Making a 1-Gallon All-Grain Batch

Brewed February 1, 2016; Published February 19, 2016 (Click Here for PDF of Lesson)

Posted by Samuel R. Atcherson

Introduction

If you’re a brand new brewer, I encourage you to first read the “Thinking About Brewing?” lesson. The reason for this is because in this lesson, I am brewing a 1-gallon “All-Grain” batch of beer, a Black Hills Stout*. If you’ve been extract brewing for a while, but have never brewed all-grain, this lesson is a nice place to start on a small scale with equipment you probably already have. In either case, this lesson should be a worthwhile one.

All-Grain Brewing Versus Extract Brewing

In all-grain brewing, the brewer is making wort from scratch using crushed (milled) malted barley and heated water. Briefly, the sugars are extracted and rinsed from the malted barley (i.e., mashed and lautered) before the wort is combined with hop additions over a 60 to 90 minute boil. All-grain brewing does increase the overall time it takes to brew beer, but it is appreciably a miniature version of what basically happens every day in a commercial brewery. Extract brewing, on the other hand, skips the mash and lauter process altogether and instead producing wort with packaged extract in liquid or powdered form. Packaged extract is basically concentrated wort that will be mixed with water and boiled over 60 to 90 minutes with hop additions. As you can see, both all-grain brewing and extract brewing involve boiling the wort, but where they differ is from where the sugars came.

Thoughts Before We Begin

Before we begin, let’s draw attention to a few things related to this lesson. First, all-grain brewing does generally require more equipment than you would need for extract brewing, but for a 1-gallon batch, you’ll find most things in your kitchen. With a 1-gallon batch, you’ll only be able to produce 7 to 9 bottles of 12 oz. size. However, one would argue that you can have more variety if you intend to brew often. Others would argue that for some additional extra time and cost, you can brew 5- to 6-gallon batches and have a lot more beer to enjoy (48 to 52 bottles of 12 oz. size). The additional time required for larger all-grain batches is realized during the heating of water, the lautering of the extra wort, the cooling of the wort after the 60 to 90 minute boil, the transfer of liquids, and clean up time.

Second, all-grain brewing is often a matter of preference and cost. For example, all-grain brewing really is “making something from scratch” and often at the benefit of an overall lower cost to produce from raw ingredients (i.e., malted barley and hops). Another preference is to be able to make a lighter colored beer that could be more difficult with extracts (e.g., a Belgian Blonde ale). At no time, however, should extract brewing be frowned upon. Great beers can indeed be made with extracts, and many have won homebrewing awards at the national level. Although I love (I mean LOOOOOVE) all-grain brewing because I am a “made from scratch” kind of guy, there are times my personal or professional life gets busy and I have an itch to scratch. To scratch that itch, I have made some excellent extract beers in a pinch, and I will continue to advocate for both all-grain and extract brewing methods. If there’s any major problem at all with using extracts, liquid malt extract is not exactly easy to portion into smaller batches, like 1-gallon.

Preparation

Most of the equipment needed for this brew session can be found in the average kitchen. Everything else, think of it as an investment in your hobby. Things like a reliable thermometer, an airlock, a good mesh strainer, an auto-siphon, 1-1.5 gallon jug or foodgrade bucket, and sanitizer. My preferred choice of sanitizer is StarSan, which I buy in a large 32 oz. size, and it will last a long time and make 160 gallons of diluted sanitizer (1 oz. of StarSan mixed with 5 gallons of water). I make enough for a spray bottle, or bottle unused diluted StarSan from a larger brewing session. I will actually store unused diluted StarSan in empty distilled plastic water jugs. The rest of the kitchen items I ended up using include two pots (1 large enough to hold two gallons (6 to 8 quarts) and 1 large enough to hold at least one gallon (2 quarts), scissors, stirring utensil, a measuring cup (to transfer hot water), a funnel (if using a carboy), and a large bowl.

The Recipe

The all-grain recipe for the Black Hills Stout (courtesy of The Water Buffalo*) is as follows:

4.7-4.8% ABV – Estimated alcohol by volume

1.049 OG – Estimated sugar content before fermentation

35.6 IBU – Estimated bitterness/hoppiness

23 SRM – Estimated color

Mash temp 152*F for 60 minutes – Target temperature and time for the malted barley to “extract” certain sugar chains

~2 ½ quarts of water for the mash; ~4 quarts of water for rinsing (sparge)

1.64 lbs. Maris Otter malted barley

1.4 oz. British Chocolate malted barley

0.16 oz. Dark munich malted barley

0.16 oz. 60L Crystal/Caramel malted barley

The Steps in Pictures

Gather all your ingredients, equipment, and related brewing supplies. Don’t forget your sanitizer and a reliable thermometer. This is a good time to review the recipe and the steps for beginning any brew session.

Get your ingredients ready. The crushed grains will be used first in the mash. After the sugary liquid (wort) has been extracted from the grains, the hops will be added to boiling water using a specific schedule (see recipe). In this recipe kit, 1 oz. of dextrose (priming sugar) was also provided, but will be put aside for when the beer is time to bottle after a period of fermentation that is 1.5 to 2 weeks in length.

Heat up the first volume of water to about 166-167*F. This is the strike water. When the strike water and colder grains are mixed together, the overall temperature to drop to the mash range.

Here, the grains and strike water have settled to a target mash temperature of 152*F. However, because the pot is not insulated, the mash may need to be heated while stirring to try to keep the mash within a few degrees of 152*F. Stirring while heating is necessary to keep the grains from scorching on the bottom.

Mash for 60 minutes.

While mashing, heat up the remaining water to a specified temperature (in this case, between 168 to 170*F)

When the mash is finished, strain the liquid (called wort) into another container (see large white bowl under strainer). The tin foil pan was eventually removed from the strainer, because the holes kept getting stuck with grains.

The strainer still allowed some grain sediment to get through. To compensate, I recirculated the wort over the grains without disturbing the grain bed. Here, the grain bed served as a nice filter. Recirculate the wort all over the grain bed to extract sugars as evenly as possible.

Pour the newly heated water over the grains and continue to drain the remaining wort. No need to recirculate the wort here.

Heat the wort to a boil (leave the lid OFF!), add bittering hops, and let boil for 45 minutes (60 minute countdown to flame/heat out)

After 45 minutes has passed (15 minutes to flame/heat out), add the flavoring hops and continue to boil

While waiting for the last 15 minutes of the boil, prepare an ice bath in your kitchen sink.

After the final 15 minutes has passed (0 minutes to flame/heat out), take the pot off the stove and put into the ice bath CAREFULLY!

Cool the wort by setting the pot in the ice bath and bring the temperature down to less than 70*F.

Transfer the cooled wort into a cleaned and sanitized fermentation vessel (carboy or bucket; I used a small 1.5-gallon bucket).

Pitch the yeast, add the lid/grommet, add the airlock filled to the line with diluted StarSan, and set the unfermented beer in a cool, dark place (ideally less than 68*F, but no less than 59*F… the lower end of the range is best during most active fermentation for this beer).

Here is the fermentation vessel with bubbling airlock after 24 hours. The fermentation vessel will sit for about 1.5 to 2 weeks before packaging to bottles.

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Summary and Final Thoughts

Brewing is always fun for me, no matter the time or day. This was only my second time brewing a 1-gallon all-grain batch. The first time was to help a friend and new brewer with the steps. What I appreciated about this brew session is the relative ease of brewing using the pre-measured ingredients in the form of a kit, smaller and lighter equipment, ease of liquid transfer, and speed of cooling a small amount of wort with a small ice batch in the kitchen sink. Cleanup was also quick and easy. What did not anticipate was the extended time it took to heat water and boil my wort with a glasstop stove. And that’s on top of the standard 60 minute mash and standard 60 minute boil of the wort. When you put all this together, a 1-gallon all-grain brew session on my glasstop stove is only slightly shorter than when I’ve brewed a 5 to 10 gallon batch of beer using an outdoor propane burner and stand. Nevertheless, I better understand that not everyone has the storage space that I have that comes with brewing large batches of beer. Small batch brewing does indeed have a smaller footprint with the possible advantage of enjoying more varieties of beer in a short amount of time. Bottling 1-gallon of beer into 7 to 9 bottles isn’t the only option as there are 1-gallon kegs available too, which will require a co2 tank and regulator for serving (and, optionally, force-carbing). As a frequent 5 to 6-gallon brewer, I can also see the advantage of a 1-gallon batches of beer for experimental purposes before putting in more time, effort, and resources into a much larger batch (commercial breweries often do small batch stuff too ).

As I don’t have a 1-gallon keg, I will be bottling this up for natural carbonation using the priming sugar (dextrose) that was provided with the kit. Bottling is easy. If you have not bottled beer before, look for the “Bottling” Lesson on HomeBrewDoc.

*Thanks to Nolen Buffalo (owner) of the Water Buffalo Brewing and Garden Supply for supplying the ingredients and the mini auto-siphon for this lesson.

Making a 1-Gallon All-Grain Batch

Advanced Brewer Tips

Use Beersmith (or other software) to “dial in” your system. I made some more precise decisions for this 1-gallon brew. However, my boil-off rate was slower than I anticipated on a glass stovetop, so I had to boil a little longer to achieve the desired specific gravity (see next tip).
Use a refractometer to measure specific gravity before, during, and after boiling the wort (I actually extended my boil time about 12 minutes to achieve a specific gravity of 1.047 because of the lower than expected boil-off rate). Without a refractometer, I would have had a very low alcohol beer because I would have stopped boiling too short.
Use a fermentation chamber to have better control of fermentation temperatures. I modified a mini fridge to accommodate a carboy and use an external temperature control regulator to keep fermentation temperatures at a constant (+/- 2 degrees). Controlling the temperature goes a long way towards minimizing ester-y off-flavors in beer from fermenting too “hot.” In fact, active fermentation by yeast produces heat, which will raise the wort 8 to 10*F. Using a fermentation chamber will make corrections while the yeast is active, and maintain that same temperature after fermentation is done.