Great One Gallon Fermenter

The extra gallon will be good for headspace concerns, but it's not going to help your trub issues. When designing recipes, you need to target more wort into the fermentor, at least an extra .25 gallon. If it's kits you're brewing, yeah, I had the same problem with them when I first started out, most don't account for this factor.

 

No way anyone should expect to get ten - 12oz bottles from 1-G fermentor.
Ten ... 12-oz bottles = 120 oz
1-G fermentor = 128 oz

A 1-G fermentor w/~20% head-space = ~102 oz = 8.5 bottles
Trub is variable depending on hop-loading; therefore ... getting seven 12-oz bottles from a 1-G fermentor should not be unexpected.

A 2-G bucket has the capacity to ferment 1.6G of wort.
Go bigger or go homer!

 

How necessary is head space? i've been doing one gallon batches in gallon jugs that probably full come in around 1.25GAL. I don't fill them to the top with wort, maybe around 1.15GAL. Starting with a blow off tube, I do not leave a whole hell of a lot of space.

 

How much blowoff do you have? The less headspace, the more blowoff (on average). One way or another, there is beer that you are not getting, either by not putting it in your fermenter in the first place, or by blowing it off into another vessel.

 

Head space is very important if you don't want to lose wort volume. Batch sizes of 5G are typically fermented in a 6.5G vessel which leaves 20% for headspace.

@pweis909 addressed the consequence of the blow-off tube.

How can a 1G jug have a 5 quart capacity?

 

It's a lot of work, expense and time doing a brew: why bother unless you do at least 5 gallons? Sorry JM2c

 

Because it's a perfect way to experiment with different recipes and ingredients. Also when doing a 1 gallon batch it's less expense, time and imo less work.

 

I think a lot of the time savings you see in volume reduction depends on your gear.

HEATING WATER AMD WORT:If you are using a stove top, especially an electric one, for heating and boiling, the time to hit strike temps and the time to bring your wort to a boil are definitely volume related. If you have a high BTU burner, there will still be time savings with lower volumes, but not as much.

COOLING WORT: Cooling can also be volume related. If you are making an ice bath in your sink, it will take quite a long time to cool 5gallons as opposed to 1 gallon. But if you invest in chiller equipment, you could see substantial time efficiencies that minimize the volume effect.

PACKAGING: Volume impacts packaging time substantially if you are a bottler. You can clean and sanitize 8-10 bottles in 10 minutes, and fill them in another 10. This time scales proportionally to # of bottles. But if you keg, it pretty much takes the same time to work with a 2.5 gallon volume as it does a 5 gallon one.

 

I'm way over estimating this. But, 128oz does not fill said jug.

pweis909 covers why 1 vs 5G. Also, i realized after enough 5G batches I don't want 40 bottles of any one beer. I lose interest.

 

Same here; however ... there's a sweet 2.5 - 3G spot in between.

 

Just as a counterpoint, the best pint I pour is inevitably followed by the swooshing emptiness of gas flushing through my taplines. But you guys are right that diversity is the spice of life and I don't get enough of it with my own 5 gal homebrew schedules. Fortunately, there are some good commercial beers to be had here in WI.

 

Thank you for confirming the hunches I was beginning to have. I've always done 5gal batches, on a stovetop, have a wort chiller, and bottle. Problem is with 2 going on 3 kids I've not had time to brew in now over a year and I miss it terribly, so I've been considering smaller batches so that I can actually get in a brewday at all, but I wasn't sure if reducing batch size would be enough. Two of three of the items you point out will have a significant effect on my process.

Question I have is what size batch should I do with a 3gal carboy for primary fermentation? I'd like to avoid further investment ($ and space) so I don't want to buy anything smaller. I was thinking about 1gal, 1.5gal, or 1.67gal (1/3 of 5gal) batch sizes, or is that too much headspace?

If I need to do a secondary, I have about 50lbs of food safe marbles to eliminate headspace, but I would think they'd be bad to use in primary.

Tagging in @FATC1TY as well for additional feedback.

 

IMO, there is no such thing as too much headspace in a primary fermenter. Your beer will be in the fermenter for probably 2-3 weeks. Because the yeast are active and evolving CO2 during this time period, you are fairly well protected from oxidation and the stale cardboard flavors commonly associated with it. I have routinely used my 6.5 gallon buckets for primary fermentation of 3 gallon batches and have not had oxidation issues. Also consider that some brewers do open fermentation (is that infinite headspace? Well, maybe not infinite, but >> 1 gallon).You'll want to avoid prolonged secondaries with large head space, but I think you are fine for primary. At the high end of your volume capacity, you'll risk blowoff. You probably want to rig a blowoff tube if you are over 2.25 gallons or if you are brewing a high gravity batch.

 

1 gallon = 10.5 12oz bottles. if you have 1G in your Fermenter before you add the yeast, after fermentation you should end up with about 1G + yeast + trub.
Along the process of moving the beer in tube and between vessels you loss some.

My best shot out of one gallon was 9 12oz bottles.

2 Gallon Plastic Fermenter will work better by giving you lot of head space