When I brew one gallon batches I've noticed that the smaller diameter carboy causes a large layer of trub, limiting the amount of usable beer. How have you all dealt with this. I brew all grain FYI.
Did you attempt to strain out the trub, or to stop short of the trub while pouring the wort into your fermentor? If so, then a better procedure needs to be used for future batches to limit the amount that gets in there. Some trub is expected and is okay though. At this point, you can add water to make up for the estimated volume of the trub and to get your beer to the expected liquid level for the batch size if there is room in your fermentor. However, you need to leave some room for fermentation and krausening. If you can't add water now due to space limitation in your fermentor, it's okay to add it into your bottling bucket at the time of bottling. You can get a better handle on how much liquid you have if you wait until then. You will also be adding some liquid at that time with your priming sugar in solution.
I filtered when I transferred but after fermentation the high level of trub in the small diameter carboy left less beer to use at bottling
Chill down to ~ 80F with your chiller, then cool to ferm temp in a bottling bucket. Drain from BB to primary fermenter, leaving the cold crash trub in the BB.
Not from my experience. The wider the carboy the more spread out and thin the trub is. That's a great idea! Thanks!
Right, I agree with that. But when you siphon, assuming you want to avoid the trub, you put the end of the siphon as close as you can without touching it, right? So there's something like a quarter inch of space between the trub and the siphon, as close as you feel safe with, and that height doesn't change depending on the width of the fermenter. So I would think you'd leave behind a volume of beer that is a quarter inch high multiplied by the surface area of the carboy - in which case, the smaller the diameter is, the less you leave behind. Am I totally out to lunch here?
I understand what you're saying, but I only bottled like 6 beers because of trub in a batch that's supposed to yield 12
Since you've already bottled, then, in theory, you've got 6 bottles with an ABV that may approach double what they are supposed to be. (And that may not be all bad.) But if your gallon fermentor was half full of trub (if you only got 6 bottles and 12 was the target), then you've got to figure out a better way to strain that stuff when transferring from kettle to fermentor. And next time if it happens again, you'll need to top off with water if you want more beer.
No way you get 12, 12 oz bottles from a 1G batch even if you could bottle the entire volume. 1G = 128 oz 12, 12 oz bottles = 144 oz. You need 20% for headpace and another 5% for trub. 128 * 0.8 = 96 oz batch-size Best case: 8, 12 oz bottles
Obviously brewing ... drinking ... and posting don't always mix. 128 * 0.75 = 96 oz batch-size Best case: 8, 12 oz bottles
After 40+ 1 gallon batches last year I just started planning on getting 6 clean bottles from each batch. Sometimes I'd get an bonus 22 or 8 bottles. My process was to cool the wort then fill 1 gallon jug with up with almost no headroom. Then I'd chill it overnight in the fridge and the next day pour a gallon of clean wort into a new 1 gallon jug and pitch when it got to the right temp.
