I hear ya. I used to brew in an apartment. Now I have a garage and I have a electric HERMS system using keggles. Love this system.
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After helping my friend with a couple of 10 gal all grain batches, I've decided to get back into the hobby. I used to do partial grain years ago. Picked up a pico kit yesterday at the lhbs. Does 1 gal batches, which is perfect for me as I don't really drink more than 3 bottles in a week. Plus it will let me try some really experimental stuff, without making such large batches in case I have to pitch it. I plan on doing a brew in a bag (biab) setup, using a grain bag in the brew pot. That way I have one vessel for mashing, sparging and the boil.

First up I think is a Mexican Chocolate Stout.
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Nice, definitely let us know the results.

I did a small (~2gal) batch of a Jade IPA clone when I first started on all-grain in case it got screwed up, came out as one of the best I've made. After wishing there was more I decided I can't do small batches any more :-)
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Scotch ale
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:-)

Just finished the boil of a Thanksgiving Cranberry Wheat. Currently cooling before pitching the yeast. My Mexican Chocolate Milk Stout is bubbling away nicely.
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Racked the stout into the secondary. FG was a bit high at 1.021, likely due to the too high of mash temps. Sample in the hygrometer tasted good though. :-)

Gonna be chocolatety. Made a "tea" of 1C water, boiled then cooled to 180F, added and ounce of cacao powder, 1/4tsp cinnamon and an ancho chile. Steeped for 20 mins then filtered. Only got 1/2C of tea. Added that to the secondary with another half ounce cacao nibs, another ancho chile and 1/8tsp cinnamon. I'll bottle in two weeks.

Tomorrow is another brew day. My Xmas ale, a carrot cake dessert ale.

Also picked up the cranberries for the wheat, which I'll rack tomorrow into a secondary.
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Sounds good Bob :-)

I brewed up what will become a vanilla oatmeal porter on Sunday, I used 1lb of oatmeal for a 5gal batch (approx. 16lb total of grains), I like my stuff really oatmeally so I'm guess that it wasn't enough, but I think it will be a good base to judge for future oatmeal porters. I plan on putting 5 split vanilla beans I the fermenter about a week out from bottling. This is my first time making an all-grain porter, but I did a partial mash a while back that used that many vanilla beans, I'm gonna use that as my guide and hopefully use the results to be able to fine-tune for future batches. This is one of my favorite style of beer, so if I can get it down I see many batches in my future :-)
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Just bottled my first two batches, the Mexi-stout and cranberry wheat. If the conditioned bottles taste anywhere near as good as the samples, both are winners.
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That sounds delicious Bob. The yeast that you're using for the wheat brew, is compatible with the cranberries? Just thinking of balance with the cranberries being a smidge more noticeable than the wheat.

Give us a report after it bottle conditions:-)
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I used Safale US-05, a dry yeast. It's supposed to be very clean/crisp which is what I was wanting since I knew I'd be adding adjuncts.
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...:-)
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Bottled my Xmas Carrot Cake Ale this evening. Not a bad first attempt. Tasted the sample in the hygrometer flask. Needed more vanilla. Still pretty happy with it.

Next up to brew is a Fluffer Nutter Porter.
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Started pouring my attempt at a two hearted clone, filled up a growler going out of town last weekend and it is a little hoppier than the original, I did use a little bit more hops than the recipe I was basing off of but that's just because I thought it was low from the start. gonna call his one a Two Hearted IPA :-)

Also a week or two out from my vanilla oatmeal porter being ready to drink, bottled it last week. Very excited about this one, ABV only around 6.2% but I think it's going to be very tasty. If it does work out I'm going to try to use the same base recipe but make it some sort of coffee porter, since that's possibly my favorite style of beer. Anybody have any experience making a coffee porter or stout?

Next up on the chopping block is a Jade IPA redux, I made this as my first all-grain brew at the start of he year in a small batch and it was really good, I think now that I have 6-7 runs done and almost know what I'm doing, a full run of the Jade is necessary. Oddly it doesn't use a lot of Jade hops, but it is very tasty :-)
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Brewed my Fluffer Nutter Porter this evening. Did a double mill of my grains. Bumped my efficiency up just over 80%. :-)

OG into fermentor was 1.072. I hope my yeast (WLP013) can handle it. If need be, I'll pitch another pack. Or maybe the bit of dry Safale yeast I have in the freezer.
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Sampling my first two batches, after about two weeks of bottle conditioning.

Mexi-chocolate milk stout - meh. Hoping more time might help. I went with low priming in the bottle, but there was no carbonation in this bottle. Got a bit of a "phfst" when I cracked the cap, but nothing in the glass. Very little of the cinnamon or chile flavor. Just a weird tasting milk stout.

Thanksgiving Cranberry Wheat - Wow! Better carbonation, but a citrus flavor bomb. Tart from the cranberries, sweet from the apple, big time orange flavor. I used more priming tabs in these bottles and it showed on the pour, but it' dissipates quickly. Hmm... Can't wait to try this in another week or two.
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those sound very interesting Bob, I still need to get a good understanding of carbonation. I've been trying out bottling vs. keg but not consistently, this next batch I'm doing half in bottles and half force carbonation through a keg, I'm excited to do a side-by-side. I've only had one brew that was too carbonated, it was an amber that would overflow when you open it and give mostly foam when it's poured, but it still tasted fine.

Brewed up a redux of the Jade IPA, the first all-grain brew I did, which was on a pretty small scale. This time went ended with about 5.5gal, around what I normally do. It will probably be right around 5gal when the fermenting and filtering is done. I screwed up the hops, only got half as much Jade as I really needed and used centennial instead of cascade, but it's still got 9oz total after dry hopping so I think I'll be ok. The centennial vs. cascade could be an interesting twist, but it's mostly citra and jade so I don't think it's going to be too noticeable
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When I was brewing before, I had switched to egging. Now that I'm back in the game, but doing really small batches, it doesn't make sense to keg. I'm using priming tabs. Basically sugar tablets. Supposed to use between 3-5 for differing carb levels. I did 3 in this stout, 4 in the wheat.

Just cracked open bottles of each again, after a couple more weeks of conditioning. Wow, time does make a difference. The wheat is still right on point. Maybe tone down the orange in the secondary on the next batch. But the stout is shaping up nicely. Still no head retention, most likely due to the cocoa fat from my first cacao addition. Oh well, next time I'll fix that. But the hop flavor has subsided to let the chocolate and chili flavore to come thru. I'm liking it now.
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Hmm.. I've never used priming tabs, I always just make some simple sugar using priming sugar and water then add the whole thing into the batch after fermentation right before bottling. I think the package we use is 5oz, and I always do the same amount. I guess that's the next thing I need to look into, and how it effects the ending carbonation. Is it a one tab per bottle type of thing?
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I'm using the type that are 3-5 per bottle. They're about the size of a aspirin.
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Ah I misread, thought you meant there were different "strength" tablets, not that you use a different amount of them :-)
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