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] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I've been through a couple of different setups and sizes over the years from 1gal to 10gal. I don't even drink beer every day so a 5gal batch often lasts way beyond the timeframe I want to drink it.

I've settled on 2-5gal batch sizes now, and mostly do 2gal batches with the occasional 5gal if it's for aging or specifically sharing. There's not much to it in regards to scaling down, just use a recipe calculator to scale because it's not linear. Dead space, volume of wort in hoses etc. of course have a much larger impact on smaller batches, so keep that in mind.

The hardest part for me is getting a setup that does both 2gal and 5gal well, I haven't found a "one size fits all" setup yet. But what I have now can do medium-gravity 2gal batches to 5gal medium/high-gravity batches. If I want a 2gal batch <6% ABV it's doable but not as easy or efficiency is complete shit.