Converting Questions

Ive watched the videos a few time but Im a little confused since Im make a few transitions at once.  Im currently mostly doing extract beer and mead brewing in 5 gallon batches.  I want to start migrating to partial mash and at the same time going to 1 gallon small batch brewing.  Im wanting to keep costs down getting started on grains and keep costs down so I can experiment and make more styles and types that dont sit around.

I have my equipment set up pretty good for 5 gallons right now, at least I think so for the 2 batches Ive done.  I plan on using my normal equipment for boiling and just switch to 1 gallon carboy or 1 gallon wide mouth fermenter.  In the video it talks about easiest way to convert or scale size is to change your equipment but Im wanting to use the same equipment and just go from 5gallon to 1 gallon.  Instead of changing equipment profile will just changing batch size from 5.00 to 1.00 do the scaling correctly?

Would it be better to convert recipes to all the same kind (ie all extract or partial or one copy of each) and then scale?  or scale first then convert types?

Im sure Im going to have other questions about converting like how do you pick what DME or LME to use or which grain to replace Multons Old Ale extract with...

Thanks!

There are two ways of tackling this. 

The first is to take your standard equipment profile and use the 'scale recipe' feature, but keep the equipment file the same.  The pros are you don't have to make another equipment profile and you can easily keep your recipes at the 5-gal size and just convert as you go to brew the smaller size.  The cons are that it will not take into account any differences in boil off rate between doing a 1-gal batch and a 5-gal batch and you will need to keep rescaling your batches as you go forward.  Also, if you make a change to your equipment profile to update any of the information, you need to update any of the recipes with your new batch size and rescale again. 

The second is to take your equipment profile and make a copy of it.  Now, rename that copy as "1 gal batch" or something to distinguish it from your standard equipment profile.  Now change the batch size in your 1-gal profile to give you 1 gal of wort to the fermentor (or whatever your batch size will be).  The pros with this method are that scaling will now be easier, you can customize it with changes in boil off rate you experience between 1-gal and 5-gal batches.  The cons are you have two equipment profiles, which is a pretty minor issue. 

I currently have 4 standard equipment profiles for different batch sizes and equipment arrangements and it is no big deal.  I keep all my recipes as my most commonly used equipment set up (10 liter inside batch) and can easily scale them to any other batch size once I make a copy in my brew log.

The first thing I'd do is convert the baseline, full volume recipe into partial mash. This is easier to look at because you're already familiar with how much specialty malt and other brewery products (like yeast and whirlfloc) that is needed.

When you scale the recipe to one gallon, you'll use the scale recipe function. Be aware that smaller batch sizes on the same equipment usually means lower Brewhouse Efficiency. This is because the same 10% half gallon loss on 5 gallons is 30% of 1 gallon. The losses accumulate (trub, boiloff, deadspace). So, you'll need to make a new profile that accounts for the lower efficiency for your recipes to scale properly.

thanks!  I can going the route of mulitple profiles is the way to go.  I suppose you can just scale back and forth as needed or have folders for 1 gallon, 5 gallon etc and keep the ones used most often in there and change version #s to reflect note and changes.