Small-Batch Brewing

This article originally appeared in the January/February 2023 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Dan Jablow

I love craft beer, and I love to make things. After casually enjoying the craft beer made by others for so many years, I knew it would only be a matter of time before I’d eventually want to brew my own. About three and a half years ago, the bug finally bit me, and I started researching how to brew beer. Right from the start, I knew I wanted to focus on all-grain brewing, figuring that my formal culinary training and experience as a chef would serve me well on my quest to develop my own recipes. As I began investigating how to get started, I ran into a few potential issues.

My research at the time suggested that the most common homebrewing setups would produce 5 or 10 gallons (19 or 38 liters) of beer at a time. As the sole drinker of beer in my household, producing that much beer at once was far more than I needed. I also figured that if it took me a long time to go through that much beer, then I’d be brewing relatively infrequently, which defeated my goal of brewing frequently to gain experience.

Whether I chose a three-vessel or an electric all-in-one system, I’d need to part with some of my hard-earned cash. Such systems, along with the additional gear I’d need to support fermentation and packaging, seemed like they were not going to be cheap. At the time, I was also renting a house that had a very small and poorly laid out kitchen that wasn’t conducive for batches of that size, nor did I have access to any real outdoor space for brewing.

The idea of brewing in smaller sized batches came naturally to me after wrestling with, and ultimately passing on, the decision to buy an all-in-one system capable of producing 5 gallons of beer at a time for the reasons above. If I were going to start homebrewing, I’d need something that would better fit my needs.

I thought about the lowest common denominator here and asked myself if I could produce beer one gallon at a time…

Access the full article in the January/February 2023 Zymurgy magazine.

This article includes:

• HOMEBREW RECIPE: Your First SMASH Ale
• Why go small?
• Brewing equipment
• Serving experiments
• Recipe design
• Small batches for the win