Expert: Keith Patton - 6/26/2007

Question
I live in a small condo and was wondering if it was possible to brew using a 1 or 2 gallon kit, and if it would effect the brewing process.  On a side not I also wondered where wild yeast comes from and how it was origionally obtained to make beer.
Thanks.

Answer
Small batch brewing is a common thing.  You can actually use the one gallon jugs that inexpensive wine comes in. I use them for experimental batches.  You just get the appropriate sized pierced stopper and air lock.  If you have a large 2 gallon pot and a bucket you are in business.

A one gallon batch will make around 1.5 to 2 six packs.  You can scale down any recipe by dividing by 5 or what ever number of gallons the recipe was designed for.  In your case, using the extract plus specialty malts would be the way to go.  Use one jug as your primary and another for your secondary fermenters.

Yeast is one of those mysteries of nature, not quite plant and not quite animal.  It belongs to a whole other kingdom, that of Fungi.  It divides asexually by budding.  It is ubiquitous, found everywhere.  The white powdery film on grapes is yeast and will ferment them naturally if given a chance, even if left on the vine. It can become airborne and permiates wood and other porous material, that is why we have to disinfect when we brew.

 It is commonly believed that the first fermented beers were made by the Sumerians, Babylonians and Egyptians.  It is known that grains were preserved from year to year by baking it into unleavened cakes like hardtack.  This was less suseptiple to spoilage.  Then as now, most of the world (outside of the developed world that is) subsists on gruel.  Now you know why the UN and Aid for Africa ships them bags of grain.  They boil it and make a porriage just like Goldie Locks stole from the bears. Way back in the day they would soak the hardtack in water to rehydrate it and then make a porriage.  It doesn't take much to exptrapolate that some soaking biscuits were forgotten and were fermented by wild airborne yeast.  Waste not, want not, the forgetful someone drank the mix, not wanting to throw it out, and was amazed by the magical properties of the new beverage. It probably made him forget the long day he just had working on the Pharoah's Pyramid.  The beer back them was flat and murky.  Hieroglyphs in Egyptian tombs show royalty like their beer.  They drank it from large vessels like amphora, with straws, obstensibly so they could draw off the clear liquid from the heavier dregs and or the foamy yeast on the top.  Over time yeast mutated or was cultivated to give desired characteristics to beer.

In the early 1800's yeast was on the cutting edge of industrial espionage.  The Danes stole the Bavarian's new bottom fermenting cold tolerant lager yeast and shipped it back to the labs in Danemark.  Pasteur cut his teeth working on yeasts and they were able to isolate the new cold tolerant lager yeast and named it Saccharomyces carlsbergensis.  Yeah the theives were from the Carlsberg Brewery.  Well the lager yeast has been mutated and changed to give different characteristics to the beer.  Long before that the Ale yeasts ruled the roost and it is amply demonstrated by the variety of the characteristics the plethora of ale yeasts can impart to the same wort.

For shear cost effectivness in your mini brewery, you can scavange yeast from the bottom of bottle conditioned belgian ales to make your own.  But that is another question.