The Femto-brew

[Thirsty Boy]

I do mean small....

I was testing out a new way to drive my malt mill and ended up with a couple of hundred grams of crushed pale malt. Out of curiosity, I wondered how much beer one could brew with this tiny amount of malt.

It turns out that my 205g of malt could produce exactly one litre of 1.047 OG beer.

Now a litre of beer is not to be sneered at, so rather than thoughtlessly toss that surplus malt into the bin, I brewed that litre of beer !! Its a kolsch ( top cropped the yeast from a big batch I have going)

Now I usually do my small batches BIAB style, but for this batch, I went with a more traditional 3 vessel system.

Left to right. The HLT, the Mashtun, the Kettle.



Boiling with 2g of Cascade flowers. Had to make it a shorter (35min) boil so it wouldn't end up a 50 IBU beer


Chilling


And all finished and done, into an orange juice container fermentor. All the froth is from shaking to oxygenate, not krausen.




It was all kinda good fun, and was pretty much achieved completely during the ad breaks while watching the Bourne Supremacy on the telly

So. Whats your smallest brew? and yeast starters don't count

Thirsty

 

[Enerjex]

8 litres here

 

[therook]

I do mean small....

I was testing out a new way to drive my malt mill and ended up with a couple of hundred grams of crushed pale malt. Out of curiosity, I wondered how much beer one could brew with this tiny amount of malt.

It turns out that my 205g of malt could produce exactly one litre of 1.047 OG beer.

Now a litre of beer is not to be sneered at, so rather than thoughtlessly toss that surplus malt into the bin, I brewed that litre of beer !! Its a kolsch ( top cropped the yeast from a big batch I have going)

Now I usually do my small batches BIAB style, but for this batch, I went with a more traditional 3 vessel system.

Left to right. The HLT, the Mashtun, the Kettle.
View attachment 14342
Boiling with 2g of Cascade flowers. Had to make it a shorter (35min) boil so it wouldn't end up a 50 IBU beer
View attachment 14343

Chilling
View attachment 14344

And all finished and done, into an orange juice container fermentor. All the froth is from shaking to oxygenate, not krausen.

View attachment 14345
It was all kinda good fun, and was pretty much achieved completely during the ad breaks while watching the Bourne Supremacy on the telly

So. Whats your smallest brew? and yeast starters don't count

Thirsty

Great effort Thirsty....i love the 3 vessel setup, i can't wait to see the march pump plumbed in

Rook

 

[Kai]

I'd kill that several times over on fermentation samples.

 

[Zwickel]

classic.....and funny too :lol:

Thirsty Boy, thats absolutely award winning....

 

[Thirsty Boy]

I'd kill that several times over on fermentation samples.

Refractometer dude...

plus, I don't really think I will be worrying too much about samples. Maybe I'll take the dregs into work to see what its %abv and final gravity end up being and just work back from there to see what I started with.

 

[SpillsMostOfIt]

This takes the art of one-downmanship to new levels.

"Would you like to share my latest batch of kolsch? Careful - it's a sipping beer and not because it's strong."

I was thinking of using a similar device to Thirsty Boy's mash tun as a kettle and microwaving a brew. That way I should be able to get the boil done in under 90 seconds...

 

[Kai]

Refractometer dude...

Yeah, I have one of those. I was thinking of sensory analysis

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Well, the Femto-Brew has been completed and I've drunk it.

Here it is, chilled overnight and force carbed in a 1.25L PET



It was actually much paler than it looks in the photo. wouldn't have been more than 6 or 8 EBC.

It was a fairly bland sort of a brew, fair enough too seeing as its malt bill was a massive 200g of 100% schooner malt. Still, it was clean, crisp and fairly dry. I had no trouble at all finishing off the 1000ml.

Surprisingly very little to no hop aroma or taste. It had a relatively high amount of hops and they only got boiled for 35 mins... I was expecting a little more.

It was a little yeasty... but thats because I used a kolsch yeast and couldn't be bothered filtering or lagering.

Good fun. I might just make it my "method" for making a starter... then I get 1-2 litres of drinkable beer as well as the main batch. If I can be bothered.

Thirsty

 

[Kai]

Well, the Femto-Brew has been completed and I've drunk it.

I hope it was worthwhile!

 

[redmond]

I currently have a 5l batch in my fermentor. Doing a wheat which I am not particular fond of so I only made a small batch. I am looking forward to the results as I may use the method for pilot batches in the future.

 

[pint of lager]

The smallest batch is in my hydrometer test tube. Often that sample sits behind the sink for at least a day and sometimes longer.

One sat there for 5 days and developed a krausen. I tipped that out and the next sample was pitched directly onto the very small cake.

Did actually try one of these small brews, it tasted very skunky.

 

[rwh]

You should have bottled it in Tobasco bottles or something.

 

[Thirsty Boy]

The smallest batch is in my hydrometer test tube. Often that sample sits behind the sink for at least a day and sometimes longer.

One sat there for 5 days and developed a krausen. I tipped that out and the next sample was pitched directly onto the very small cake.

Did actually try one of these small brews, it tasted very skunky.

Now that is cool POL. Yucky, but cool :beer: