Moving to smaller batches

All right, I've got my copy of Brewing Classic Styles and I've been going through it choosing which recipes I want to try soon. The recipes in the book all call for 7G water to start, which should give you 6G at the end of the boil, 5.5G into the fermentor and 5G of actual beer at the end of the process. If I want to cut all the ingredients in half without changing the recipe, then I figure I should aim for 3G at the end of the boil, and about 4G initially. This'll probably give me 2-2.5 gallons of beer when it's all said and done - it's a bit wasteful, but I want to experiment and learn, so I think it will be worth it. Does my math seem right so far?

There is one thing that bugs me about Brewing Classic Styles, and that's the fact that a lot of Jamil's recipes call for Light LME (2.2 Lovibond, IIRC), but that's not something I can find on most online stores. Is gold LME the same as light LME? Or should I simply substitute dry light LME at a rate of 0.8 lbs dry for every pound of liquid that the recipe calls for?

Finally, while I'm hoping to be able to skip the starters for these smaller batches, it won't always be possible. If I want to make starters on the cheap, could I use a plastic juice container to do so? I was thinking a Simply Orange container, which I can get at my local grocery store and holds 1.75 litres. They look like they'd be a good shape, they have a relatively wide mouth for pouring in my starter wort and they're big enough for the small batches I want to make.

 

Thanks, Vike! Yeah, I know that my boiloff rates are TBD, and the amount that gets left behind at each transfer is both process- and recipe-dependent. On the bright side, I've mostly given up on secondaries, so that's one fewer place where I'll lose beer for most recipes. And it sounds like my orange juice container idea is a winner, so I'll keep that in mind until my next brew day.

As for extract, I did a bit more research and it seems like gold extract is the same thing as light extract. In the end, I'll probably go with whatever is cheaper (taking into account the fact that DME goes farther pound-for-pound than LME), since the prices on LME are often a bit better. Though if the shipping isn't flat-rate, then I suppose it might end up costing more to ship all that extra water...

 

Hmm, glass juice containers are rare, but sometimes I see glass milk containers. I think they're only 1L, but they might work for making a small starter. The mouths are nice and wide, too. Hmm...