One Gallon Homebrewing

When I started homebrewing in the very late 2000s everybody assured me I would want to go bigger than five gallons and it was sheer insanity to brew small batches of homebrew. At the time I was homebrewing in an apartment where I had limited space for equipment, ingredient and fermenting beer. It did not take long before I was small batch brewing one gallon batches in an apartment and I have carried that over to my current residence. I enjoy the convenience of the batch size and it lets me brew more often without having to figure out what to do with five gallons of beer. Now it is a well accepted technique and not just for apartment homebrewers. There are medal-winning homebrewers out there brewing those medal winning beers on a one gallon system.

This page is a collection of resources for one gallon homebrewing. There is some introductory material and tips about one gallon brewing in the first section. The second section details my one gallon system. The third section offers some recipes already built for one gallon brewing. You can scale most homebrewing recipes to one gallon without problems but if you don't want to figure out how to scale ingredients or temperatures then these recipes might be helpful. Use the jump links below or scroll to find the information.

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Intro to One Gallon Brewing	|	Setting Up a One Gallon Brewhouse	|	One Gallon Homebrew Recipes

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Intro to One Gallon Brewing

Homebrewing on a one gallon system is not much different from brewing on a five gallon or other homebrew system. It is the same process as brewing at any other size although there are some logistical issues, such as acquiring and storing ingredients to balance cost and freshness. These posts discuss some of the basics of why you might want to brew one gallon batches and tips to consider in heading down that path.

Why Brew One Gallon Batches - A general discussion of why brewing one gallon batches might make sense for you and issues to consider with setting up a one gallon homebrewing system.

Buying and Using Ingredients in a One Gallon System - Most homebrewing ingredients are sold with the expectation of use in a five gallon set up (or some increment of five gallons). That can make brewing on a smaller scale challenging if you want to take advantage of the cost savings of a smaller system. 

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Setting Up a One Gallon Brewhouse

There are a number of ways you can set up a one gallon system. The biggest challenge is controlling mash temperatures at the smaller mass of a one gallon batch mash. The most popular one gallon system out there is probably a brew in the bag (BIAB) approach. I did this for a while but was dissatisfied with the lack of temperature control and the amount of trub making its way into my fermentors. So I married the cooler mash design of a larger system with the smaller scale. The posts below detail my set up.

Small Batch Homebrewing System Part 1 - An intro to all grain brewing for the novice looking to upgrade from a stove top partial boil extract set up to a small batch all grain system.

Small Batch Homebrewing System Part 2 - A discussion of different systems you could deploy in a one gallon brewhouse, including my initial hybrid system.

Small Batch Homebrewing System Part 3 - A pictorial walkthrough of a small batch brewday on my one gallon system.

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One Gallon Homebrew Recipes

Homebrewing recipes are easily scaled from five or ten gallons down to one gallon. There is not such a problem with hop utilization or other concerns to overthink a mostly linear scale. It can be a pain to convert water volumes and temperatures if you are not using software to scale recipes. It can also be a pain to scale recipes to find your one gallon recipe needs strange increments of grains and hops. The recipes below were designed for the one gallon size and use convenient increments of grains and hops. (These recipes are also posted on the Recipes page.)

Just the Tip - Mixed fermentation saison with fir tree tips

Pivo Kielich #2 - A low ABV grodziski with oak smoked wheat malt and celeia hops
Deflated Balls - A sour brown ale made out of leftover grains from other batches
Be Cool - A hoppy session-strength lager
Czech It Uut - Czech dark lager inspired by the Czech dark lager recipe in For the Love of Hops
Biere de Mars Attacks! - A biere de mars with Aramis
NYE Saison - A saison I brewed to open on NYE 2014 with chardonnay
Mebier - An Adambier based on the Hair of the Dog Adam proto-recipe in Barleywine
Yellow Umbrella - Sour mashed blonde ale with apricots
Black Samurai - Oak aged dry stout
Old King Clancy - An old ale with pilloncillo
Ratchet - A very malty biere de mars-ish beer
Wildfire - Saison with mesquite-smoked munich malt
Lucky Pierre - A brett beer primary fermented with brett custersianus and secondaried with brett anomalous
Salivator - Doppelbock recipe heavy on the caramel flavors
Wakey Wakey- Coffee and oatmeal stout
Motor Oil - Belgian stout recipe
Battery Acid - Sour black ale later blended with a Belgian stout
Ugli Ass Wheat - An American wheat with uglifruit
Nameless Wit - A basic wit recipe
Spelt Saison - A saison with spelt and oats
Fake Fox - A light 4% rye saison with a good heaping of rye
Sexless Innkeeper - A wheatwine in the dunkelweizen style
Monacle - A Scotch ale recipe with a little more complexity than the typical recipe