Tips on Making Easy 3 Gallon, All-Grain
Batches of Homebrew
Many homebrewers shy away from the idea of doing all-grain batches of beer
because of all the extra equipment they think they might need. But the simple
truth is that all-grain beer just tastes so much better than extract. Brewtopia
Events Director, Owen Ogletree, is an award-winning homebrewer and certified
beer judge who will tell extract brewers on this website how to make simple, 3
gallon, all-grain batches at home without a bunch of extra expense and
equipment. Making 3 gallons of all-grain homebrew is very simple. Give these
ideas a try, and we are sure you will find them fun and useful -- and you'll
probably make the best beer you've ever had!
Equipment Needed for Simplified 3
Gallon All-Grain Homebrewing:










4 to 5 gallon brew pot with lid.
5 gallon insulated plastic water cooler.
10 inch fine mesh stainless steel
strainer with handle.
Heavy duty plastic or metal spoon
with long handle.
11 inch plastic funnel for carboy.
5 gallon glass jug (carboy) with
carboy cap and air lock.
3 gallon glass carboy (optional) for
secondary fermentation.
Wide range (0-220 degrees F)
thermometer.
Small nylon fishnet from aquarium
shop.
Strong cleaner/sanitizer from
homebrew shop (not just bleach). Five
Star Star-San no rinse sanitizer is
great.
Brewing
Keep in mind that all-grain brewers usually make use of huge brewpots that boil the entire 5-6
gallon batch of beer on outdoor propane burners. They also take lots of time to run hot water
through their grains (sparging) in complex equipment systems to get every bit of fermentable
sugar out of the grains they can. The three gallon system that is outlined here is so simple that
it can all be done indoors and requires less equipment because of three points:



We are going to make around three gallons instead of five.
We are going to use 15-20% more grain than normal (at a minimal cost) instead of
investing time and equipment in extensive sparging.
We are not going to boil our entire 3 gallon batch of beer. Rather, a concentrated two
gallon batch of beer will be boiled on the stove, and a gallon of cold, jugged drinking
water will be added to this in our carboy fermenter.
These "shortcuts" will mean that you will not need all the usual, complex all-grain equipment.
This does NOT mean you will be making three gallons of inferior beer. I have won numerous
awards and compliments for my beers made in this fashion. So get ready for a new and
engaging homebrew experience!
"All-Grain" is the Key to Wonderful
Homebrew Flavor:
The easy steps outlined here will take more
time than making homebrew from extract.
Count on six hours at first and four to five
hours once you get used to the system. Much
of this time involves waiting while your
grains soak in hot water and while your beer
boils. It is NOT six hours of constant work, so
have a few beers ready for sampling.
Recipes and Grains: When you look at allgrain recipes from books, divide the grain
down from five to three gallons and then
ADD 15-20% to each grain type. Do this to
make up for the fact that we are not going to
sparge very well. Or, you can use one of my
exact recipes elsewhere on this page for your
three gallon all-grain batch. Take your recipe
to your friendly neighborhood homebrew
shop and ask them to measure out the grains
and crush them for you. If these exact grains
are not available, I'm sure the supply store
owner can recommend substitutes that will
turn out just as nice.
Other items for your recipe: Also be sure to pick up your hops, yeast nutrient, gypsum salts,
and irish moss. Gypsum is good to use with ales -- especially if your water is soft. You'll also
need two gallons of jugged, filtered, ozonated spring or drinking water from the grocery store.
Put this water in the refrigerator the night before you brew to get them good and cold.
Yeast: Pick a good liquid yeast from Wyeast or White Labs. These yeasts produce much
better results than dry yeast. Start Wyeast a day or two before you brew (by popping the
interior starter pouch), and give some serious thought to making a simple starter culture in a
beer bottle with malt extract (see Papazian's New Complete Joy of Homebrewing for tips on
this). Oh yeah, please don't forget your corn sugar for priming at bottling time.
Important Steps: OK, you have all your equipment and ingredients, and your two gallons of
jugged water are chilling in the icebox. You've gotten your liquid yeast culture almost to full
steam. Be sure to also fill your brewpot with three gallons of cold tap water the night before
you are going to brew and put the lid over it loosely. This will allow the chlorine to dissipate.
You can also use jugged drinking water. Now here are the brewing steps:








Pour your crushed grains into your clean five gallon, insulated water cooler. Be sure
there is NO soap residue on any of your brewing equipment (this can reduce the head
retention of your finished beer).
Heat your chlorine-free three gallons of water in your brewpot (with a teaspoon of
gypsum mixed in) to 165-168 degrees F and pour quickly onto your grains. Pour in
just enough water to soak all through the grains and leave about one inch of water on
top. Stir well to be sure there are no dry pockets in the grain. This mixture should now
be close to 152-155 degrees F (if it is over 158, stir in a few cubes of ice). Put the lid
tightly on the cooler and wait one hour. This will convert starches in the grain into
fermentable sugars.
When your grain is almost done soaking (mashing), get a large saucepot and boil
about a gallon of tap water for five minutes or so. Then add some ice cubes to bring
this water down to around 170 degrees F.
Put your large brewpot in your sink, open your water cooler filled with mashed grains
and liquid, and using a large cup or small pot scoop out the grains and liquid a little at
a time and put them into your strainer positioned in your brewpot. Allow the sweet
liquid to flow from the grains into your brewpot. Stir the grains a bit and pour a bit of
your 170 degree F water through each scoop of grains to rinse. Your goal is to end up
with about 2 1/2 gallons of grain juice (wort) in your brewpot. If you run out of your
170 degree F water before this, you can continue to sparge your grains with HOT tap
water as a last resort. Try to get as much sugar out of your grains as you can, but don't
over do it. Remember that we have added extra grains to make up for this poor sparge.
It works!
Compost your spent grains or feed them to your chickens, horses, or goats.
Now stick your funnel, large spoon, brewpot lid, and strainer in your dishwasher on
the high heat cycle with a little dishwashing powder. This will sanitize them for use
after your beer has boiled.
Use your small nylon fishnet to fish out most of the loose grain husks and bits from
the wort in your brewpot.
Boil your 2 1/2 gallons of wort and hops UNCOVERED on your kitchen stove (don't






let it boil over). Don't stir this boiling wort very often. Add a teaspoonful of yeast
nutrient and a teaspoon of irish moss (for clarity) 15 minutes before the end of the
boil.
At the end of the boil, cover the brewpot with its lid out of the diswasher and place it
in an ice and water bath in your sink for 30 minutes. Keep adding ice as it melts.
Pour 1/3 of one gallon jug of your cold drinking water into your cleaned and sanitized
five gallon carboy. Put the lid back on the water jug and shake the jug vigorously for
one minute to aerate the remaining water well. Add this water to your carboy.
Using your sanitized funnel and strainer from the dishwasher, strain your concentrated
wort into your carboy on top of the cold one gallon of water. Leave the last cup of
wort in the bottom of the brewpot (this contains proteins and hop residue). This should
give you close to three gallons total in your carboy (if not, top up with some water
from your second cold jug). Wort temperature in the carboy should be 60-75 degrees
F.
Pitch in your yeast culture.
Plug your carboy the normal way with your carboy cap/plug and airlock with water.
Set the carboy aside and watch the fermentation take off within 24 hours or so! If you
are brewing in the summer, you may want to place your carboy into a bucket of cool
tap water and place a towel around the top of the carboy so it soaks up water. Place
this near a fan and water will evaporate off the towel and cool the fermenting beer
down a few degrees. This will produce better flavors in many beers.
If your recipe is a low to medium gravity beer, there is really no need for a secondary
fermenter. If you are making a strong beer, or if you want to have beer with less
sediment in the bottles, after five days or so siphon your beer into a sanitized three
gallon carboy for another week before you bottle.
Owen's Simplified 3 Gallon All-Grain
Homebrew Recipes
Be sure to check out our other page on making a simplified three gallon batch of all-grain
homebrew without lots of extra equipment and expense. Extract brewers will be shocked at
how simple this all-grain procedure is, and how wonderful the resulting beer will taste!
Grains listed for each recipe will make three gallons in the fermenter based on the
procedures attached to this page. Colors of grains are listed in degrees Lovibond, and bittering
potential of hops is listed in percent alpha acid. Just try to get close to these specifications -- if
you're a little off, your beer will still turn out fine. Remember to add a tiny pinch of ascorbic acid
(for its anti-bacterial effect) and a teaspoon or so of irish moss 15 minutes before the end of each
boil. A good liquid yeast always works better than dry yeast. I've been impressed by the new
White Labs liquid yeasts -- check out their website at www.whitelabs.com.
"If It's Not Scottish..." Scottish Ale (3
gallons)





7 lbs. 2 row pale malt
1 1/2 lb. crystal malt (60-100 L)
1/2 oz. Styrian Goldings hops (5% aa)
- boil 60 mins.
1 tsp. gypsum in mash water.
Scottish Ale liquid yeast.
Boil wort for one hour with hops added at the
start of the boil. Primary ferment for 7-10 days
and bottle. (Malty and rich!)
Crystal Pale Ale (3 gallons)







7 lbs. 2 row pale malt
1 lb. crystal malt (40-80 L)
1/2 oz. Crystal hops (5% aa) - boil 60 mins.
1/2 oz. Crystal hops - boil last 15 mins.
1/2 oz. Crystal hops - dry hop after 4 days in the primary fermenter.
1 tsp. gypsum in mash water.
American Ale liquid yeast.
Boil wort for one hour total. Primary ferment for 7-10 days and bottle. (Note on dry hopping:
try adding hop pellets to the primary fermenter around four days after you brew. Fermentation
will be pretty much over and will not blow off the hop aroma from the pellets. Hop pellets will
slowly sink to the bottom of the fermenter over the next few days. This gives a beautiful hop
aroma to your beer.)
Sweet Stout (3 gallons)










5 lbs. 2 row pale malt
1/2 lb. toasted malt (on a cookie sheet in your oven at 350ûF for 10 mins.).
1/2 lb. chocolate malt
1/2 lb. roasted barley
1 lb. crystal malt (40 L)
1/2 lb. crystal malt (135 L)
1 oz. Kent Goldings hops (5% aa) - boil 75 mins.
3/4 lb. lactose sugar added last 15 mins. of boil.
1 tsp. gypsum in mash water.
Irish Ale liquid yeast
Boil wort for 75 minutes total. Primary ferment for 7 days, secondary ferment in 3 gallon
carboy for 7 more days, and bottle. (Dark, roasty, sweet, and smooth!)
Belgian White (3 gallons)










3 lbs. unmalted or torrified wheat
1 lb. flaked oats.
4 lbs. pilsner malt
1/4 oz. Kent Goldings hops (5% aa) - boil 75 mins.
1/4 oz. Kent Goldings hops (5% aa) - last 10 mins. of boil.
1 oz. fresh orange peel last 10 mins of boil.
1 oz. crushed coriander seeds last 5 mins. of boil.
Add another 1/2 oz. crushed coriander into primary fermenter after 4 or 5 days (soak
seeds in a tiny bit of vodka for 10 min. before adding to fermenter).
1 tsp. gypsum in mash water.
Belgian White liquid yeast.
Boil wort for 75 minutes total. Primary ferment for 7-10 days, then bottle. (Light, tart, spicy,
and refreshing!)
Jewel of the Crown Brown Ale (3 gallons)




6 lbs. 2 row pale malt
1 lb. crystal malt (40-100 L)
1/4 lb. chocolate malt
1/4 lb. black patent malt




1/2 oz. Willamette hops (5% aa) - boil 60 mins.
1/2 oz. Styrian Goldings hops - boil last 15 mins. for flavor and aroma.
1 tsp. gypsum in mash water.
British Ale liquid yeast.
Boil wort for one hour total. Primary ferment for 7-10 days and bottle. (Smooth and mellow
with a slight roasted nut flavor.)
Please remember that these recipes all are based on the simplified 3 gallon all-grain
procedure that is linked to below. Give it a try, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results.
If you have any questions at all, feel free to email Owen.
Tips on Bottling Your Homebrew
Many homebrewers say that bottling their beer is the most difficult part of making
beer! If you have an automatic dishwasher at home, try these easy tips to make
bottling not quite such a hardship. Also, be sure to check out our other page on
making a simplified three gallon batch of all-grain without lots of extra equipment
and expense.
Equipment Needed for Bottling Your
Homebrew:








Racking cane and 3 feet of siphon
hose.
Bottling bucket with spigot.
Bottling tube with spring/pressure flow
tip.
Bottles and caps.
Bottle capper.
Sanitizer such as unscented bleach.
Five Star Star-San no-rinse acid
sanitizer.
Powdered homebrewing sanitizer
(oxygen or chlorine-based).


Automatic dishwasher.
Corn sugar for priming (carbonating).
Bottling
General Information: You will need 48 twelve ounce bottles for five gallons of beer, but only
28 for a three gallon batch. For mild carbonation, you should add around 3/4 ounce of corn
sugar to prime (carbonate) each gallon of finished beer you end up with in your bottling
bucket. Keep in mind that if you have three gallons of beer in your fermenter, you will end up
with a little over 2 1/2 gallons in your bottling bucket once you siphon it off all the yeast
sediment. Don't overprime!
Important Steps:








Be sure all your bottles are the thick returnable type that can handle repeated use. Soak
and scrub off all the labels and be sure each bottle is free of debris or moldy areas
inside. Soak bottles in a bucket of STRONG bleach solution overnight and then use a
bottle brush to be sure each bottle's interior is free of sediment or residue.
The night before you are going to bottle your beer, set all needed bottles on your
kitchen counter top and fill each bottle with water and Star San solution. Let these
bottles soak overnight.
Also on the night before you are going to bottle your beer, fill your bottling bucket
(with hoses, racking canes, and racking tips inside) with water and Star San. Let these
all soak together overnight.
The next day, empty your bottles of all the water and sanitizer and put them upside
down on the prongs in your dishwasher. Sprinkle a tiny bit of powdered homebrewing
sanitizer/cleaner in the bottom of the dishwasher and run your bottles through the
longest, hottest cycle. Keep the door of the dishwasher closed until you are ready for
your bottles (this will keep them sanitized).
When you are ready to bottle, dump the water and Star San out of your bottling bucket.
One quick rinse with hot tap water won't hurt.
Count out how many bottle caps you will need and soak these for ten minutes in a little
vodka or a cup of water in which you have dissolved one Campden tablet. (Campden is
a safe, no-rinse sanitizer that will not destroy the preserving capabilities of oxygenabsorbing bottle caps.)
Boil your carefully measured corn sugar in about one cup of water for ten minutes and
add this hot liquid to the bottom of your bottling bucket.
If you have made only three gallons, this amount of beer will not weigh that much, so
you can siphon from your fermenter into your bottling bucket placed right on the open
door of your dishwasher. Place your bottling bucket with corn sugar on the open door
of your dishwasher and position your fermenter on the counter right above the
dishwasher. Carefully siphon the beer into the bottling bucket (leaving the yeast
sediment behind in the fermenter). If you drip or spill, you'll spill onto the door of the





dishwasher, and will not make a mess.
Now place your bottling bucket on the counter above the dishwasher. Using the siphon
hose, bottling cane, and pressure filler tip, grab and fill each beer bottle right on the
door of the dishwasher.
Grab a bottle cap out of the Campden solution, shake it a couple of times to shake off
excess solution, and cap your bottle using the capping mechanism of your choice.
Use a sharpie marker to mark a code and date on top of the bottle cap to identify the
beer. Don't bother with labels unless the beer is going to be used as a gift. Most labels
are very hard to remove.
When all bottles are capped, rinse out your bottling bucket and hoses, and again soak
them with water and a big shot of chlorox for a few hours.
Drain the chlorox solution out of your bucket and hoses (do not rinse) and put all
equipment away after everything is just about dry.
You can see how valuable a tool the dishwasher is at bottling time! Also be sure to
carefully rinse out each beer bottle immediately after you drink your beer out of it. I
keep a spray bottle of water and bleach under the sink to spray into each empty bottle
that I'm going to use again. I top the bottle up with cool water and leave it on the counter
overnight before I store it away for next time. This insures that no mold grows in the
bottles before you need the bottles again.