' place and they aren't very adventurous beer drinkers so I'm not gonna make 5 gallons of a Belgian dubbel, etc.

For the smaller batches I usually do 1.5 - 2 gallons (6 - 8L) and then package in swing-top 1L bottles that I immediately rinse and dry after finishing the bottle. Using swing top means I don't have to mess around with caps and I can also reseal the bottle immediately after pouring to minimise loss of CO2. Using 1L bottles makes it a bit quicker to do the bottling - plus, I have a blichmann beer gun which is a nice luxury that saves a bit of time and potentially helps minimise oxidation.