New Brewer Questions

Yes to halving the recipe. If you were planning on pitching one vial of yeast, pitch the whole thing in the otherwise halved batch. Single vials are often lower than the desirable cell count for a 5 gallon batch. However,if you had plans to make a starter, stick with the plan; it's a good practice.

Ice and water from your tap would be fine for the tub. Do you have a plan to monitor the temp, adding or removing ice, so that you keep it in the yeast's ideal spot? I wouldn't just wing it and hope for the best unless you already know what temp the water bath will maintain.

 

One thing to keep in mind with halving the batch is that you will boil off the same amount of water, if not more. Not a big deal if you are topping off with distilled or pre-sanitized water to hit your volume (ie partial boil)

Another thing to keep in mind is that brewing a batch of beer from start to finish is a lot of work, and pretty much the same effort for 5 gal as 2.5 gal. Coming out of it with a single case of beer might be a bit of a let down once you realize that every single long lost friend is going to want to sample the product. Or, if you're anything like me, anywhere form 1 to 4 bottles will disappear before they are fully ready to go...

 

One question I have for you, do you have a smaller carboy, ideally 3 gallon? A 5 gallon carboy for a half batch is going to have about 3 gallons of head space. Seems like oxidation to me once you're in secondary.

 

Switch the t-shirt out from time to time or you will get mold.

 

It doesn't sound like the OP needs to use a secondary fermentor. He should be okay with just a primary before bottling.

 

As far as icing your containment tub, I have found it super convenient to mostly-fill some 2-liter bottles of water and freeze them; that way, you can switch them out as-needed without increasing the volume of water in your tub each time you add ice. Smaller bottles work too, of course, if they are all that will fit in your tub.

I have 4 2-liters so I can double-ice if necessary and switch out every 12 hours. Phoenix temps will be rough, but I assume your place has air conditioning.

 

Just to add to Flagmantho, I make a mix og 16 oz and 2 liter bottles for cooling the "tub". Right now it is 102 outside and my German Wiesen is sitting at 62. But do watch your temps, mine got to 48 cause I misread the thermometer and added too much cold. It was at that moment it occurred to me, I can lager in the cooler contraption of mine.

 

I too live in the Phx area. I have an ipa batch dry hopping now. I kept it right around 66-68 during fermentation using an oil pan with a tshirt. Fingers crossed!

 

You have heard of people putting a collar on a chest freezer to fit fermentors and kegs? I did that to an igloo cooler, used 1x6 or so and raised the lid, cut a hole in the top so my airlock sticks out and I get really good temp control on the cheap.

 

I want to emphasize what @Mothergoose03 said above, you should probably not be doing a secondary fermentation, and so there is little reason to worry about a large headspace. But actually, by my calculation, you'll get nearly 5 gallons even after halving this recipe, right? How big is your bucket? If it's like a 7-gallon bucket (or bigger), then I think you're all set, and you shouldn't try to use a smaller fermenter.

[Edited to clarify: you should care about your headspace, but only because it might be too SMALL, not too large.]

 

What info from the OP allowed you to calculate a batch size?

 

Well, I guess I did the math wrong, but the OP referred to a recipe that would yield 52 12 ounce bottles of beer. 52 × 12 = 624 ounces = 4.875 gallons. I must have forgotten to divide by 2, which is why I thought the halved recipe would yield almost 5 gallons (when really the original recipe would yield that amount [edited to add: and the halved recipe would of course yield half that amount, or about 2.5 gallons]).

But my advice is unaffected: if you are only doing a primary fermentation, then it would be awfully difficult to have too large a headspace. The primary fermentation will produce ample carbon dioxide to fill almost any headspace, and if you bottle within 2-4 weeks there shouldn't be a problem with oxygenation. Racking to secondary is different because there won't be much carbon dioxide production to fill the headspace and keep oxygen at bay.

 

Chances are very good that it will be fine.

 

I wouldn't recommend using a dip thermometer for this long term. In the absence of a thermowell and temp probe (expensive), a stick-on "fermometer" (very cheap) would work pretty well. Measuring the temp of the ice water bath would be pointless.

 

Lol everyone has to do this at least once.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it sounds like you transferred into your fermenter before chilling the wort. This isn't terrible but generally the idea is to chill the wort then transfer it to the fermenter. When you chill the beer, some stuff precipitates out and ideally you want as little of that in the fermenter. And 2 one gallon frozen bottles is way too little. You need lots of ice if you are going to cool 5 gallons. If you did a partial boil you can more easily cool that with ice before topping off.