Small batches??

[Gingerbrews]

I've 6 demijohns in the shed from when I used to make wine. In these strange days was thinking about making 5l batches to eke out supplies and experiment a bit.
What do you think? And any suggestions?
Cheers

 

[An Ankoù]

I've 6 demijohns in the shed from when I used to make wine. In these strange days was thinking about making 5l batches to eke out supplies and experiment a bit.
What do you think? And any suggestions?
Cheers

You could do far worse than try some of the recipes on the Durden Park website, depending on what you've got in stock of course. What have you got in stock, by the way ?

 

[Drunkula]

What do you think? And any suggestions?

Most of my early all-grain recipes were in demijohns, and split batches done with beer kits - 28 of them on the trot. I think doing smaller batches makes you more creative and I already think I'm losing some of the magic now I'm doing full batches because there's longer time in between whatever fun experiment I can make up. In fact I think I'm going to start making full batches of drinking beer and small batches of thinking beer.

 

[Gingerbrews]

Have a good mixture of malts;
Hops (in varying amounts): Mosaic, First Gold, Fuggles,Chinook, Warrior, Cascade, Jester, EKG, Hersbrucker, Celeia, Bobek, Saaz, Mandarina, Challenger, Perle.
Only limitation at mo, is only have 3 types of yeast (more on order), MJ Liberty Bell, MJ Bohemian Lager and CML wheat

Started a Challenger SMASH 15 mins ago.
When SWMBO gets up she`'ll think I've finally lost it!!

 

[An Ankoù]

Have a good mixture of malts;
Hops (in varying amounts): Mosaic, First Gold, Fuggles,Chinook, Warrior, Cascade, Jester, EKG, Hersbrucker, Celeia, Bobek, Saaz, Mandarina, Challenger, Perle.
Only limitation at mo, is only have 3 types of yeast (more on order), MJ Liberty Bell, MJ Bohemian Lager and CML wheat

Started a Challenger SMASH 15 mins ago.
When SWMBO gets up she`'ll think I've finally lost it!!

Looks good. Some EKGs would be good, too, for old school English beers.

 

[An Ankoù]

Looks good. Some EKGs would be good, too, for old school English beers.

Sorry. I didn't see them at first glance.
Looks good. What experiments have you got in mind?
Don't forget that you can use the yeast at the bottom of the bottles of earlier brews to get a bit of variety.

 

[Gingerbrews]

@AnAnkou cheers for thought re the yeast. I've 2 other brews going so could recycle some yeast from there.
Was thinking about some different bitters

 

[geigercntr]

I love small batches. Makes you brew more regularly. Allows you to brew lots of styles per litre of beer too. That can only make you a better brewer right?!

For my first couple of years brewing I only ever did 10l batches. Even now I've changed my set up to a ~20 litre (brewzilla) kit, I still try to focus on smaller batches!

 

[Gingerbrews]

Geigercntr Any suggestions for the small brews?

 

[terrym]

Fuggles and EKG with some dark and crystal malts will make a nice easy drinking mild, which is light on ingredients because milds are lightly hopped and the beer itself should be lowish ABV. Milds are often the poor relation of beers yet they can be really good in my opinion if you get it right.
Here's one from a well know book as an example for 23 litres which you could scale down and/or modify to suit
Pale Malt 3190g, Crystal 360g, Black Malt 69g, 90 min boil Fuggles 21g and Goldings 18g. OG 1.035, IBU 25. You could swap Chocolate for the Black Malt

 

[geigercntr]

Geigercntr Any suggestions for the small brews?

If you've any rye, a rye IPA with loads of Chinook would be good for a small batch.

Vienna lager is always good too.

Maybe brew a basic pale-ish ale and ferment with one of your yeasts. Once it's done add some Orval dregs and set it aside while the Brettanomyces delivers some funk!

 

[Gingerbrews]

Cheers Terrym, have no Black malt, but do have Chocolate. That's a definite.

 

[Gingerbrews]

Always liked a wee Mild

 

[Gingerbrews]

If you've any rye, a rye IPA with loads of Chinook would be good for a small batch.

Vienna lager is always good too.

Maybe brew a basic pale-ish ale and ferment with one of your yeasts. Once it's done add some Orval dregs and set it aside while the Brettanomyces delivers some funk!

No rye but I like your ideas. Plenty of time to consider. Thanks

 

[An Ankoù]

Cheers Terrym, have no Black malt, but do have Chocolate. That's a definite.

As much as I think terrym's advice is good, I've always thought of mild as a drink which is taken by the gallon rather than the pint.
Looking back through some old recipes, I've reminded myself that "mild" refers to low hopping rates, not strength or colour. You can make a 10% light coloured mild if you want. Check out Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild (I think it's called) It'll give you an idea of what I mean.

 

[terrym]

Cheers Terrym, have no Black malt, but do have Chocolate. That's a definite.

If you have some dark muscavado sugar in the cupboard you could put a small amount in as a substitute for some of the malt. I recently used 140g in 20 litres of mild and it was just right (for me), didnt overpower it, yet it was just noticeable.

 

[terrym]

As much as I think terrym's advice is good, I've always thought of mild as a drink which is taken by the gallon rather than the pint.
Looking back through some old recipes, I've reminded myself that "mild" refers to low hopping rates, not strength or colour. You can make a 10% light coloured mild if you want. Check out Sarah Hughes Ruby Mild (I think it's called) It'll give you an idea of what I mean.

Sarah Hughes mild is OG 1.049 which is outside the normal range for a 'traditional' mild, in my view, ceratinly the ones I used to drink in the 1960s. I wouldn't call it a session beer. Anyway however you define a mild in terms of ABV is immaterial to my suggestion which was to brew something slightly different to the norm, and which didn't use up lots of ingredients in these uncertain times

 

[An Ankoù]

Sarah Hughes mild is OG 1.040 which is at the top of the normal range for a 'traditional' mild, in my view,

Not sure we're talking about the same beer. I meant this one:

But I see they've stopped calling it Mild. The bottles, on the other hand, of the same strength do call it Dark Ruby Mild. Anybody had this, by the way? I've had it a couple of times and can't remember what it tasted like. Probably had too many!

 

[terrym]

Not sure we're talking about the same beer. I meant this one:
View attachment 23860But I see they've stopped calling it Mild. The bottles, on the other hand, of the same strength do call it Dark Ruby Mild. Anybody had this, by the way? I've had it a couple of times and can't remember what it tasted like. Probably had too many!

From memory I got the OG wrong in my original post saying it was 1.040 when in fact , as I later found out, it is 1.049 in Greg Hughes book (and which I corrected but too late for your post to pick up), but even at 4.6% doesnt get near 6% .
But I do agree with what you said earlier though, milds are really for quaffing not sipping!

 

[Gingerbrews]

The Challenger SMASH is going like a train and is bubbling out of the airlock.
2nd up I'd going to be a Mild as suggested by Terrym. Then another bitter later today with EKG.
The good thing about a 5l batch is it seems to encourage me to try more.
Think the demijohns will all be filled at this rate.