Split Batches

[Braufather]

I am going to invest in a couple of of 12 litre Fermenters so i can do a few split batches to test various things - the main one being dry yeast v liquid but other stuff as well- things that come to mind are listed below but does anyone have any other ideas for split batch testing?

liquid v dry yeast
yeast strain a v strain b
loads of trub v no trub
dry hopping v no dry hopping
dry hopping different techniques
dry hopping different hops
same yeast differing fermentation temps
aeration v no aeration

any more?

 

[Drunkula]

Bottling after X days vs Y days.
Dry hop vs early hop tea vs hop tea at bottling. I did this and tested the beers over the span of a year.
Speciality malt comparisons like chocolate malt vs roasted barley (they can really change over time).
Water adjustments e.g. sulphate vs chloride ratios.

 

[rank_frank]

I used to split batches and try each part with a different yeast. It was a lot of fun. Why not take a look at the Brulosophy website? They have a long list of experiments that they have done and you may find some ideas for your own there.

 

[Brewed_Force]

Adding gelatine vs not adding gelatine.....

 

[ACBEV]

I've done a lot of pseudo parti-gyle / blending to brew 5 beers from one batch. It in entails a first and second wort boiled separately (two boils) which enables two different hopping schedules, then blending into 5 batches.

For examples... IPA, Pale Ale, Best Bitter, Ordinary Bitter, Light Ale. or similar with stouts and porter or milds, brown and olds ale.

I collect 15L of wort in a first mash and another 15L in a second mash. A strong wort and a weak wort. You can collect the wort in whichever way you want, so long as you have stronger and weaker batches for boiling. Apart from different hops schedules, you can add different stuff to each boil if you want.

For fermentation I use 5 demijohns with different proportions of each wort. Again you can add stuff at this stage if you want.

 

[Braufather]

i was sort of inspired by the brulososphy site, although most of the tests tend to find no differences, so thought i would try myself.

Geletine's a good one.

 

[Slid]

i was sort of inspired by the brulososphy site, although most of the tests tend to find no differences, so thought i would try myself.

Geletine's a good one.

The Brulosophy experiments are fine as far as they go, but the results are sampled very soon after pitching. I could be an "outlier" statistically speaking by drinking my beers usually after 3 months or so. Maybe it takes this sort of time to make much difference to a dark-ish beer with no major focus on the hops.

 

[Drunkula]

And get not you to help in the reviews. We did a few reviews tonight of a chocolate orange beer I massively tried to beef up the orange level in secondary by adding tons of dry peel and it tasted of washing up liquid at bottling. It tasted reasonable before I twonked around with it but I wanted orange, orange, orange!

So it's been 2 months bottled and tonight I gave it to 4 people and the initial reactions were hugely different from "This is one of your best" to saying it was thin and tasteless. To me it still tasted of washing up liquid and I said I put masses of orange peel and said I thought it was like Fairy Liquid in my mouth and the person who said it was one of my best actually started tasting it and then said it was a 4 and then I mentioned the cocoa in it and who said it was thin others that said it was thin said they notice it on the aftertaste. But! I demand honesty and they all said it was pretty crappy (4 and 5 out of ten max) but it's really surprising how you'll pick out something rank in a beer and another won't even taste it.

This sounds like hippy crap but there's a real difference between drinking something and tasting something. My first time I had it was having a wheat beer and thinking the banana thing was nonsense then it was almost gone and I'd been looking for it and then boom - how the hell could I not taste this before. And I bet just being handed a pint of the same beer without knowing what it was and slugging it down you wouldn't even taste it again - it's like you switch off when you're just booming it to get smashed.

We also tasted my peanut butter porter tonight - ones and twos out of ten! Rahhh! I love that. It was just with dry extract, hops, dried peanut butter and a gallon batch. Again, until I had to fess up it was peanuts people thought it was paraffin but after that they said it was obviously peanuts... but it was still super crappy.

I love brewing. The thing is it's not like a dinner party and if you make a terrible dinner it's really bad - give out a few bad experiment beers and you have a laugh then it's ok, I'll give you the nice ones now, you babies and the night is on again.

And sharing (not forcing on, no no no) means there's less crappy beers I have to make into shandy.