Article - Small Batches in a Small Space

By Lachlan Strong

Small Batches in a Small Space

Bachelordom - it’s great. You live with your mates, drink as much as you want and brew as much as you want. Then you go and move in with your girlfriend and everything changes.

 To be fair, my girlfriend is actually very supportive of my brewing habit, but taking this leap meant moving into a one-bedroom apartment. That meant the brewery had to go into storage (better known as my parents’ place.)

“I can last twelve months without brewing. No problem.” I said.

“Are you sure?” was the reply.

“Of course I’m sure.”

 Three weeks later I was climbing up the walls. I had to brew something. I figured I had a few options; kits, partial mashes and fresh wort kits all seemed like logical choices. Naturally I ignored all logic and decided to brew five litre all-grain batches.

 Why? I certainly don’t need more beer (I brewed enough to last me several years before moving in because of the expected lack of brewing opportunities) and I have plenty of spare time on my hands. An added bonus of this setup is that it gives me an opportunity to try new things, get to better understand new ingredients and generally do wacky stuff without having to drink 25 litres of the result. My current focus is on single-malt, single-hop variety brews to hopefully gain a better understanding of each ingredient.

 I should point out that this isn’t intended as “How To” guide to brewing; the focus is more on how this system differs from standard, full-sized brewing procedures. Many of the procedures aren’t exactly ideal, and the equipment certainly isn’t, but that’s partly the point. It’s not pretty, and it certainly isn’t high-tech, but you can brew good beer in a small space. This is how I do it.

 The Mash

Heating the mash water

 The first thing to note is that I have an electric stove. As if it isn’t bad enough to cook on, it really makes brewing difficult. I had particular problems with hitting my mash temperatures, as I found the temperature continued to rise even a few minutes after removing the pot from the stove. Stirring very well is also recommended. Theoretically, such a mash tun is ideal for all kinds of convoluted mash schedules, but I’ve found that you just can’t hit temperatures as accurately as you need to on an electric stove. If you’ve got a gas stove, I bet you can do a fifteen-step mash no problems (if you’re into that kind of thing).

Mashing in. Note the pot is off the heat.

 I mash in a 4.5L pot, which conveniently has roughly the same volume as my lauter tun. The most I can mash is about 1.5kg with a stiff mash (3L of water) which results in an OG in the vicinity of 1.060. I then place it in my high-tech mash insulator™ which also doubles as a dressing gown. I thought it would be better to mash in a five-litre drink cooler, but I found it was too difficult to get the water and grains in without spilling it everywhere. The temperature loss with the pot-and-dressing gown mash tun was negligible anyway, so I don’t really see any reason to bother with a cooler.

I told you it was low-tech.

Not recommended.

 After an hour or so, the pot goes back on the stove to heat to mashout. Stir well! I let that sit for about ten minutes and then scoop the mash into my lauter tun. Underletting the mash is probably a good idea with this system too, but I must confess I’ve never bothered.

I now have a new appreciation for all-in-one mash/lauter tuns.

 The lauter tun is basically just a scaled down version of the classic bucket-in-bucket system using the 4L pails from which Grain & Grape sells malt extract. Not owning a drill, I tried to fashion the false bottom using the tools I had on hand – a compass and a Stanley knife. This took several hours’ work and left quite a bit to be desired in terms of performance. After two batches I decided it was time to borrow a drill, which did the job in a matter of minutes. I think I chose a drill bit that was a size too large, but it seems to work fine.

The now-retired compass-and-Stanley knife false bottom

The new-and-improved drilled false bottom.

The two pails united (with the old false bottom.)

Note the stuck mash caused by the old false bottom.

 The Sparge

 After a good vorlauf (this setup gives a noticeably cloudier runoff than my usual system) the runoff goes into a stock pot. If I were smart I’d place the lauter tun somewhere higher so I can run the wort into the pot whilst it’s on the stove, but sadly it’s taken me until now to think of it.

Vessel-wise, it’s a case of all hands on deck. I just need to put the frypan to use.

 Being a dedicated batch sparger, I’ve had to re-learn fly sparging with this system. The lauter tun just can’t hold enough liquid to make batch sparging worthwhile. As you can see, I just pour the sparge water on top of the mash. It’s pretty turbid at the top, but it doesn’t seem to have an effect on the clarity of the runoff. One trick I have seen (but not tried myself) is to place a perforated sheet of foil over the grain bed and pour the sparge water on top of that. Eight litres of sparge water seems to be the perfect amount to give me about 8L of sweet wort in the kettle and (assuming 1.4kg of grain) is also the point at which the runoff starts to get close to about 1.010.

 The Boil

 Once the stockpot is full, it goes onto the stove and the boil begins. In retrospect, this batch size is approaching the limit of what I’m able to properly boil on this stove. Another consideration is that the evaporation rate will be proportionately higher than a full-size batch. I find that 8L boils down to 6L with a 70-minute boil on my system. Also, the importance of accurately measuring boiling hop additions becomes relatively great with a batch of this size. A few extra grams of those 11.3%AA Horizons could make quite a significant difference here.

Delicious wort.

 Chilling

 Chilling such a small volume of wort in the kitchen sink is a relatively trivial exercise (provided your pot fits in the sink!) I chuck a bunch of ice in the sink and stir the pot and the water in the sink every so often. It gets down to pitching temperature in about 15 minutes. I decided that pre-freezing ice to chill the wort with was too much effort, so now I just duck down to the supermarket for a bag of ice after I take the pot off the boil. I think it’s $2 well spent.

Fermentation

 After that I just strain the hops out as the wort goes into the fermenter. I’m not too fond of getting all the trub into the fermenter but I don’t really have much choice because racking off it would cause me to lose about a third of my wort! Yeast is a whole lot easier with small batches; you only need about half a packet of dry yeast or a Wyeast pack without a starter. I don’t like the thought of repitching the yeast from the primary fermenter with all that trub in there, so if I feel the need to repitch, I’ll do it from the secondary.

The “European brewery”

 Luckily we have more cupboard space than we do possessions, so there’s space for me to fit a full-sized fermenter easily. Of course a more sensibly sized vessel could easily be found and stashed away somewhere in the house with relative ease. Our place maintains an almost constant temperature of about 18C so it’s perfect for fermenting ales, but one advantage of brewing such small batches is that fermenting lagers in the fridge becomes a lot easier provided you have an appropriately-shaped fermenting vessel. On the topic of fermenter shape, you’ll notice that in a standard 30L fermenter this amount of beer has a height:width ratio of significantly less than one. This probably isn’t ideal if you’re trying to brew super-clean lagers, but if, like me, you’re into Belgians this may have some additional benefit. I have a handful of 5L jugs that I’ve used for various experiments over the years, and these are ideal vessels to use as secondary fermenters (provided you aren’t scared of siphons.) Six litres of beer in the primary fermenter generally fills a jug very nicely.

All that effort for THAT MUCH beer???!!!

 The Cleanup

 And lastly, the chore that is cleaning up becomes a whole lot easier. Brewing doesn’t seem like nearly as much work when the cleanup only takes a few minutes.

 The Finished Product

 So how’s the result? Can I make beer on this cobbled-together system that’s as good as what I make on my proper system? Well, it’s close at least. Of course it’s hard to know for sure, but early results are quite promising (except for a couple of infections I put down to milling grain in the same spot as pitching the yeast... but that’s another story.) Despite a very cloudy runoff and a relatively insipid boil, my first batch – a best bitter – was up there with what I’ve made on my full-size system. There were no clarity or head problems, which don’t mean much in and of themselves, but I figure they are indicators that the system doesn’t have any major flaws.

Bitter and mild. They look alright so there’s a chance you’ll believe me when I say they taste alright too.

Guess which is the beer fridge and which is the food fridge!