The Pol

Recipes 

I think what you are asking is... if you have already mashed the grains, will rinsing it with room temp water help capture any of the sugars left in the grains after the mash.

YES, though this is not optimal. Heated water helps to keep the sugars flowing easily from the grain bed, or bag... if you take the time to heat water for the mash and you are going to boil anyway, just use hot water 160-170F to rinse the grains. BUt yes, room temp water will rinse SOME sugars from the grain.

UnaBonger

Recipes 

Could "tea bagging" (cant help but laugh as I type that) the grain bag after mashing work as a replacement for a real sparge? While i'm sure it's not ideal, it does rinse the grains with more liquid, thus getting more of the sugars into the wort... right?

The Pol

Recipes 

Right............

DeathBrewer

Recipes 

that's what this method uses. read the thread. read the partial mash thread in my sig, too.

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Easy Partial Mash Brewing - Stovetop All-Grain Brewing

"Death is always with us." - Brewpastor

We will remember...

Brewinator

Recipes 

DeathBrewer, you wrtote somewhere that you use ProMash for your recipes. Is there somewhere I can find one of them? I didn't see your nickname under any of the recipes here. This would be extremely helpful if you are using ProMash with the method described in this thread. For the record, my space is so small I am doing 2.5 gallon batches ATM. So I'd like to start with one of your recipes and scale it.

Does ProMash accurately account for your teabag sparge volume? Despite being inspired by your great guide, I remain confused as to how to accurately get boil volumes in advance (including grain absorption), so you can adjust hops accordingly. Also, calculating minimal headspace in one's pot, in advance, is needed to keep mash temps static, as you said. Obviously, the software isn't designed for the teabag sparge method.

I'm actually finding learning to use the software is the hardest part of all of this.

DeathBrewer

Recipes 

i haven't found promash to be very useful when it comes to partial boils. it does not account for hops utilization, at least not the way i use it. beersmith is much better at this.

if you do a 2.5 gallon batch, you can pretty much cut any one of my recipes in half. even though they are usually 5.5 gallon batches, there won't be a huge difference.

as for using the tea-bag method, this has nothing to do with promash. all you have to do is calculate efficiency, which is easy with a cooled refract or hydrometer reading. i'm not sure what you are hoping to accomplish by using promash with your mash.

when i do this method with a partial boil, i take a reading, judge my efficiency and calculate my utilization.

when calculating mash volume, i use promash. all you do is plug in the amount of grains and then go to the mashing window. when you plug in the volume of water you want to use, it will give you the total mash volume in the lower right hand. i try to stay below 4.25 gallons or i don't have quite enough space to stir in my 5 gallon pot. sparge doesn't matter...a little heat loss is no big deal and you're only letting it sit for 5 minutes anyway.

when i do a partial boil with a partial mash using this method, i just shoot a little high on my IBUs to account for the loss of utilization. i assume 70% efficiency, because it's always close to that.

to get boil volumes, all you do is account for absorption and add that to the total amount you want to boil. that will be your pre-boil volume. for instance, if i mash with 3.5 gallons of water and i lose 1 gallon to absorption, i would want a 4 gallon sparge to reach 6.5 gallons.

the software is not that hard, but learning the language can take a little while. just keep screwing around with it...you'll figure it out.

hope this helps. let me know if anything is still unclear.

__________________
Easy Partial Mash Brewing - Stovetop All-Grain Brewing

"Death is always with us." - Brewpastor

We will remember...

nowise

Recipes 

Woo doggies! So I tried this method using Ed Wort's Pale Ale recipe and it was a load of fun! Especially when my grain bag broke, woot!

Everything was going fine until I went to transfer the grains to the sparge pot and then bam, it all spilled out. I spent then next 30 minutes scooping 11 lbs of grains out with a mesh screen scooper. (I used extra grains to account for the inefficiency).

After that, everything went fine again. I am wondering if it caused any harm but I am not going to worry about it. I'll have something drinkable at least. I made a hell of a mess but my awesome fiancee, who is fully supportive of my hobby, even helped me clean it up. (I bought her dinner afterward )

I gathered about 7 gallons of wort which boiled down to just over 5.5. I ended up hitting 1.050 OG which calculates to 65.9% efficiency according to BS. I know I will lose a bunch to the remaining grain which I couldn't scoop up, and I'm willing to bet I'll have some tannin flavor in there but oh well. All in all, it was a positive experience.

Panzermann

Recipes 

Deathbrewer:

You are a god mein freund!

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folgen Sie die Reinheitsgebot oder die Deutschen reinheit gesetz?


***No longer have time to keep up with all my batches***

DeathBrewer

Recipes 

speaking of gods, tonight i was drinking a beer we made from the second runnings of our "thor's hammer", a reiterative pilsner we based off of a BYO article. it's a small beer, about 2.5%, a little tannin flavor, a great amount of hops...it's a pleasant brew session beer. we named it "thor's baby fist"

nowise, sorry to hear about the bag...that's the first time i've heard of that happening and i know some others were worried. where did you get it? i messed up all-grain a couple of times and had to pour it through a colander, but not with the bag:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f85/1st-all-grain-attempt-made-fail-47665/

__________________
Easy Partial Mash Brewing - Stovetop All-Grain Brewing

"Death is always with us." - Brewpastor

We will remember...

nowise

Recipes 

Thanks for the fail story, I feel in good company

The bag was from my LHBS in Columbus, it looked fine before I used it. Chalk it up as a mfg. defect I guess.

I was honestly so pumped that I got 7+ gallons of wort to boil on my electric stove that it made the problems from earlier feel like a distant memory.