Small Batch Experiments

[MmmBeer]

I'm still quite new to home brewing, but have had several decent results from kits, some of which I have pimped.
I am keen to try some of the more advanced techniques, but don't have the equipment available at present to take this too far. I do however have a couple of demijohns, bought with the intention of making some loganberry wine once my bushes bear fruit in a month or so. I was thinking of doing some small batches of malt extract brews, using a single hop to get a better feel of the characteristics of each variety without making 40 pints at a time.
Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for experimenting in this way? I would very much appreciate your input.

 

[chub1]

I'm still quite new to home brewing, but have had several decent results from kits, some of which I have pimped.
I am keen to try some of the more advanced techniques, but don't have the equipment available at present to take this too far. I do however have a couple of demijohns, bought with the intention of making some loganberry wine once my bushes bear fruit in a month or so. I was thinking of doing some small batches of malt extract brews, using a single hop to get a better feel of the characteristics of each variety without making 40 pints at a time.
Does anyone have any experience or recommendations for experimenting in this way? I would very much appreciate your input.

Hiya,
any chance of making your script a tad bigger as poor old b#####s like me have a job to read it:lol:
Yup easy peasy lemon squezy.You can do it on your stove top with a decent size pan,say 5 litres,not expensive.
You can use either spray malt,ie dried powder or liquid malt or combo of both.I did a brew with just spraymalt and some hops and it was actually not a bad drink,bit bland but certainly better than a one can kit. To make it even better you can add grains and steep them for 30 minutes to add more colour and some flavours.
I do mostly biab brews or partial mashes but still throw in some 5 litre extract brews,some of which are pretty damn good even if i do say so myself:lol:.
Plenty of advice on here.
If you want a few 5 litre recipies you are welcome to message me,easier than sitting here trying to keep up and type them out on the forum.

 

[MyQul]

Hi, and welcome to the forum. Are you sure your not doing some small text size experiments? :lol:

I think this is probably what your after http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=51779 the first post is what you want. The rest of the pages of the thread are comments and questions

 

[MmmBeer]

Hopefully I have fixed the font size problems. Thanks for the advice, I can use a pressure cooker as a 5 l pot (without the pressure lid). I might start playing this weekend, a number of packs of hops in the freezer.

 

[Klemay83]

Before I built my kit up a bit I used to do small batch brew. What I found was more, maybe not beneficial but certainly worthwhile, was doing a 10L batch instead of a 5Litre batch. Split the batch, keep 5L as the recipe I'd brewed and then expiriment with dry hopping the other 5L. I just found that with 5Litrs it's such a lot of mess, time etc, for such a small a mount of beer. You can a decent 15L pot off eBay or the likes for about £30-£40. This is what I still use for doing All Grain. I'm not a fan of doing 40 pints worth of beer.

 

[MyQul]

Before I built my kit up a bit I used to do small batch brew. What I found was more, maybe not beneficial but certainly worthwhile, was doing a 10L batch instead of a 5Litre batch. Split the batch, keep 5L as the recipe I'd brewed and then expiriment with dry hopping the other 5L. I just found that with 5Litrs it's such a lot of mess, time etc, for such a small a mount of beer. You can a decent 15L pot off eBay or the likes for about �£30-�£40. This is what I still use for doing All Grain. I'm not a fan of doing 40 pints worth of beer.

The wilko 12L pot is actually 15L to the brim and about £18