I'm making my first beer from scratch next week. However the recipe is for 10litres, only it's only me who's gonna be drinking it. To make 5litres, do I just half all the recipe ingredients????
All grain is exactly that. Beer made from grains, where you mash the grain yourself then boil the resultant wort and add the hops(this bit is done for you with a kit)
If you want 5L of beer I make 6L or 7L as you'll lose some beer to trub (sediment)
Sure, but you'll be making what's known as an extract brew rather than all grain (AG) which is what people will assume if you say your making your beer from scratch
If you have big enough equipment and enough storage space, I would brew 10 litres. This will start you building up stocks and you can see if the beer taste changes over time.
If you brew different recipes next, you will then have a variety of beers to drink (I get bored just having 40 bottles of 1 type of beer to drink!)
They will last a long time (but hoppy IPAs will lose the fresh hoppiness over time).
I'm not a big stout drinker and have 6 bottles left from a kit brewed over 2 years ago! To be fair, I brewed it with a whole tin of black treacle and it took 12 months to mellow out