Why Did I Launch Small Batch Brewing?
We homebrewers are a lucky bunch - there is no shortage of information available to us in the form of countless books, websites, Facebook groups, YouTube channels, and local meetup groups covering a wide range of topics from ingredient and equipment selection to advanced fermentation. Through my research, I deduced that the five gallon sized batch has become the ‘standard’ for a homebrewing setup. There are other sizes that seem common too - 7.5, 10, 2.5, and 3 gallons - but most recipes I’ve found are written with a five gallon batch size in mind. Additionally, many of the slick all-in-one electric brewing systems or the custom three-vessel systems that homebrewers piece together are designed to produce a minimum of five gallons. Let me be up front about something - I have no problem with systems of this size. I’ve seen some pretty amazing five gallon (and larger) sized setups from homebrewers that have been seriously brewing a lot longer than I have and it’s inspiring to see such passion and devotion to this craft.
When I first got started I knew that a five gallon batch was going to be too big. I lived in a house with a small, poorly designed kitchen.
My refrigerator was big but not huge and was usually packed with food for the family as we like to cook a lot. I did have a smaller mini fridge for storing my ever expanding collection of four-packs and crowlers from local breweries but that was usually pretty full at an given time. Not only was I short on space, I was also short on resources - I didn’t really want to break the bank by dropping a lot of cash on a new equipment. Five gallons also felt like a lot of one type of beer to have on hand, whether in bottles or in a keg. I like variety and as the main consumer of beer in my house it felt like it would take forever to go through a 5 gallon batch of beer. I started thinking that there had to be a way to downsize the ‘5 gallon standard’ to better accommodate my space and budget constraints and my desire for variety.
As I fully immersed myself in learning and research, it seemed to me that there was one niche that wasn’t getting its fair share of coverage - small batch brewing. I’m talking about anything less than 2.5 gallons and that size was too much as I didn’t have any equipment that could handle that volume. I did have almost everything needed to produce beer in a one gallon size already in my kitchen so that’s where I got started three years ago and haven’t looked back.