Prost!, from Connecticut.

[brewinbasque]

Hello all,

New to the site, as well as homebrewing. I did my first extract kit a few weeks back and it will be ready to drink for Thanksgiving, I went with the True Brew kit, with Amber Ale to start. I have a 4 gallon SS Kettle, and am considering doing extract/specialty grains or small scale BIAB.

I do have a question to start, I know at Hopville.com you can clone the recipe and tailor it down to fit your equipment specs. What general size batch can I do with my 4 gal. kettle? should I be scaling down to 3 gallon batch size for my malts and fermentables, and go 3.5 gal boil? Any suggestions? I want to try full volume boil, but on my extract kit I added the wort to extra water in my fermenter. Would it be better for me to do that again?

 

[TyTanium]

Welcome to the forum!

With a 4 gallon kettle you can do standard 5 gallon batches doing a partial boil of 2.5-3 gallons, and topping off in the fermenter as you stated.

OR, if you want to do full boils, I think you're right on with 3.5g boil and 3g batch.

If you're going through all the work though, I'd rather end up with 5 gallons instead of 3. You can make awesome beer with partial boils. Search the forum for late extract additions.

 

[brewinbasque]

Thanks Ty! I will do some more research into partial boils.