Anyone ever made a session from spent grains?

spenghali · 01-23-2012, 01:06 AM

Was at a local brewery last night and they had a russian imperial session on tap, needless to say i was intrigued (new concept to me). I uess they just made a session from the spent grains of a RIS. Anyone ever do anytihng like this?

Phunhog · 01-23-2012, 01:16 AM

Sounds like they did a partigyle...do a search there is a ton of info out there on it.

sniperd · 01-23-2012, 01:40 AM

I brew with a buddy and I usually make a 10 gallon batch of X and he brews a 5 gallon batch of Y, we both do all grain. One of the times we brewed we did the math wrong on how much water to use and his 5 gallon batch had something like 9 gallons of wort, we only pulled 6.5 gallons out to boil and then we poured the rest into a spare kettle. We were just going to throw it out but then I had the bright idea to just run some more water through my mash ton, mix them, and use some extra hops/yeast and boom, 5 free gallons of mixed beer!

It turned out OK, pretty light beer about 3% and of course the flavors were all mixed up. So the next 2 times we brewed we lined our recipes up so they used similar grains and would partigyle out together nicely. Worked a little better. We have done this 1 more time since then.

I would say if you have the room to ferment it, buy 2 oz of hops and just make a little bigger of a starter yeast and boom, free beer! Like for real, free beer!

And worst case you can just give it to people you don't like, or when somebody is on beer 5 and they just want another one, well, hand them one of these!

spenghali · 01-23-2012, 01:40 AM

this must be exactly what they did, thanks for the info (in ref to phunhog)

spenghali · 01-23-2012, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sniperd

I brew with a buddy and I usually make a 10 gallon batch of X and he brews a 5 gallon batch of Y, we both do all grain. One of the times we brewed we did the math wrong on how much water to use and his 5 gallon batch had something like 9 gallons of wort, we only pulled 6.5 gallons out to boil and then we poured the rest into a spare kettle. We were just going to throw it out but then I had the bright idea to just run some more water through my mash ton, mix them, and use some extra hops/yeast and boom, 5 free gallons of mixed beer!

It turned out OK, pretty light beer about 3% and of course the flavors were all mixed up. So the next 2 times we brewed we lined our recipes up so they used similar grains and would partigyle out together nicely. Worked a little better. We have done this 1 more time since then.

I would say if you have the room to ferment it, buy 2 oz of hops and just make a little bigger of a starter yeast and boom, free beer! Like for real, free beer!

And worst case you can just give it to people you don't like, or when somebody is on beer 5 and they just want another one, well, hand them one of these!

now that you plan these do you use a bigger original grain bill knowing that you will make a 2nd beer?

sniperd · 01-23-2012, 02:31 AM

Sometime I'll use an extra pound of whatever base malt but really we don't want to put too much effort into it. Usually one of us is brewing a slightly stronger beer so that sort of makes up for it. We usually get OG in the 1.030-1.035 range and FG of 1.010 area. Pretty much just have to spend $5 extra on hopes/bottle caps/sugar to get 5 more gallons of so-so beer. So if one of us is going to have an open fermenter and the empty bottle pile is getting big we'll make what we've been calling, "Dave's and Allen's Mistake" or DAM beer. It's fun!

But it is neat, we did a Wee-Heavy that mixed with a Black IPA. It was.. uh.. interesting! But if you find you run out often, have the space, why not make 2 extra cases for free!

spenghali · 01-23-2012, 02:36 AM

yea sounds like a good idea. an extra pound makes sense, but adding too much more defeats the purpose of it i suppose, thanks for the info.

nanofreak · 01-23-2012, 02:49 AM

A RIS could make a nice Mild with second runnings. Complex grain bill for a mild, but still.