Pilot Brewing: Smaller Batch Homebrewing
Almost all of the pros — from Anheuser-Busch to your local craft brewery — use pilot brews to test new recipes. As a homebrewer, you can, too. There are lots of advantages to pilot brewing that go well beyond mere recipe testing. Pilot brewing can be faster and require less special equipment than brewing five-gallon batches. It can allow you to try out new yeast strains, new hops and malts, spices, herbs, or strange recipes and brewing methods you might not
otherwise risk on larger batches. If you like chile beer but no one else around you does, take an afternoon to make a pilot batch for yourself. Don’t have the space or equipment to lager beers? Brew a small batch and pop it in the fridge. Planning an important large-batch brew? Do a pilot batch of something experimental a week earlier, and have plenty of healthy, pitchable yeast slurry by big-batch time.
Pilot brewing just might offer you the opportunity to try all those ingredients, potions, and recipes you’ve been thinking about but haven’t had the time for between regular brews. Making small batches is cheap, quick, and so easy it might even get you into trying your first all-grain beer.
Getting Started
Brewing test batches doesn’t require any special equipment except a few stoppers and airlocks. Pilot batches can be done cheaply and effectively in amounts as small as one gallon or as large as three gallons. Your current five-gallon or larger fermenter is adequate, but many homebrew shops carry three-gallon carboys that will make your small-batch brewing much easier. Many markets sell one-gallon glass juice jugs that make ideal fermenters. The tinted one-gallon jugs that hold cheap wine work well and offer some UV protection. Brew up to a two-gallon batch, split it into two one-gallon fermenters, and test two yeasts or two fermentation methods at the same time.
Boiling can be done in your pasta or stock pot, a full mash can be done in a second pot, and a partial mash can be done in a large saucepan.
Pasta colanders and even wire mesh strainers make perfectly effective lauter screens, and a tin watering can makes a good mash rinser.
To illustrate an experimental batch, let’s use the following recipe for Stretch-It-To-The-Limit Stout, provided by San Francisco Brewcraft. The beer was given this name because the amount of dark grains is much higher than most stout recipes call for. The purpose of this small-batch experiment is twofold: 1) to taste the effect of a high proportion of roasted malt and 2) to note the differences that two separate yeast strains will have on the finished beer.
Stretch-It-To-The-Limit Stout
(2 gallons)
Ingredients:
All-grain:
• 2 lbs. pale two-row malt
• 4 oz. flaked barley
• 4 oz. flaked oats
• 6 oz. roasted barley
• 4 oz. chocolate malt
• 2 oz. black malt
Partial mash:
• 1 lb. pale malt extract
• 1 lb. pale two-row malt
• 4 oz. flaked barley
• 4 oz. flaked oats
• 6 oz. roasted barley
• 4 oz. chocolate malt
• 2 oz. black malt
Extract with specialty grains:
• 2.25 lbs. pale malt extract
• 6 oz. roasted barley
• 4 oz. chocolate malt
• 2 oz. black malt
For all recipes:
• 0.5 oz. Galena or Chinook hops, for 60 min.
• 0.75 oz. Cascade hops, after the boil is finished
• 2 ale yeast strains, for example Wyeast 1084 (Irish style ale) and Wyeast 1056 (American ale)
• 1/3 cup priming sugar
Step by Step:
For all-grain batches, mix all grains with 0.75 gal. water in a
stockpot and place on a stove, slowly raising the temperature to 150º F. Partial mashers can use a large saucepan or pot to mix grains with 0.5 gal. water and raise to the same temperature. Extract recipe users should place grains in a mesh bag or just pour them directly into 2.5 gal. water on the stove, and slowly raise the temperature to boiling. Just before boiling, remove the grain bag or, if you’re not using a bag, pour wort through a wire strainer into a second pot and bring to a boil.
Mashers should rest at 150º F for 30 to 45 min., then turn on the heat and raise the mash to 168º F. Simply pour the whole mash (carefully) into a colander or wire strainer resting on the lip of your boiling pot. Heat about 2.5 gal. of water to 170º F in a teapot or stockpot, and slowly pour over the grain bed to thoroughly rinse (lauter) the mash.You should collect about 2.5 gal. to add to the pot, and you’re ready to boil.
Bring the wort to a boil, remove from heat, and add extracts if needed. Add the Galena or Chinook hops. Boil the wort for one hour. Turn off the heat, add the finishing hops, wrap some plastic or foil tightly around the lip of the pot, and cover. Chill by placing the pot in the sink in a bath of cold or iced water, or place in the freezer or fridge for a few hours. After the wort is cooled, pour through a sanitized funnel into two sanitized 1-gal. glass jugs. Pitch a different yeast to each one (don’t forget to label them!), fit your airlocks, and relax.
Age for 14 days and bottle using 1/6 cup priming sugar per gallon.
OG = 1.056
IBUs = 65 to 70
Being Creative and Controlled
Aside from testing new recipes or ingredients, brewing small batches can also be a way to set up controlled experiments that can make you a real specialist in certain areas. The keys are to be creative, take excellent notes so that your experiments are repeatable, and vary only one element each time.
For instance maybe you’re seeking a certain hop aroma in your IPA. Try brewing a small batch, splitting it into two fermenters, each with the same yeast and the same fermentation conditions, and dry hop with the same hops but in different amounts. Or with different hops. Or brew a small batch of standard, basic pale ale in the morning, and brew the same beer using a new type of crystal malt in the afternoon. Brew a wheat beer adding raspberries to the primary in one fermenter and raspberries to the secondary in the other.
If you’ve never brewed an all-grain batch before, experiment with a small batch using common kitchen utensils such as the stockpot and strainer until you get a general feel for the process, gravities, and techniques.
If you’ve been dying to make a classic pilsner but don’t have the equipment for lagering, try a pilot brew. It’s much easier to keep a small fermenter at around 50º F than a large one. Just keep the fermener in a small bucket of cool water with an occasional ice addition. Lagering is a snap. Rack into a second small fermenter, and pop the secondary in the fridge for a few weeks.
Thirst-Quenching Pilot Batch
Here’s another great pilot recipe that embodies the spirit of small-batch brewing. The results will really
surprise you.
Despite the thought that a watermelon beer might be either sickly sweet or have no flavor at all, yeast really seem to like the stuff. They attack the watermelon meat with a vengeance and leave you with a beer that has a beautiful watermelon nose but a very dry, crisp flavor with just a hint of the fruit. It’s a great summer thirst quencher.
Watermelon Wheat
(2.5 gallons)
Ingredients:
All-grain:
• 1.5 lbs. two-row malt
• 1.5 lbs. white wheat malt
• 4 oz. crystal malt, 20° Lovibond
• 8 oz. honey
Partial mash:
• 1.5 lbs. pale malt extract
• 1.5 lbs. white wheat malt
• 4 oz. crystal malt, 20° Lovibond
• 8 oz. honey
Extract with specialty grains:
• 1.5 lbs. pale malt extract
• 1.5 lbs. wheat malt extract
• 4 oz. crystal malt, 20° Lovibond
• 8 oz. honey
For all recipes:
• One 8-lb. watermelon
• 0.25 oz. Northern Brewer hops, for 60 min.
• 0.25 oz. German Hallertauer hops, for 30 min.
• Wyeast 1007 (German ale)
• 3/8 cup priming sugar
Step by Step:
For this recipe you will be collecting 2.5 gal. of wort to the fermenter. For all-grain brewers, mix all grains with 1 gal. water in a stockpot and place on a stove, slowly raising the temperature to 148º F. Partial mashers can use a large saucepan or pot to mix grains with 0.5 gal. water and raise to the same temperature. Extract-recipe users should place crystal malt in a mesh bag, or just pour directly into 3 gal. water on the stove, and slowly raise the temperature to boiling. Just before boiling, remove the grain bag or, if not using a bag, pour through a wire strainer into a second pot and bring to a boil.
Mashers should rest at 148º F for one hour, then turn on the heat and raise the mash to 168º F. Simply pour the whole mash (carefully) into a colander or wire strainer resting on the lip of your boiling pot. Heat about 3 gal. of water to 170º F in a teapot or stockpot, and slowly pour over the grain bed to thoroughly rinse the mash. You should collect about 3 gal. to the pot, and you’re ready to boil.
Add the honey and extracts, if applicable, and the Northern Brewer hops. Boil 30 min. Add the Hallertauer hops and boil 30 min. more. Total boil is one hour. Turn off the heat, wrap some plastic or foil tightly around the lip of the pot, and cover. Chill by placing the pot in the sink in a bath of cold or iced water, or place in the freezer or fridge for a few hours. After the wort is cooled, pour through a sanitized funnel into a sanitized fermenter, pitch the yeast, fit your airlock, and relax.
After primary fermentation is complete, rack the beer to a sanitized 3-gal. fermenter. Cut the watermelon open, cut the meat from the rind, and dice into small cubes. Use a clean knife and cutting board, but don’t worry too much about contamination. The watermelon meat is protected inside the rind until cut open, and the acidity and alcohol of the fermented beer is enough to prevent any bacteria from gaining a foothold. Using a sanitized funnel, cram the diced meat into the secondary fermenter. Fit with an airlock and let sit for two weeks. Some meat and seeds will float on the surface, and the rest will sink. Rack to a bottling bucket, prime, bottle, wait 10 days and enjoy!
OG = 1.054 to 1.056
IBUs = 17 to 19
Small-Batch Helpful Hints
In general small-batch brewing follows the same rules as brewing of any size regarding sanitation, fermentation temperatures, and so forth. Your one-gallon jug of fermented beer can be siphoned directly into your bottling bucket, and the amount of priming sugar will be the only variable. Remember that five-gallon batches require 3/4 cup of priming sugar for normal carbonation. That translates to six ounces per five gallons or 1.2 oz. per gallon. Be sure to weigh the priming sugar accurately for each small batch brew to avoid exploding or undercarbonated bottles. Also, when improvising with one-gallon containers remember that some are not designed for pressure. Do not try to“bottle” the beer in one.
Scaling recipes you like up to normal batch size or down to small batch size is essentially a matter of multiplication. However, lots of different factors will affect the brew consistency based on the size of the batch. If you are accustomed to brewing concentrated wort with extract and diluting up to five gallons with cold water in the fermenter, and small-batch brewing allows you to boil the entire wort on your stove, hop utilization will be different (more efficient in the full wort boil), color may be slightly different, and other factors such as lag time may be
different.
When scaling a recipe up or down, take good notes on your process and the flavor of the beers and make minor corrections based on the differences you note. A two-gallon all-grain mash, for example, can be carried out on your stove. However, when you move the recipe to your five-gallon, camping-cooler mash tun, extract efficiency is bound to be different. Take good readings and adjust based on your system.
Remember that for a five-gallon batch, you will be collecting about 5.5 gallons to the fermenter. In a three-gallon batch you may only be able to collect 3.75, or for a two-gallon batch, just two gallons. This will dictate how much water you initially collect to the boiling pot, and your gravities will be slightly affected by the different-sized batches. Again, take good notes and gravity readings, stick to the same brewing conditions, and experiment with your system until you have arrived on a simple formula for scaling up or down.
Pilot brewing can be very rewarding with little expenditure of time or money. It is an excellent way to explore brewing by experimenting with new methods and ingredients. And it is an excellent way to make all those strange brews you keep dreaming up without risking all the effort and money you put into the ones you like to come home to every day.
