Small Quantity AG Brews + Wyeast

[EasyDean]

Hi All

I'm planning to do a fair bit of AG brewing, I have no previous experience and wanted to throw myself straight into the deep end.

I want to create quite a few brews (so I can gain some broad experience) and do it pretty quickly, but I don't want hundreds of pints of beer around the place, so I was thinking of brewing smaller quantities - say 5 litres at a time.
The advantage of this is that I've got loads of 5 litre glass demijohns which are compact and easy to store, so if I make 10 brews over the space of a week or so it's not going to overwhelm my space..

Does anyone know if there are any significant disadvantages to this idea ? I will be using a brupaks mash tun and enamel wort boiler with a hop strainer (plus immersion wort chiller).
Im planning on just using the correct fraction of ingredients for any particular recipe.

Also, Ive read that liquid Wyeast is much better than dried yeast. I've got plenty of all the main dried yeasts available, but I'm thinking of getting some of the wyeast. Does this yeast require special handling, and does anyone have any tips.

Many thanks in anticipation.

Dean

 

[A T]

Just my two cents, for the amount of time and effort that goes into an all grain brew there is no way i'd do a 5 L brew. Is your equipment small enough to do brews that small? Will your immersion chiller be submerged in 5L of wort? Will your hop strainer be effective with such a small amount of hops? same for your mash tun?
If you wanted to use liquid yeast you could but the dried yeasts do a fine job and there's no messing about with them, just cut it open and dump it in
You could still ferment in the glass demijohns if you did a 20L brew but remember you won't ferment 5L in a 5L demi
Best of luck whichever path you take :thumb:

 

[Aleman]

Make 5 Gallon batches, and store them in 5 Gallon budget barrels in the shop and give away free samples to your customers to help persuade them to go All Grain

The time investment is not worth it for 5L of wort.

Liquid yeasts are great if you have the time to prepare starters, and step up to a sensible pitch rate, but dried yeasts are pretty much as good and are so much more predictable.

 

[MEB]

Make 5 Gallon batches, and store them in 5 Gallon budget barrels in the shop and give away free samples to your customers to help persuade them to go All Grain

The time investment is not worth it for 5L of wort. I agree completely

Liquid yeasts are great if you have the time to prepare starters, and step up to a sensible pitch rate, but dried yeasts are pretty much as good and are so much more predictable.

Disagree completely, IMO dried yeast is a waste of a good brew. Lag times are unacceptable, dried yeast is too single dimensioned to lift a beer into the next category.

 

[Wez]

I see what you are saying, but "waste of a good brew" probably isn't right IMO. I've turned out some crackers with a dried yeast and i'll brew them the same again as they are spot on for me.

That said I have also turned out some beers where I wish I'd have had the time to bring on a liquid yeast as it would have made a big difference.

Liquid Yeast = Quality yes
Dried Yeast .. doesn't = "waste of a good brew"

 

[Aleman]

Lag times are unacceptable, dried yeast is too single dimensioned to lift a beer into the next category.

And yet my Imperial stout was pitched with dried yeast and within 12 hours was fermenting well, within 18 climbing out of the FV and within 3 days had fermented from 1.098 down to 1.023.

While I accept that if I had pitched a litre of slurry taken from a FV then I would have had less of a lag . . . but who is to say that a lag time of 2/4/6/8/12/24 hours in unacceptable . . . it is if you are trying to minimise the time the fermenting beer is in the fermenter . . . say in a commercial environment .. . . but luckily I don't have an accountant running the brewery :lol: . . many of the flavours contributed by the yeast happen during that lag phase, if you have a very short lag you find the flavour contribution reduced or missing altogether.

In the past couple of years there have been some quite exceptional dried yeasts introduced onto the market, and while there is not the range of liquid yeast, they do produce exceptional beer . . . many prize winning micros here in the UK use dried yeast.

The other benefit of dried yeast is that you do not need to schedule your brew day to fit in with when the starter is ready. I've lost count of the number of times I've planned to make beer, set the liquid starter off, grown the yeast up, and something comes up so the brew day gets postponed . . . and then the weather is sh*te for a fortnight, and the yeast needs another step up from having sat in the fridge for a fortnight.

Dried yeast . . . rehydrate and go . .. but use what you find works for you, you don't have to try it if you don't want too.

Of course liquid yeast is much more of a viable proposition if you are not pitching 30ml of yeast into a 25L batch of wort . . . if you have easy access to litres of the ruddy stuff then its much more useful :mrgreen:

 

[EasyDean]

Great advice - my concerns about the effectiveness of the work chiller and mash tun at those low liquid levels seem to be right, so i'll stick to 23ltr batches and hope I get a few thirsty customers.

I think dried yeast is the way to go for now - once I have more experience I may 'play' with a little liquid yeast to see what happens.

Thanks for the advice people

Dean

 

[Screwy]

Liquid yeast is good IMO. A good brewer brews according to ingredients and yeast. For example some dried yeasts tend to strip hop aroma and bitterness and some strains attenuate more than others. The brewer needs to compensate using his knowledge of yeast/ingredients.

A FRESH liquid yeast smack pack can in most instances be pitched into 19L of wort below SG 1.060. However making at least a 2L starter assures a good pitching rate.

Pitching liquid yeast to 5L would be fine, I would make up a 2L starter and ferment it out, shake up to get the slurry into suspension then split into six small sanitised bottles, seal up and store it in your fridge. One of these would be close to the correct pitching rate for one of your 5L batches. Although best practice would be to make a small starter so you are pitching actively fermenting yeast to your 5L of wort.

Cheers,

Screwy