How Small A Fermenting Batch & Barley Sugar

[Fatgodzilla]

Two questions

1. How small can a batch ferment (successfully).Thinking of a three litre container for brew to experiment some flavours. I'll be using extract stuff - liquid & dry malts. Does small size affect the fermentation much ?

2. Anyone brewed using barley sugar ? Ingredients says glucose syrup, sugar, lemon oil & colour 110. Assume should ferment down and leave some residual flavour - but has anyone tried it before? This is one of the reasosnfor a small batch ferment !

 

[Fatgodzilla]

Two questions

1. How small can a batch ferment (successfully).Thinking of a three litre container for brew to experiment some flavours. I'll be using extract stuff - liquid & dry malts. Does small size affect the fermentation much ?

2. Anyone brewed using barley sugar ? Ingredients says glucose syrup, sugar, lemon oil & colour 110. Assume should ferment down and leave some residual flavour - but has anyone tried it before? This is one of the reasosnfor a small batch ferment !

anyone ??

 

[drsmurto]

I'm doing small (4ishL) batches of ginger beer as a trial to work out what different amounts of spices etc help as well as playing around with suagrs and soon, malt, spec grains and yeasts.

So i dont see why this would work for beer. Hardest thing is getting the quantities of yeast right. I cheated and got my HBS to weigh out individual packs of champers yeast for these batches. Will be harder when i try other yeasts.

Barley sugar? I guess the thing that concerns me is the additive, in this case its sunset yellow - [rul=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_yellow]Link[/url]

Why are you using this? The flavour is due to the glucose and lemon oil.

 

[Stuster]

1. Any size brew can ferment successfully. I've done quite a few experimental extract batches of 4-5L. Just remember that you'll lose proportionately more to trub and in transfers because of working at this smaller scale. Having something like an auto-syphon made life easier with this for me.

2. I've never used it, but all the glucose and sugar will probably ferment out completely. It's not too different to using all sugar with just a squeeze of lemon juice. I think you'd be better off using malt or at least using mostly DME/LME with some of the barley sugar if you want to use it for flavour. I'd keep it less than 30% of the fermentables though. I'd still use some hops of course.

 

[Fatgodzilla]

I'm doing small (4ishL) batches of ginger beer as a trial to work out what different amounts of spices etc help as well as playing around with suagrs and soon, malt, spec grains and yeasts.

So i dont see why this would work for beer. Hardest thing is getting the quantities of yeast right. I cheated and got my HBS to weigh out individual packs of champers yeast for these batches. Will be harder when i try other yeasts.

Barley sugar? I guess the thing that concerns me is the additive, in this case its sunset yellow - [rul=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_yellow]Link[/url]

Why are you using this? The flavour is due to the glucose and lemon oil.

Brewing an Halloween beer for a local brew group competition which wants to see lollies used .. that's why I'd prefer to only use say 3 - 4 litre batches. Was thinking about inserting a muskstick in the bottle. Not really planning on mass producing them !! The yeast - yes, that could be a problem.

What if I brewed a normal brew, then drew off 3 litres several days into brew. Added my barley sugar and experimented then. Reckon enough yeast would be in solution to be successful ?

 

[Asher]

1 - My 200ml starters ferment out quite well.... So do my 3 litre starters

2 - Got bored at work once and made a brew with what I had in my draw....

- 10 barley sugars
- 1 Teaspoon of Gunpowder green tea
- 1/4 teaspoon of Lipton's (for colour)

Steeped barley sugars in coffee cup until dissolved
Added Lipton's and microwaved for 1 minute.
Added green tea and cooled in freezer.
Transferred to empty water bottle and added the skin of 2 table grapes I was munching on
Left to ferment on desk at 22.5 degrees for 2 weeks.
Chilled in work fridge and racked to empty coke bottle containing 1 barley sugar
Left to carbonate on desk for a further two weeks
Once carbonated returned to fridge.

Turned out to be a quite respectable soured tea beverage.

Still prefer to disguise stout as a black coffee when at work though....

 

[Fatgodzilla]

1 - My 200ml starters ferment out quite well.... So do my 3 litre starters

2 - Got bored at work once and made a brew with what I had in my draw....

- 10 barley sugars
- 1 Teaspoon of Gunpowder green tea
- 1/4 teaspoon of Lipton's (for colour)

Steeped barley sugars in coffee cup until dissolved
Added Lipton's and microwaved for 1 minute.
Added green tea and cooled in freezer.
Transferred to empty water bottle and added the skin of 2 table grapes I was munching on
Left to ferment on desk at 22.5 degrees for 2 weeks.
Chilled in work fridge and racked to empty coke bottle containing 1 barley sugar
Left to carbonate on desk for a further two weeks
Once carbonated returned to fridge.

Turned out to be a quite respectable soured tea beverage.

Still prefer to disguise stout as a black coffee when at work though....

I'm impressed you lived to tell the tale !!

 

[drsmurto]

Lollies - people add black jellybeans to darker beers.

 

[Fents]

You know your fully addicted to brewing when you get bored at work and.......

2 - Got bored at work once and made a brew with what I had in my draw....

- 10 barley sugars
- 1 Teaspoon of Gunpowder green tea
- 1/4 teaspoon of Lipton's (for colour)

Steeped barley sugars in coffee cup until dissolved
Added Lipton's and microwaved for 1 minute.
Added green tea and cooled in freezer.
Transferred to empty water bottle and added the skin of 2 table grapes I was munching on
Left to ferment on desk at 22.5 degrees for 2 weeks.
Chilled in work fridge and racked to empty coke bottle containing 1 barley sugar
Left to carbonate on desk for a further two weeks
Once carbonated returned to fridge.

Turned out to be a quite respectable soured tea beverage.

Still prefer to disguise stout as a black coffee when at work though....

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I made a perfectly respectable 1 litre batch of Koelsch.

Assuming you aren't giving up full sized batches altogether.. you can use the small batches as Starters for your big ones - This week a small batch or two, next week the yeast cake from it (them) goes into the fermentor of a big batch.

Or, what I did with the one litre batch.. I just opened the tap on a fermenting batch and took a 100ml or so sample... measured the gravity and dumped it into my small batch.. they yeast in suspension and what had collected in the tap, was more than enough.