Small(er) Batch Help Thread

You summarized the small batch pointers very well, nicely done.

Thanks for sharing that article, not sure if I'd seen that one previously or not. Personally I got the idea for a tall fermenter from the tour I took at New Glarus. They use a small diameter stainless cylinder fermenter in their pilot brewery which IIRC I'm guessing is like 10-15 gallons or something like that. They explained this tall narrow fermenter shape was necessary to better emulate the conditions in their big fermenters. So I took that and ran with it. I am actually still able to siphon the old fashioned way with a long hose over the top, no pump, but just barely.

I have indeed run a side by side tasting experiment only once that I recall... and I could NOT taste a difference between it and a more shallow fermenter. However I still use the vases because I think *maybe* it still could make a difference, at least in some instances. For example, when researching the roggenbier that I just made which turned out great, I knew I wanted more clove and less banana, so I selected parameters to achieve this goal, including fermenter shape / openness of surface area at top. I used WLP300 which is well known as being a "banana bomb", but by using the tall fermenter, I achieved a beer with good clove level but very low banana, just the way I wanted! When I brew more weizens or roggens in future, I'm likely to do the same thing again because it came out so well, for MY tastes. Conversely, IF I wanted a lot of banana, I would definitely NOT have used the tall guy for that, as the height and minimal exposure to oxygen reduces the esters. Same with an estery beer, if I were brewing a Belgian or English style for example where I wanted a lot of esters, the tall guy probably will not work so well for those styles. But any American style, or German lager, yeah I think it's probably best to use the tall fermenters for those.

 

Yep, I do this.

 

YES, ditto.

 

The book, Simple Homebrewing is a good resource for those who want to brew smaller batches.

 

Let me know how it works out for you.