Heard of the Mini Batch Before?
I am sure you have heard of fermenting your beer, then breaking it down into 5 “small” batches. Well yesterday, I took this to a whole new level with the Mini Batch. I am really interested in brewing my own beer, however I live in the middle of the Pacific far away from the other Donkeys (except Da) and I cannot participate in the brewing festivities. I have a studio apartment that is quite small and is extremely limited in the way of storage. My great thought is that I will purchase the ingredients for the regular 5 gallon batch, but I will make it 5 times in small batches. I should have googled the fact that 64 fluid ounces is only a half gallon before I came up with this great idea. Well needless to say, I had to break my batch up one more time to have 10 micro batches.
I am brewing a Red Hook IPA clone. For the full 5 gallon process the recipe is as follows:
1. Grain: 1 lb. Crystal 40, 0.5 lb. Munich
2. Malt: 8 lbs. Pale Liquid Malt Extract
3. Hops: 2 oz. Northern Brewers (start of boil), 1 oz. Willamette and 1 oz. Cascade (30 minutes after start), 1 oz. Cascade (55 minutes after start), start cooling wort at 60 minutes.
4. Liquid Yeast: White Labs 001
I followed along quite well however about 40 minutes into the boil I noticed that the wort level in the kettle was quite low. I don’t know how good of an idea this is, but I added another 4 cups (1/4 gallon) of bottled water at this point. My reasoning was that I am going to have to add more water to fill up the fermenter, so why not do it at this point so it could have more of the hoppy flavoring. In hind site, I think that next time I should start with 12 cups (3/4 gallon) of water. Anyways, other than that I think the process went pretty smooth for this mini-batch. So, anyone want to share a 40 in a couple weeks :). Please let me know if you have any suggestions on how I could have improved this. For my first batch, I think it went relatively smooth. I had such a great time doing it and I look forward to make a lot more batches (and hopefully on a larger scale).
By the way, if anyone reads about this please do not mention it to my better half. She isn’t really into the beer thing, and thinks it is a waste of time, I cannot wait to prove her wrong, but in the mean time I have to keep it on the DL. I have stored most of my equipment and ingredients up high so she cannot see them, and I built a false wall to hide the fermenters :p Don’t worry about her reading this, it is at the bottom of a long block of text about beer, she will never make it to the bottom.
good work jeremy. I especially like the false wall!!!
Comment by dana12 — February 10, 2007 @ 10:18 am
Can any one help me? I know there would be some blow off, but I am not sure how much there should be. I have the double chamber airlock on it, and the first chamber is empty and the second one is filled about three quarters of the way with beer (wort?). Should I take it off and dump the liquid then add fresh water?
@Dana: Thank you! I like the false wall also, it is pretty janky, I need to make a better one.
Comment by jeremy — February 11, 2007 @ 1:37 am
Actually, Jason posted that note about the false wall. He was logged in under my name.
Comment by dana12 — February 12, 2007 @ 10:36 am
Makiko never noticed that one day, your small studio got just a bit smaller?
Comment by lisamaemoseley — February 12, 2007 @ 1:49 pm
i haven’t used the double airlock but as long as some liquid (wort or water) is in a chamber, i don’t see how oxygen would be able to get into your fermenter (which would be a problem).
Comment by jason — February 12, 2007 @ 4:21 pm
I think I will switch to the single chamber airlock.
Comment by jeremy — February 12, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
Busted! - The false wall was penetrated. The growler was kicked, glass was shattered and the carpet smelled like beer for a few days.
Comment by jeremy — March 5, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
I like your blog, this post is really good, but please vary your topics, it will broad your readership.
Comment by mebig0 — April 10, 2008 @ 10:17 pm