Certainly any recipe is scalable. The only potential trouble I see would be accurately reproducing certain hop profiles with very small fractions of an ounce of hops. Some 5 gallon recipes already require measurement to the nearest quarter ounce. Oh, and if you really nail the recipe, you will hate only having a couple of 6-packs of it.
I've just started brewing and my small scale operation is nice but I'm concerned about scaling down recipes. I'm waiting patiently for my copy of True Brew to arrive. It is a book of 1 gallon tasty treats. I do LOVE an IPA but I think hopping a gallon is going to be a lot of work with tiny rewards (8-10 bottles!) hmmm...
It's no biggie scaling 1/4 oz of hop pellets per 5G down to a 1G batch-size. 7 grams / 5G = 1.4 grams / 1G Weigh Lucky 11 Gram Scale
You can be much more creative with 1 gallon batches... brew 5 gallons of wort and split it up into 5 batches to evaluate different yeasts or dry hops, e.g. And no, no need to hate yourself if you made the perfect beer and only have 10 bottles. You have the recipe and a good yeast starter ready to make many more bottles. At this level, scaling up/down is pretty insignificant re: the final product.
I experiment with my one-gallon batches, not with my five-gallon batches (well, at least not as much with my five-gallon batches). You can hop the crap out of a batch, you can toss all sorts of odd stuff into the fermentor with the wort, you can even experiment with different grains and temperatures. If a batch sucks then you don't feel too bad about dumping it and starting over. The one tough part I have is sampling for testing ABV. You typically I use about 8 oz of wort or hot liquor in the hydrometer. It feels like a lot to waste (even though you can drink it after testing, it's a bit flat) for the batch size. It also seems a bit easier to control the temp a light exposure with the fermentor sitting on the kitchen counter rather than out in the garage sitting on a work bench (at least if you're cheap like me and don't want to buy a lot of atmospheric controls). Brew day is a bit quicker and bottling and cleanup are way faster.
Sorry, the one part I left out is be sure to document your batches (weights, temps, timing, ingredients, even equipment). Please keep in mind that scaling from a one-gallon to a five-gallon or larger recipe may not necessarily be directly proportional. My experience has been that the hops seem to come forward more in a larger batch than in the one-gallon. That is why some experimenting on the larger batches may be necessary.
I've brewed a little over 40 1 gallon batches this year and everything has been creative or experimental. I've made a bunch of sours from bottle dregs, fruited a bunch of beers, tested out yeast and hops, boiled something for 3 hours, sour mashed, etc. Even made 4 batches using captured wild yeast and 3 beers with semi-spontaneous fermentation. The bad part about small batches is when you end up having to bottle more than 5 gallons. You also lose a lot of yield when you add fruit to things or do weird shit that soaks up beer (like adding donuts). The bittering was a problem for me at first but I switched to low alpha hops (used more) for bittering but found it easier to control. For me the process was much faster too since 1 gallon was BIAB and 5 gallon is using a 3 vessel system. If I buy liquid yeast I make sure I'm going to repitch it or wash it since it costs twice as much as the grain bill. What I really like to do is brew a one gallon batch and use the yeast in my five gallon batch.
I would say 1-gallon batches are perfect for creativity. Not sure you want 5-gallons of goose liver pate porter? Try it as a 1 gallon batch and see if it tests your gag reflex. Next time, scale the recipe up or down accordingly.
^^This. I don't have the time to waste brewing just 1 gallon, but brewing a 5 or 10 gallon batch and splitting it a bunch of ways is a really great way to do test batches. I do that all the time.
Thank you for all the great feedback. It's going to be a long winter here in Wisconsin so I'm going to put my 5 fermenters to the test.
I just brewed a 1-gal batch of old ale a couple weeks ago. (week and a half, really...) It honestly didn;t save much time of my normal brew day, except for heating strike, liquor and bringing wort to a boil. However, it was nice using the kitchen stove versus cranking up the propane burner, and brewing in the nice warm house versus the garage or back patio. I will certainly be doing more, mostly trying to get recipes nailed before scaling up. 5-gal will still be the normal brew volume, but there's nothing wrong with small batches now and then.
The issue I have always seen with doing 1 gallon batches is that I would go through them too fast to actually get good feedback on the batch. It takes beers a few weeks to hit their stride... 8 bottles won't last a few weeks in my house.
