One gallon beer recipies.

Hello,

I'm struggling for space at the minute but would love to brew some beer. I have heard that some people brew gallon batches of beer. Has anyone got any experiences to share?

Please no comments about why bother etc......I know 5 gallons is what people normally do.

Thanks.

 

[iceo]

i brew in 5L water bottles. i just divide my kits by 4 and the sugar by 5. fill to to about 4L in bottles then top up with .5L cooled boiled water after its calmed down. or you could go for come cider in 5L bottles

 

[mike77]

You could look into extract brewing. Find a 5 gallon recipe then just divide by 5 I guess. A cider could be a good idea too. Do a search for turbo cider on here. Basically just apple juice yeast and maybe some sugar.

 

[RobWalker]

You could look into extract brewing. Find a 5 gallon recipe then just divide by 5 I guess. A cider could be a good idea too. Do a search for turbo cider on here. Basically just apple juice yeast and maybe some sugar.

unfortunately not, hop utilizaton is massively reduced at 1 gallon.

you need about a 2 gallon pan to comfortably boil the volume you want, some hops and malt extract, yeast, and you should be able to do it easily. just grab a program like brewtarget, input your ingredients and volumes accurately and measure the beer up in the pan as you go, pre measure your hops - you boil beer for an hour, so just use a single bittering hop addition at 60 minutes to get your bitterness, then whatever you want at 10 minutes for aroma hops. cool in the sink, ferment in a gallon container with 1/3 pack of yeast, boosh! beer!

you will only be able to brew rather simple beers, but thats a wide range of brews indeed - bitters, stouts, pale ales, porters, more or less anything. the trick with low volume brewing is simplicity. single hop are easy, but you wont be capable of American IPAs or anything - those hops take up a lot of room at that volume!

 

[fbsf]

I've done a 1 gallon all-grain before. Really simple to try, although you do end up with a bit of trub in the bottom, so better to start with a 5L water bottle and then rack to a 4.5L demijohn after a week or so.

It was this - a dark-ish ale which tasted lovely. You could easily substitute the Perle hops for another (make sure the Alpha Acids correspond, so if you are using hops with a 5% AA, then use twice as many).

Likewise, you could remove the Crystal and black malt to get a pale ale.

850g Maris Otter
50g Crystal 120EBC
10g Black Malt
BIAB Mashed for 90 mins at 67°C

60min boil with
4g Perle (10%AA) @ 30mins
5g Perle @ 15mins
1/4 Protofloc tablet @ 15mins
10g Perle @ 5mins
11g Perle @ flameout

Fermented with 1/2pkt MaltMiller’s Ale Yeast 2 (although any dried ale yeast will work).

All done in a 7L pressure cooker pot (with the lid off for boiling). I used a net curtain bag to strain the hops, but a friend has done it just using a sieve. Both worked well.

Hope this helps..

 

[graysalchemy]

Didn't we have a back to basics challenge thread a year ago which was basically 1 gallon on the stove top :wha: :wha:

 

Thanks guys, that is really helpful. I'll give it a go and let you all know.

Thanks.

 

[graysalchemy]

I found this one which may be of help here. This was the original challenge from 3 yrs ago but I am sure it was done again last year :wha: :wha:

 

[dennisdk2000]

unfortunately not, hop utilizaton is massively reduced at 1 gallon.

Could you elaborate on this, please? I've never heard that hop utilization is affected by brew length, but I'm still learning and frequently discover how little I know! As I am a 1 gallon brewer due to space restrictions, I want to understand how this works.

you will only be able to brew rather simple beers, but thats a wide range of brews indeed - bitters, stouts, pale ales, porters, more or less anything. the trick with low volume brewing is simplicity. single hop are easy, but you wont be capable of American IPAs or anything - those hops take up a lot of room at that volume!

I agree to an extend, but it is by no means impossible to produce a good American IPA at a 1 gallon brew length, but you will need an oversized container to hold all the hops; however, this is true for brewing beers with lots of hops at any brew length!

Dennis

 

[oldbloke]

I don't know if it's true of any real beer kits, but the gluten-free Gone With The Wheat ones come with two of everything (except yeast), so you can do half the kit in 2 demis if you don't mind brewing it pretty short, maybe diluting at bottling time. 's wot I dun.

 

[RobWalker]

dennisdk - you need about 5 gallons boiling to extract 100 percent (or thereabouts) of the hop oils thag sjpply the bitterness to your beer. the lower you go, the less you extraxt. measuring accurately in brewtarget etc will account for it, so no al work on your part, but jts worth using high aa bittering hops at 60 mins for yhis reason.

 

[MPLMPL]

dennisdk - you need about 5 gallons boiling to extract 100 percent (or thereabouts) of the hop oils thag sjpply the bitterness to your beer. the lower you go, the less you extraxt. measuring accurately in brewtarget etc will account for it, so no al work on your part, but jts worth using high aa bittering hops at 60 mins for yhis reason.

I'm not sure I get it??? For example, if you're using 25g of bittering hops for a 5 gallon recipe and you scale down to 1 gallon, then you will be using 5g of hops. The mass of hops:volume of water ratio is the same 5g per gallon. I can't fathom why this would result in lower bittering? I can understand perhaps if you were doing a concentrated boil, i.e. 25g of hops in 1 gallon and then diluting to 5 gallons before fermentation - the gravity of the wort would affect hop utilisation. This would make some sort of sense, but I'm struggling to see why the same hops:water ratio would produce different results on a 1 gallon scale as the gravity of the wort would be the same as on a 5 gallon scale.
Am I just being daft?

 

[fbsf]

I think it has to do with how much room the hops have to move around in (so how fast the wort washes over them when boiling). Perhaps hop pellets would be less affected than whole leaf hops?

 

[MPLMPL]

I think it has to do with how much room the hops have to move around in (so how fast the wort washes over them when boiling). Perhaps hop pellets would be less affected than whole leaf hops?

If the 'density' of the hops is the same i.e. 5g / gallon then surely they have the same room to move around in? I don't get how they can take up more room if the hops/gallon is the same. Is it some sort of pan diameter to volume issue?
I'm not trying to pick an argument! I'm just interested in how hop utilisation would be lower, as I make 10-12L batches.

 

[Dave1970]

I found this one which may be of help here. This was the original challenge from 3 yrs ago but I am sure it was done again last year :wha: :wha:

The Back to Basics 2 thread from last year is here. Plenty of recipe ideas and different methods for doing a 1 gallon AG brew here.

 

[dennisdk2000]

I have to say I tend to agree with MPLMPL - I don't see how the "boil-thickness" changes if you scale the recipe down using 1/5th wort volume to 1/5th weight of hops?? I can follow the thought that "boil-thickness" ie hops to liquid ratio can have an effect (as is the case with mash thickness), and I'm guessing that this is why pellet hops are more efficient to use weight for weight than leaf hops. But I need someone to give a better explanation as to why a shorter brew length should affect hop utilization -not convinced as of yet!

Dennis

 

[TRXnMe]

I found this one which may be of help here. This was the original challenge from 3 yrs ago but I am sure it was done again last year :wha: :wha:

Yes there was, as linked to above, it was that thread that converted me to the dark side, I didn't want to buy the AG equipment and find out is a waste of time, I hadde everything required for a 1 gallon brew in the kitchen so tried it, it was good, the rest is documented in various posts around here

I still brew one gallon brews if I want to try a recipe out on the cheap and have no problem with hops. From what I've read the hop problem is for extract brews where you are trying to hop a small quantity of wort to a high enough level to dilute, then you have to massively over hop the boil in order to get the final bitterness level.

 

[dennisdk2000]

Yes, that I can understand. As the wort is more concentrated, it is less effective at extracting further flavour compounds.

Dennis