The Red Barron (American Red IPA) had mixed fortune, from the keg it was a great success. Took it to a friends house warming (but not party!!) and it all went within a few hours. No joke! all what I had left was some slurry at the bottom of the keg. No only it seems everyone finds it remarkably cool to see a keg on the kitchen top, people also like free beer.

From the bottle it was more of a traditional english ale as I gave a 6 pack to my dad. it certainly wasn't designed to be relatively still, I had thought that it could be the case in the bottles as my sample ones were the same. So all in all I am not completely happy with the results.

There wasn't as much hop flavour as with my other batches in the past.




When I came to build and order my next recipe (Fimbulwinter Black IPA) I noticed that the hop quantities for the Barron were around the same as I have done with my 12l batches, however the Red Barron was in the region of 19l so all I can think of was that is was slightly diluted and I amended the recipe volume after I purchased the hops and forgot about it.

A shame and it didn't help also that I was adjusting to using a new brew setup (my Ace Boiler) and had a real ball ache to cool and transfer to the fermenter.  I will redo this batch in the future, I owe it to myself to do it again to make 12l to see how it turns out. I really do like the 'Seasonal' takes on IPAs so I will ear mark it for next year.

I must remember I am a 12l batch brewer!!!
I must remember I am a 12l batch brewer!!!
I must remember I am a 12l batch brewer!!!

What I have taken from this though, my keg setup works very, very well. I will utilise this going forward and will carb it in the keg and transfer enough when fully carbonated to bottles to give away.

To do this I have recently bought a growler/bottle filler to fill the bottles straight from my tap. I will also buy in the next few days a mini regulator adaptor so I can use larger co2 bottles (same as the soda stream machines) to connect a direct supply to my small keg. The mini 16g cartridges are good to transport with to parties but are not great and consistent enough to carb the keg.  I will also purchase a smaller 6l keg for kind of an overflow/bottling/testing keg before I tap my 9l keg.

If this all works out well with my Fimbulwinter Black IPA. I will get rid of my massive 30l bottling bucket.

Until next time.....Happy Brewing

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Are you like me that have limited space & resources, unable to have variations of equipment for brewing? 

Do you struggle to get through 40 odd pints of the same beer because you are unable to brew two batches in close succession, allowing them to condition over the same period of time? Or just find 40 pints of the same beer too much?

The last statement is quite generalised, I haven't had a problem with my 'Way to Amarillo' Pale Ale, its a very nice brew (best one Ive done to date) but every brew after the 30 something pint I really fancy a different beer - variety is the spice of life! 

So now that I have got into Extract brewing & starting to either devise my own recipes or scale down others -  small batch brewing is on the cards! 

3 Gallons batches (11 Litres) which is roughly 20 pints, if you take into consideration the trub and other loses during fermentation, you'll probably end up with 18 or so 500ml sized bottles. 

I did need to do some research however as I only have a full sized 23/25l bucket, I had a small 12.5L bucket in the shopping cart ready but before I committed myself I wanted to check if I was able to use my original, existing bucket.

And you actually can! 

Many people have done the same, fermented 3 and even 2 gallons in a 5 gallon bucket. 

For example, for every 2 gravity points creates one volume of CO2. So a gallon of beer, dropping from 1.050 to 1.010, will make 20 gallons of CO2 over the course of its fermentation. So any oxygen will be purged from the bucket. 

If you decide to condition a beer for a longer period of time in secondary, like if it's a very high alcohol beer, you would want as little headspace as possible to minimise the risk of oxidation so then I recommended to rack into a similar sized vessel. 

For the duration of primary fermentation (up to 3 weeks) there appears to be no problems using a 5 Gallon bucket.


This not only will allow me to potentially brew two batches within weeks of each other but I can now scale down a recipe to test it out to see if I like it, rather than having tons of bottles of 'meh' beer to get through. Essentially giving them away to associates just to clear the numbers. Some people windge that they don't get any beers but others have, but that's another story for another time. 

If you find yourself in the same predicament like me....I would say give small batch brewing a go. 

Until next time..............Happy Brewing

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