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Hi all,
I'm currently a 'homebrew spectator' owing to my pitifully small flat in which the temperature fluctuates wildly, but read these threads and think 'ooh, wouldn't that be a lovely thing to do'. A single demijohn would take up about half of my kitchen space, but I wondered whether there was any way of brewing anything on an even smaller scale that wouldn't be too adversely affected by changes in temperature. Or should I just resign myself to a life of shop-bought booze until I get somewhere bigger? If anybody has any thoughts, please let me know!

Rob

Wow - that IS a small kitchen. But yes, you can do it on a slightly smaller scale. Get yourself a couple of 2 litre PET bottles (as in Coke or lemonade) and use those for fermentation and storage vessels. Just remember not to screw down the caps on a fermenting brew!!!!! And you'd have to get out your calculator to work out how to change the recipes for 2 litres as opposed to 4.5 litres (1 gallon if you're not in the US). You can overcome fluctuating temperatures by wrapping any fermentation in something cosy - a towel, bubble-wrap, the dog's blanket - anything you can think of.

The problem is that if you like the results, you'll soon have multiple PET bottles on the go. At which point a demijohn would be your next purchase ... and so on.

Anyway - give it a go. What have you got to lose?

Mike

rjt88 wrote: A single demijohn would take up about half of my kitchen space

I had a kitchen like that when I lived in Shepherds Bush. A Housing Trust special

Your demijohn doesn't necessarily need to be in the kitchen though - tucked behind a chair in the living room works just fine too, or in the airing cupboard (if you have such a thing).

I agree with Mike - once you've got the bug you'll need a demijohn anyway - have a look in charity shops, that's where most of mine came from.

I use the 2 litre glass bottles that you sometimes see scrumpy being sold in when I have made over a gallon or even a milk bottle both take and airlock and a bung pretty well.

I started my homebrewing in a one bed room flat and I put up some shelves behind the kitchen/living room door and this worked pretty well, in fact I brewed 84 litres of elderflower champagne and stuck the bottles on these shelves.

Well, I'm living, making wine, propagating yeast, and all-grain brewing in a pretty small one bedroom flat... There's 3 5-gallon pressure barrels in the bedroom, and another pressure barrel and the dedicated beer fridge in the living room. The living room also contains my 30-litre boiler, mash tun, hot liquor tun, and temperature controlled fermentor (all tucked away under the computer desk except when in use). There's a magnetic stir plate and a couple of demi-johns of wine (needing filtered and bottled) on the desk, a range of laboratory glassware scattered throughout, and a tupperware box containing my yeast library in the bottom of the fridge. My 40-bottle wine rack is in the back of the wardrobe, and there's crates of beer bottles on top of all the cupboards... The freezer's full of hops and I've got a large plastic crate containing my grain store under the laundry basket in the bedroom. It can be done! (As long as you're single... )

Now I'm trying to figure out where to put a proper lab microscope and a temperature-controlled microbiological incubator...

Glad to see you have your priorities right, Dunc. Excellent use of space.

Mike

MKG wrote:Glad to see you have your priorities right, Dunc. Excellent use of space.

Mike

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