I do 1-gallon meads and such and I love the idea of doing 1-gallon beers. Would anyone care to share photos of their 1-gallon all-grain setup? I am confused about the bias method vs methods requiring sparging, etc. thus far I am an extract + steeping grains brewer at 5-gallons. 1-gallon batches may gain me spousal support for larger batches if they are successful. How do you scale yeast for 1-gallon?
Cheers,
-Blake
I hit 70% using two pots and a strainer. I use a 12 quart pot for mashing (You want to use something low, the higher the water line in the pot, the less heat you will use) and a 16 quart for my boil (avoid boilovers). I mash for a little over an hour then dump the grains into one of these:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003VZOOOY/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
Get one that matches the diameter of your pots (hopefully your pots are the same size) so you can simply put the strainer on top of the pot, dump in your grains.
Let it drain for a minute, I often lift it up and tilt in several directions, then put the grains on top of the other pot, and SLOWLY pour the wort back through the grains, try to pour over every area but more than half through the middle. Repeat two more times.
Add the grains back to the mash pot, add your sparge water. I also have a 1 gallon pot I transfer my wort to and start heating up immediately. Stir like crazy, wait a few minutes. Repeat the whole process. I have hit 75% but my last 6 batches are all 69.5% And this is with precrushed grains as well.
Thats it. I have a few other small mesh strainers I use to pour the wort through into a chill pot to capture all the hop material, etc. A smaller pot is nice to chill in because I can easily fit it in my sink/ice-bath
As for yeast...a half pack without rehydration will take care of most beers, even higher gravity like I usually do. 3 grams is usually what you need. I often do double batch brewdays so I can use the whole pack right there.
No pics as of now, doing a fathers day triple batch brewday (Just got citra, simcoe, centinneal and summit for a few single hopped IPAs and my tasty original recipe) but I will take some then...good luck!