Can Home Brewing Really Be Simple? Enter Small-Batch Beer Brewing

When it comes to beer, bigger isn’t always better. Not to mention that bigger is sometimes not even possible. We started beer brewing when living in a house share in London. And space was not on our side. It was difficult enough fitting two people's wardrobes into a small IKEA shelving unit, let alone a whole beer brewing set-up. What we wanted was great tasting craft beers without overrunning the gaff with bulky, complex equipment.

Enter small-batch brewing—a simplified version of traditional home brewing that involves using smaller, more manageable quantities. You don’t need to invest in expensive equipment or clear out a swimming pool-sized space in your house. All you need are the basic supplies such as a fermenter, a thermometer, and some bottles.

When we found out about small-batch brewing, we set ourselves up with a five litre setup that makes nine pints of beer. Perfect for sharing among friends or just enjoying a few on the weekend! All we needed to store was the fermenting bucket with the kit inside, which tucked away nicely under the bed, ready for the next brew session. Convenient to set up and pack away.

There are plenty of other benefits to small-batch beer brewing as well. We love the individual attention and creativity that goes into each batch of beer we make. And because it's on a small scale, we can easily experiment; add a few more aroma hops here, or a few less grams of yeast there, all to get the perfect batch that suits our taste buds. We keep notes on each batch of beer we make and refer back to them on the next attempt to see what we could have done better or what to tweak to get the result we want.

Variety definitely keeps things interesting. We never wanted 40 pints of the same beer and we especially never want 40 pints of spoiled beer that has to go straight down the sink!

Once we had a few great recipes, we decided to share the joy of small-batch brewing with fellow craft beer lovers, and started Bottle Topped.
At Bottle Topped, we exclusively deal in five litre, all-grain brew kits that contain all the ingredients and supplies for crafting delicious beers at home. Our aim is to keep beer brewing simple, without having to worry about any complicated setup or processes. You can choose from a variety of recipes which are all created by us, and our kits are curated with high quality, fresh ingredients.

Once you get comfortable with your setup and process, you can start experimenting with different flavour combinations and ingredients to find something that suits your taste buds perfectly. We love it when people let us know what tweaks they’ve made to our recipes to better suit their palette!

Small-batch beer brewing has so many advantages over bigger setups, and opens up the possibility of beer brewing to all beer-lovers across the country. From variety and creativity to space-saving perks, there are plenty of reasons why we chose the small-batch approach for our business. We love the idea of bringing more people into the world of homebrewing and getting folks interested in the process, without turning people’s homes into a mad scientists laboratory. Give one of our craft beer creations a try and see for yourself why small-batch brewing is the way to go. Who knows—you may just discover a hidden talent or passion!