Easy Partial Mash Brewing (with pics)

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Getting ready to do my first PM in the next week or two.
Have a question regarding mash/steeping. Sure it was answered in the thread somewhere but I can't locate it.

Are the specialty grains that are meant for steeping simply added to the grain bag for the full mash or added as it gets closer to the end of the mash time?
 
Getting ready to do my first PM in the next week or two.
Have a question regarding mash/steeping. Sure it was answered in the thread somewhere but I can't locate it.

Are the specialty grains that are meant for steeping simply added to the grain bag for the full mash or added as it gets closer to the end of the mash time?

If you are both mashing and steeping, you might as well do them all together. I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything if you did them separately, but I don't see the point. Steeping should be done at about the same temperature as mashing, but it requires less time. The extra time won't make the steeping less effective, though, so my personal opinion would be that it is most efficient to just do them all at once.
 
If you are both mashing and steeping, you might as well do them all together. I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything if you did them separately, but I don't see the point. Steeping should be done at about the same temperature as mashing, but it requires less time. The extra time won't make the steeping less effective, though, so my personal opinion would be that it is most efficient to just do them all at once.

Thanks Justibone.
That's pretty much what I was thinking but then I saw somewhere a few pages back someone mentioned something about the different temps and times and it got me thinking about it. Still kinda noobish so I'm just trying to figure some of the ins and outs before I get knee deep in grains :D
 
I think I'm ready to give this technique a try but I have a question. I have a 5 gal pot and a 1.5 gal pot, which isn't very useful for mashing more than ~3 lbs of grain. I've read that others use a fermenting/bottling bucket to mash in. Will this really keep the water temp within range for the entire time? I have a brew belt. Should I use that or just wrap the bucket with a blanket or sleeping bag?

Thanks,
Jason
 
I think I'm ready to give this technique a try but I have a question. I have a 5 gal pot and a 1.5 gal pot, which isn't very useful for mashing more than ~3 lbs of grain. I've read that others use a fermenting/bottling bucket to mash in. Will this really keep the water temp within range for the entire time? I have a brew belt. Should I use that or just wrap the bucket with a blanket or sleeping bag?

Thanks,
Jason

Others have done it by wrapping the bucket with blankets and setting the bucket on top of an insulating surface (not on a tile floor, for example). They have kept boiling water on hand and added it, little by little, as needed. If you have software you can calculate how much to add, or you can just do the math yourself (vol*temp + vol*temp = net temp in net vol), but either way it's just not going to work that well.

The brew belt may help slightly, but it really doesn't pull that much power and is intended for just changing a few degrees here and there, rather than keeping it about 70F degrees higher for the better part of an hour.

Like someone else mentioned, the picnic cooler thing (like they put Gatorade in at football games) is said to work well. Another option is to only mash/steep as much grain as you can comfortably fit in your pot, making the rest of the fermentables up with extract. Yet another-other option would be to split the mashed grains (like 2-row) from the steeped grains, and mash the mashable grains first, then add the steepable grains after the temperature drops since they are not so temperature dependent.

You just gotta work with whatcha got!
 
Justibone, Beerman1957, thanks so much for the replys. This is super helpful to me. I'm tempted to buy a 2-gal beverage cooler but I'm afraid buying one more piece of gear before we get a bigger house would cause SWMBO to come unhinged.

I like the idea of mashing and steeping in separate pots. I may try that, or I'll tweak my recipes to bring the grains down to a volume I can manage in a single pot.

Thanks again, guys!
 
I just remembered, I do have a 16-quart Coleman picnic cooler, the rectangle kind with a lid that wedges down on top and locks when you lift the handle upright. Would that work? For some reason, my mind was stuck on the round orange type of cooler. Surely my Coleman would be better than my fermentation bucket.

I'll be pretty stoked if this will work! Can't wait to brew a proper wit.
 
That could work great. Does the bag fit?

You could do probably about 8 lbs of grain in that, max...but hell, you get good enough efficiency and you could do an all-grain wit with that amount.
 
I just remembered, I do have a 16-quart Coleman picnic cooler, the rectangle kind with a lid that wedges down on top and locks when you slid the handle upright. Would that work? For some reason, my mind was stuck on the round orange type of cooler. Surely my Coleman would be better than my fermentation bucket.

I'll be pretty stoked if this will work! Can't wait to brew a proper wit.

A lot of people use those. You can build a manifold type filter to mash with. Just search the forums. I would install a 1/2" valve on the drain port then you can still use it as a cooler if needed.
 
That could work great. Does the bag fit?
I'm still working on this. I have a home depot paint strainer bag with the elastic opening and it's very tight when I pull it down over the outside of the cooler. And because the elastic opening doesn't have anything to hook on to, it just slides back up and down into the cooler. I'm not sure if I want to put screws or something into the outside of the cooler for the bag to hook on to. I probably should just buy a regular 24" x 24" grain bag.

Thanks again to all of you for being so generous with your knowledge! My beer making understanding is light years ahead of where it would be without this forum.

Partial mash maiden voyage: Deathbrewer's Dunkelweizen!
 
Thanks for the guide. Going to be giving this a whirl hopefully tonight with a Flanders Red Ale recipe.
:mug:

Edit: Brew day went well. Beer is now in the fermenter.
 
I just had to share.

Just got done brewing a saison using Death brewer's instructions for a mini-mash.

Using the formulas from "How to Brew" by John Palmer I did a multi-step. Since I had 1.5 lbs of flaked wheat, 1.25 lbs of oats and .25 lbs of corn grits I thought it would be a good Idea to have a protein rest. I shot for 122 degrees for 20 min 140 degrees for 40 and then I used the multi-pot rinse technique Death brewer describes; I shot for 158 degrees there.

All my temps came out low 115 to 140 to 150 respectively. I squeezed my grain bag out thoroughly. I figured I should get around 75% efficiency. I only take one hydrometer reading and that is right before I put the lid on the fermenter. So, I had 7 lbs of Pils LME and 2 LBS of inverted sugar.

If I take the sugar and LME out of the equitation I figure I got something like 70% efficiency.


THAT IS SO SWEET!

Here are the numbers if you want to double check my math.

7lbs pilsner LME = 250 PPG
2lbs inverted sugar = 90 PPG

Max ppg for other grains used in mini mash

2.5 lbs 6 row malt = 87.5 PPG
1.5 lbs flaked wheat = 54 PPG
1.25 lbs oats (mostly quick oats) = 40 PPG
.25 lbs corn grits = 9.75 PPG
.25 lbs dark munich = 8.75 PPG


My actual OG was around .080-.081.

If I take the LME and sugar out of the equation I have a max potential PPG (acording toTable of Typical Malt Yields from John Palmer's book ) of 200 PPG.

If I take my .080 reading and mulitply by 6 gallons I get a PPG of 480. Taking out the LME and sugar again leaves me with 140 PPG yield from my mini mash. 140 is 70% of 200.

Now go have a beer since I made your head hurt!
 
This looks like an amazing idea and a perfect in-between step for me, moving from extract.

I have one question and it may be really stupid, but I have only brewed 2 extract kits before.

My question is...

How do you make up for boil off with water? I noticed you mentioned 2-3 gallons for the mash (I have seen 1.25 qts per lb of grain). So let's say that gets you up to 2.5-3 gallons. Then you have 2 gallons for the sparge. That still leaves you short by about a gallon from the boil process.

Do you make up the remaining water at the end like you would with an extract kit when you only do 2.5 gallon boils? Where you just add a gallon of distilled water?

Thanks for all of your help this was an extremely helpful and awesome thread. I am still making my way through the pages, so perhaps my question has been answered.

Edit: Sorry DB, I found your response on about pg. 20ish. Thanks again though!!
 
Hey Deathbrewer,
Great thread... Noob here with a few extracts under his belt and am thinking of trying this technique out. Playing around in BeerSmith with a Dry Stout recipe, it seems like I can make this all work in my 6 Gallon kettle with new DME addition. Am I missing something?

Here is the recipe. Using the calculators, it looks like I would mash the 9.4 lbs of grain in 11.79 qts of H2O taking up 3.7 gal of space. If I sparge and top up my boil to 4 gal, it seems like I hit my gravity and ibu's great for the style according to BeerSmith.

Is this right?


Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Boil Size: 4.00 gal
Post Boil Volume: 3.50 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 5.00 gal
Bottling Volume: 4.60 gal
Estimated OG: 1.045 SG
Estimated Color: 30.4 SRM
Estimated IBU: 35.9 IBUs
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70.00 %
Est Mash Efficiency: 70.0 %
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
6 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 63.6 %
2 lbs Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) Grain 2 21.2 %
1 lbs 4.8 oz Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 3 13.8 %
2.1 oz Acid Malt (3.0 SRM) Grain 4 1.4 %
2.00 oz Goldings, East Kent [5.00 %] - Boil 60.0 Hop 5 35.9 IBUs
1.0 pkg Irish Ale (Wyeast Labs #1084) [124.21 ml Yeast 6 -


Mash Schedule: Single Infusion, Medium Body, Batch Sparge
Total Grain Weight: 9 lbs 6.9 oz
----------------------------
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash In Add 11.79 qt of water at 163.7 F 152.0 F 60 min

Sparge: Batch sparge with 3 steps (Drain mash tun, , 1.09gal, 1.09gal) of 168.0 F water
Notes:
------
 
Last night I did my very first BIAB - of sorts...

my bag didn't fit over the lip of my mash kettle so i modified the method a bit, and mashed in another pot, transferred the mash into the bag, and then "tea bag" sparged.

here goes the step by step

1. dough in.
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2. RDWHAHB
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3. Bottle my Amber (first time in glass bottles!)
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4. "Sparge"
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5. open kettle view of sparge and sweet sweet wort
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6. remove bag
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7. Sparge/Rinse Grains
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8. Add 1/2 of DME
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9. First Hops addition - beginning of boil "C" hops
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(not a step... but cool pic of spent grains)
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10. BOIL
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MORE GRAIN PRON
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11. 30 Minute addition (5min also)
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12. prep yeast
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13. keep notes! (and the recipe close by)
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14. Cooled. Aerated. Ready to Pitch
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15. Lid. "it's all over but the waiting"
IMG_0083.JPG


whole process took less than 2 1/2 hours, from heating strike water, to having my 3rd homebrew after the lid was on the fermenter.

i had a blast. this kind of brewing will lead to, most likely, AG BIAB's in the near future.
 
I only have one 5 gal pot. Can I do everything in there with out a separate sparge pot? I can maybe heat up water separately then pour it over the mash. Does this work? Sorry for the noob questions :)
 
I only have one 5 gal pot. Can I do everything in there with out a separate sparge pot? I can maybe heat up water separately then pour it over the mash. Does this work? Sorry for the noob questions :)

That's how I have been doing it. I have a big colander that fits over my big boil pot. I just mini-mashed in the pot, then lifted up the bag, slid the colander under it (resting on the rim) and poured my "sparge" over the suspended bag. Problem arose when my colander slid and fell in this time and spashed sweet, hot wort all over my kitchen. :(

I am going to switch to the tea-bag method next time, then just combine the two runnings. Less possibility for spill/injury with my setup. Do whatever works better for your setup. From what I understand, you just get a little better efficiency from dipping than pouring.
 
yes. you really can....

some people don't sparge at all in the BIAB method. Jake from NorthernBrewer's Brewing TV doesn't. he just lets it drip drain in his strainer. apparently, his SG isn't all that drastically different and the thought is if he's going to BIAB, it's to save time in both brewing and cleanup, so why add time with another step?

happy brewing! let us know how it goes!
 
Whew! Brew day was a success. If you are wondering about getting into PM from extract, you should dive it. It is a lot simpler doing it and figuring it out than readin about it. I think my hefeweizen went well.
After the mash, it tasted nice and sweet like it was suppose to. After all was said and done, I pitched the yeast and when I woke up this morning there was a nice head of krausen and bubbles were seen all throughout. Hopefully it'll turn out well. I had to adjust the recipe because I ferment in a MrB because of the space in my studio apt.
Here's some pictures

Mash

image-1420747801.jpg


here's after the dry malt extract was added
image-2270357256.jpg

Thank you for your advce!
 
I've been doing my mashout differently with the BIAB method...

I use a 46L Pot on my stovetop. It's so big it actually users two burners at once. Anyways, I simply raise my grain bag so it doesn't touch the bottom of my brew kettle. It takes me about 20 minutes to raise my temps from 150F to 170F....at which point I simply drain + squeeze the bags and dispose of the grain....

Why make things complicated with a second pot of hot water? Is there anything wrong with my technique?

I do BIAB, and I average 75% efficiency with 90 minute mash @ 154 and 20-30 minute mashout.


The only difference I can see in my technique is that because





Also I've read it's better to only add a fraction of your malt extract at the beginning of the boil, and the rest in the final minutes.
 
thanks for posting your process. my local HB store gave me a handout which is essentially the same as this, and has been the only type of beer i've brewed. i've always used boiling water for the sparge, so i'm curious now about using 160 degree water. i use a muslin bag for the grains, and after use, i rinse it out and can use it over and over for about 4 batches. i have a separate bag for the berries; i live in vermont, and have an excellent Magic Hat #9 clone, but i have substituted my own black raspberries in place of the apricot essence. here's the recipe i've used for 4 batches (i've changed up some things along the way, such as using liquid yeast instead of dry, changing the amount of berries, etc.)

Grain bill:
Cara-red 1 lb
Torrified wheat 8 oz

extracts:
light malt extract 6.6 lbs

hopping schedule:
liberty 1 oz 60 mins
liberty 1 oz 20 mins

adjuncts:
apricot essence 4 oz (i've substituted between 2-3 lbs of frozen black raspberries, added in the muslin bag for the last 10 mins of boil. no need to worry about sanitizing, the boil takes care of that)

mash schedule: place crushed grains in muslin bag, and steep in 2 qts of 160 degree water for 30-60 mins. sparge with 1-2 qts of water. remove grain bag, add malt, mix well so it's not stuck to the bottom of pot. add enough water to total about 3 gallons. bring to rolling boil. follow hopping schedule, adding the berries at the end of the boil.

use wyeast #1187 ringwood liquid yeast - "for a truly magic ale". when moving into fermentation pale, top off with cold water, and pitch yeast when temp is ~60-70

the apricot essence is added with the priming sugar.

primary for one week, move to secondary for 1-2 weeks. boil 2 cups of water, add 3/4 cup corn sugar, and bottle

OG 1.056 (i usually get 1.052, but my current batch was only 1.038 :-/ )

FG 1.013

if anyone tries this with the apricot essence, i'd be curious how it compares to MG #9. i love this ale, it's very popular around here (about 10 miles from Magic Hat brewery) :mug:
 
So just wanted to thank everyone for all of the help I've received on here as a beginning brewer. Most recently to DeathBrewer for this awesome write-up and BeirMuncher for the Centennial Blonde recipe. :) I used DB's method for the first time yesterday and it worked great. I am a little challenged, because I only have a 3gal and a 4gal pot and I attempted my biggest grain bill to date (7 lbs) on this one. I was expecting my efficiency to suffer d/t the thick mash, but I actually pulled 64% out of my mash. For my 1st batch with this setup, I'm pretty happy with that.

For anyone not familiar with the recipe: (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f66/centennial-blonde-simple-4-all-grain-5-10-gall-42841/)
If anyone wants to critique my process or has any ideas, please feel free to chime in! I thought I would throw in some pics and description about my brew-day in case anyone was interested:

I used my 3 gal pot for my initial mash. (I used the tea-bag method and expected I would need a little more room for the sparge with the absorbed water transferring with the grain.) With this grain bill, I had to account for a 3.5 gal boil MAX so I did 2 gal mash and sparge. That put me at 1.14 qt/lb, which is less than ideal but I wanted to mash as much grain as possible.
Hit my mash temp pretty close, it actually evened out to 154 after thoroughly stirring. These pots magically only lose 1-2 degrees over the course of the mash, without any assistance.
After the mash, I lifted the bag out of the pot and slid the colander underneath for dripping. Once it had drained, I lowered it over into the sparge water (hit 167*), stirred well and let it sit for about 10 min. After the sparge, I used a plate over the colander to squeeze the grain bag. (Pic below is 1st and 2nd runnings side by side)
The rest of the boil went off without a hitch, except for the cooling. The baby was asleep, so I couldn't dump ice in the sink and had to rely only on cold water changes and 2 small ice packs. Took about an hour, but I got it cooled to about 66 for pitching. OG was a little low @ 1.041, but I had to top off with 2 gal so who knows how accurate that is. As of this morning, the yeasties are off and running! Overall, a great brew day. Thanks again to everyone!

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Dunkelweizen Recipe

I made a batch from that recipe that just finished conditioning. Only difference is I used a full ounce of Tettnangers.

I don't think this beer will last very long ;).

It has a nice spice character. I think I might use this as a base for a holiday beer.
 
I have a couple of questions about batch size limits with my current equipment. The biggest pots I have access to are a 3 gallon and a 2 gallon. Obviously this will mean a partial boil. Also, I assume the 2 gallon would have to be the Mash pot, and the 3 gallon one for sparging.
1) What is the maximum amount of grain I could realistically mash in the 2 gallon pot? (including both grain and water)
2) How much water could I sparge with using that max amount of grain?

Finally, looking ahead at buying a new, bigger brew pot:
3) What is the maximum volume I could realistically boil using a gas stove top in the kitchen (not a propane burner)?
4) Any leads on an adequate brew pot that won't cost a fortune?
 
I use 5-6lb with two 15qt pots. With the 'tea bag' sparging, I use a lot of water and I usually start the boil with around 3-3 1/4 gallons of combined mash wort and sparge water.

I mash in 1.75 gallons water for around 1.33 qt/lb. I sparge in about 2 gallons water. I use fermcap to prevent boilovers.

Given those ratios, you might be able to try mashing about 3.25lb in 4.25 quarts with 5 quarts for sparging.

My brewing buddy puts his mashed grain in a colander and pours water over it until it runs clear. I'm not sure if that method uses less water.

You can get a 15 qt stock pot from Walmart for under $25.

I think the primary limiting factor in boiling larger volumes is the weight. 5 gallons of wort at 1.050 weighs almost 44 lbs. You don't want to move around that much boiling water.
 
Buffalo,
I am in a similar situation, but my pots are 3gal and 4 gal. I am new so I am still revising my process, but I agree with what ludo said. That being said, LME is expensive and I wanted to do as much grain as I could so I pushed the limits on my last try:

I actually mashed 7lbs on my last batch. I used DeathBrewer's BIAB tea-bag method, and I mashed in the smaller pot, just as you had mentioned. I knew the grain would take some water with it, and didn't want to overflow. I didn't get very good efficiency this way (62%), so I'm going to try using a little thinner mash in the larger pot with a smaller sparge next time to see if that helps. I had gotten some advice in another thread that it may be better to max your efficiency in the mash and just sparge with what you can. We'll see how it goes!
This link is awsome for the “can I mash it” calculator:
http://rackers.org/calcs.shtml/
Looks like you could do at least 5.5lbs of grain with that equipment at 1qt/lb if you watch your water volumes. Problem is you risk your efficiency by taxing your water/grain ratio.
I have also tried the colander method, and had mixed results. I had a spill incident that pretty much turned me off to that.

As far as bigger pots, my vote is to get a turkey fryer kit w/pot (WalMart ~$50) and move outside with that much water (that's my plan.) As ludo said, working with more than 4 gal of water on the stovetop is tough. My big canning pot is probably 4.5-5 gal when full of quarts and my poor stove is maxxed out trying to keep it boiling.
 
Thanks for the help. Last weekend, I brewed a pale ale with what I thought was this method, but realized afterward that I totally overlooked the key step of sparging. That's what I get for reading too much too quickly. I used 4.35 lbs. DME and 5 lbs. of grain. When I took my OG reading after combining with regular water bringing the level up to 5.25 gallons, my reading was only 1.034. It seems like it should be higher than that. I heard that it can be way off because the wort and water might not have been mixed well enough when I took the reading. Anybody else experience this before?

As far as the turkey fryer idea, and some ideas that others have said, does it make a big difference if the pot is aluminum. I have heard some say that you should only use stainless steel. Others say that the cheaper pots are too thin, and can risk burning the wort. Any thoughts from those who use aluminum?
 
Well, after searching around a little more, I found the answer to my own question about aluminum vs. stainless steel in one of the other forum thread with the clever title of "Aluminium vs Stainless Steel Brew kettles." I actually just ordered a 32 quart stainless pot last night. It should be here in time to brew next weekend. Now I can adjust my recipe back to AG.

From what I am reading, it seems like you can mash in a couple of different pots (i.e. 2 gal. and 3 gal.) then combine both with the sparge water in the 8 gal. pot. Is that correct? Also, if I need to split the mash up, should I mix all of the grains first so they are evenly distributed in both mashes? That would help the efficiency be consistent right?
 
Well, after searching around a little more, I found the answer to my own question about aluminum vs. stainless steel in one of the other forum thread with the clever title of "Aluminium vs Stainless Steel Brew kettles." I actually just ordered a 32 quart stainless pot last night. It should be here in time to brew next weekend. Now I can adjust my recipe back to AG.

The true controversy is cost. No one says aluminum is better... just that it might be just as good. If money was not an object, everyone would use stainless, I believe.

From what I am reading, it seems like you can mash in a couple of different pots (i.e. 2 gal. and 3 gal.) then combine both with the sparge water in the 8 gal. pot. Is that correct?

You can do this. Is it a good idea? I dunno. Pouring hot water can be messy and risky. At least it's only at mash temps, though, and not boiling, so maybe it would be alright... but still. I'd try to think of a better way.

Also, if I need to split the mash up, should I mix all of the grains first so they are evenly distributed in both mashes? That would help the efficiency be consistent right?

Just make sure both have enough of the 2-row so they have converting enzyme. If you are using sour grain, also make sure that is in both kettles to manage the pH. After my grain is milled at the LHBS, they put it all into one bag and then it gets shaken around a bit, so it's pretty well mixed for me just going through that. If I were to be mashing in more than one pot, though, I personally would try to make sure the grain was well-mixed, but I wouldn't think it was strictly necessary.

You might know this already, but mashing in multiple vessels is usually done for something called a "decoction", and there are plenty of threads on that if you do a search.
 
Brewing my first minimash tomorrow and plan on using this method. I will let you know how it goes for me, but looks great.
 
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