By Kieran Haslett-Moore
I have brewed beer on a wide range of sized kits in my time. From 20L to 2500L, the essence of the process is the same. However, there are obvious, and perhaps some less obvious, differences between dealing with quantities of wort one can carry to dealing with quantities one could drown in.
I started my brewing life like many with a can of malt extract and a 20L bucket. The brewing bug bit me hard and soon I was boiling concoctions on the stovetop of the old 1920’s flat I lived in and rigging up heaters and electric blankets in the room under the stairs to keep my precious fermentations warm. Then it was onto the chilly bin and power drill stage as elaborate set ups were concocted to enable all-grain brewing. A home bar was assembled and batch sizes increased. A 70L kettle entered the scene, gas burners were balanced on breeze blocks. Then it was down to Dunedin and brewing on Richard Emerson’s old 200L pilot plant. For the first time, I learnt how to use a pump. That led to brews on the Emerson’s 1200L kit, then a brew at Fork and Brewer, then it was 2000L batches at Panhead and Kereru, before taking the plunge and contending with my own 2500L kit with the odd similar sized collab brew in Britian. Now I am back to brewing 30L at a time and it has really crystallized my thoughts about the pluses and minuses of brewing at various brew lengths.
Small is Beautiful
There are ways in which brewing on a small scale is actually both easier and better than brewing large. The obvious downside is that at the end of a day’s labour one ends up with a lot less beer. But there are ways in which small scale brewing is better for the beer you are producing.
Moving large quantities of liquid takes time. For some parts of the process this just means a longer day in the brewhouse, for instance a long slow lauter is only detrimental to the length of one’s workday, but for others it has a distinct impact on the beer you produce. When I first started brewing on my own 2500L kit, the time it took to cool the wort at the end of the boil and cast it into the fermenter meant that recipes which worked perfectly at 70L became searingly bitter and less aromatic once end of boil hop additions sat hot for an hour or more rather than for 20min. All the recipes which had been trialled at home had to be tweaked with boil hop additions reducing and dry hop additions increasing.
Now that I am back to 30L batches the swift wee casting runs have allowed me to once again load the kettle and reduce the dry hops. Of course, for many of you the tropical aromatic beers you are trying to produce will be built around hefty dry hop additions anyway, but for the old school beers I produce, hot side hopping is important. Either way, it is nice to have the option.
In general, I have been amazed at the speed with which I can turn over a 30L brew day. Starting at gentleman’s hours in the mid-morning and being cleaned up, home and hosed by mid afternoon is a fantastic novelty after full days at a commercial scale.
Think Big
Brewing large is obviously more efficient. This is true even within the realms of homebrewing. I originally increased from brewing 20L to brewing on the 70L kit because with a home bar full of friends drinking every Thursday night, the beer was disappearing quicker than I could brew it at 20L a time.
Perhaps the ultimate example of this is UK homebrewer Richard Baggaley who runs a country home brewery and bar for his neighbours in Staffordshire, England. His 120L brew kit produces cask and keg ales to quench the thirst of his friends and family. His exploits are documented on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/@Wheatlow .
At a commercial level, economies of scale kick in and the larger the batch the cheaper the cost per litre tends to be. I remember some years ago when local brewers were regularly invited to the UK to brew with regional brewers for the Wetherspoons International Ale Festival and would brew more there in one day than their company had in its entire history to date.
Scaling Up, Getting Down
I think recipe formulation stems from how a brewer’s mind works. If you are used to brewing 20L batches, you probably think in kgs and gs. If you are used to 2500L batches, you probably think in sacks of malt. When I first started to brew full commercial batches, it took a while to climatise to the larger units. While specialty malts would often be added in quantities less than a sack, it made no sense to do so with base malt. As a homebrewer, one often ends up agonising over the most minute adjustments that simply aren’t relevant on larger scale brews. To be honest, they probably aren’t relevant on small scale brews either, it is all part of the brewing career lesson.
So in addition to adjusting for hot side hop utilisation in larger batches, I also learnt just how much fine tuning had an appreciable effect on a commercial batch of beer. Later on, I ended up contract brewing for brewers who were going through the home to pro brewer process I had gone through, and part of my role was to gently steer them through the process suggesting that the extra 700g of malt that would necessitate buying and opening another sack of pale malt wasn’t needed. Now I am going through the reverse process as I go from thinking in sacks to devising recipes at 30L which will eventually be brewed commercially again at 300L.
Whatever size you brew at, brings its own trials and triumphs. Working out how to overcome the former and achieve the latter is all part of the joy of brewing. Cheers.