Small-scale brewing...any recommendations?

[dangersausage]

Hello Aussie Homebrewers!

Have been reading threads on here for a while and thought I may as well start my own...

I'm looking into getting back into doing some homebrewing after a break of a few years, but currently living in a pretty small apartment which doesn't leave a lot of room for storage of decent sized equipment or large brews.

I'm thinking of getting a small set up (~less than 10L per brew) - I figure it'll let me experiement a bit as I can change things in brews and will need to brew often to keep up!

I guess the question that I wanna throw out to the wide world of brewers is: does anyone have any recommendations on what would work better for this scale of brewing, from kit (demhijohn, bucket with a tap fitted, etc.) to brew styles or whatever.

Interested to see if anyone's done anything similar, or if I'm just batshit!

Cheers!

 

[indica86]

http://store.coopers.com.au/beer-kits/craft-kit/coopers-diy-beer-craft-kit.html

Try a few in that.
Then 19L stock pot + bag for BIAB.

 

[crowmanz]

http://store.coopers.com.au/beer-kits/craft-kit/coopers-diy-beer-craft-kit.html

Try a few in that.
Then 19L stock pot + bag for BIAB.

you can even get that craft kit at BCF

 

[TimT]

I usually do mini-brews just like this. 10 L pot, boil the wort down to about 4.2-4.5 L, and it all goes into a demijohn.

It's pretty simple - I pretty much worked out the method for myself. Just do the mash in a pot. Then I have a big-arse sieve that will sit over the big 10 L pot, and a heap of cheesecloth for draining the wort off the grain. Line the sieve with the cloth, fold it all up when done, give it a few squeezes, and Bob's your uncle.

I call it Brew In A Rag!

 

[glenos]

I brew in a bag 5L batches, occassionally 10L. It is pretty safe to just scale the recipe for a 23L recipe as a 5L batch divide the amounts by 5/23, 100g becomes 22g, 5 kg becoms 1.09kg.

You get a bit more losses for trub but oh well, you can drink a batch quicker and it gives you more opportunity to hone your skills.

Go for it.

 

[mugley]

I've been doing 10 litre stovetop batches in a tiny apartment for a couple of years now. Here's what my "system" is made up of at the moment:

- 19 litre pot. The Big W ones are fine, but I've switched to a Tuffsteel stainless as it was only $10 more at the Vic Market, holds a boil better on an underpowered stove, and has a metal lid that doesn't shatter spectacularly when dropped like the Big W glass lids do so well. The pot's also good for storing brewing/bottling gear in when not in use.

- 30cm stainless strainer with side handles. Sits in the top of the pot for the bag to drain in. Looks a bit like this one... http://www.westfield.com.au/carindale/products/robins-kitchen/soffritto-a-series-345cm-stainless-steel-strainer-with-handle/1634800 . Also sits in the top of the pot for storage.

- Second pot for dunk sparging. A bucket would do the job, but a pot's harder to knock over and easier to balance the strainer on, and gives you the option to hit it with a bit of stove heat. Since pots are stackable, doesn't take up any extra storage room.

- 8.8 litre urn. Completely unnecessary luxury item, but allows me to have boiling water (mix with cold for strike temp) available first thing in the morning, and to heat up sparge water during the mash while the doona-wrapped pot stays on the stove. Knocks about an hour off brewday and was a no-brainer at $25 in a Reject Shop clearance. Takes up a little space, but if you use it to replace your electric kettle (edit: kettle as in tea/coffee) it works out about even.

- Fermenter: 10 litre plastic jerry - skinny config, not cube. Takes up very little space, and if you can find the "BMW Marketing" version you get moulded litre markings.

It's totally batshit, but it makes beer

 

[TimT]

You can always scale up or down as suits anyway. The advantage of keeping your ferments mostly in those 4-5 L demijohns is you can do bigger brews and split them up when you want to do experiments with different yeasts, etc. 'Brew in a rag' becomes progressively less feasible for the larger brews - you want a bag to really hold all that grain - but still doable. But what's a bag anyway except just a rag with a string to draw it tight around the top? (I have a bag too).

The oddest piece of brewing paraphernalia I find is the much-discussed 'mash paddle'. What's a mash paddle for? To stir the grain about to circulate the amylase enzymes and break up any dough balls? So it's got a handle and a large, paddle-like end to do all the stirring? Oh, you mean a bloody spoon! At any rate a big-arse spoon, one of those slotted spoons you get in the cooking aisle at Coles, will stir up a mini-mash perfectly well, and I've never used anything different for my larger batches, up to and including the 22 L brews. Maybe for a grain-heavy 30 L batch brewers might really feel the need for a mash paddle or something. I dunno. It's just a big bloody spoon to me. Reminds me of that story about Archimedes and his levers: "Can you lift anything with them?" Archimedes: "Give me a place to stand, and I will lift the earth."

 

[stux]

You can always scale up or down as suits anyway. The advantage of keeping your ferments mostly in those 4-5 L demijohns is you can do bigger brews and split them up when you want to do experiments with different yeasts, etc. 'Brew in a rag' becomes progressively less feasible for the larger brews - you want a bag to really hold all that grain - but still doable. But what's a bag anyway except just a rag with a string to draw it tight around the top? (I have a bag too).

The oddest piece of brewing paraphernalia I find is the much-discussed 'mash paddle'. What's a mash paddle for? To stir the grain about to circulate the amylase enzymes and break up any dough balls? So it's got a handle and a large, paddle-like end to do all the stirring? Oh, you mean a bloody spoon! At any rate a big-arse spoon, one of those slotted spoons you get in the cooking aisle at Coles, will stir up a mini-mash perfectly well, and I've never used anything different for my larger batches, up to and including the 22 L brews. Maybe for a grain-heavy 30 L batch brewers might really feel the need for a mash paddle or something. I dunno. It's just a big bloody spoon to me. Reminds me of that story about Archimedes and his levers: "Can you lift anything with them?" Archimedes: "Give me a place to stand, and I will lift the earth."

You should try using a potato masher

Up/down through the grain will get the grain moving and break up any dough balls

 

[TimT]

Of course the real reason for the spoon mash paddle is the same reason when you're cooking, say, onions or mushrooms on the stove, you have to stand over it with a spoon and, I dunno, poke 'em about a bit. It may or may not make any actual difference but it adds that crucial something to the final flavour. What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah. Fidget. It gives you something to fidget with while you're just standing around waiting for stuff to happen.....

 

[Blind Dog]

10L Braumeister...

Not that you seem to be able to actually buy one here yet. And when you can, it'll cost an arm and a leg (just remember that any arm and any leg will do, they don't need to be yours!)

 

[Blind Dog]

You should try using a potato masher

Up/down through the grain will get the grain moving and break up any dough balls

Or a paint stirrer

Has the advantage of being attachable to a drill so you get to use power tools completely unnecessarily (and messily if you're not careful)

Has the disadvantage of some stupid bu**er (not me, honest) using it to stir paint, rendering it useless for its intended purposes

 

[lobedogg]

Not in an apartment but I stovetop using Lord Raja Goomba's two-pot method.

Mash in esky, scoop grain into bucket in bucket lauter tun, recirculate, sparge, then split runnings into my two Big W 19L pots ensuring they have same volume/gravity. Then boil as usual and simply split your hop additions. Flameout, settle, whirpool, settle, and syphon into cube which I ferment in. Hitting 70-75 % efficiency and find I can get 21L into the cube within 4-4.5 hrs. Only pain in the arse is the siphoning and you do need to be a bit patient while bringing your pots to boil.

I recommend this method and if you're short on space you could just adapt it to one pot only no probs. You could get away with sparging in one of your buckets too if you don't have an esky etc.

 

[TimT]

Or a paint stirrer

Has the advantage of being attachable to a drill so you get to use power tools completely unnecessarily (and messily if you're not careful)

Dad got me one of those because he thought it would help me in my cheesemaking endeavours??!? Those curds are delicate things, I'm still not sure what he had in mind.

 

[Tahoose]

Have done a combo combination of most of the above.

19 litre pot
Decent sized bucket and BIAB sounds like the go.

Potato mashers are great for a small system, mash paddles are good for 15kg grain bills.

There is a small malt pipe for 10 litre batches on the braumeister if your that keen.

Spend the money on a decent thermometer.
2 pot method has a really good capacity to punch out 12litres per pot, post boil. This just about fills one of those 25 litre cubes.

 

[stux]

Potato mashers are great for a small system, mash paddles are good for 15kg grain bills.

Potato mashers are great for large 15-20KG biab grain bills too

You just need a bigger one

Here is my 60cm stainless potato masher mash weapon

Same as Barley Belly's

Ive just finished building a 100L mash-tun esky, so might find that a traditional mash paddle is the way to go with a normal thickness grainbed... or not. We'll see. Hoping to do the maiden brew this weekend.