Easy Partial Mash Brewing (with pics)

Different equipment works different ways, too. It depends on your grain/water ratio, what kind of loss you get on your pot/pan, residual heat from the burner, how you mix it in, etc.

My numbers are estimations. With most of my equipment, I only drop about 8-12°F, so maybe take it down a notch next time when you try again.

These calculators also work well...I still use them all the time:

Green Bay Rackers--Mash Calculators

It could just be "hot spots", tho, and you didn't necessarily have that hot of a mash. How did it taste?

it tasted very sweet..which I'm imagining is a good thing...I was going to take a hydrometer reading but since I didnt know what I was shooting for there I just forgot it.

I also dug down into the middle of the spent grains took out a mouthful and chewed on it...like wet soggy oatmeal which I think is another good thing because they were tasty as hell before I mashed....which would mean to me that I was able to pull those flavors out...

Its downstairs fermenting right now im doing all I can to get it below 70 but its stuck around 72...Im going to work on getting something to help cool it down..

Yeah, sounds good. Higher temp mashes would make it taste more "dextrinous."

I'll bet you were just reading a "hot spot" and your actual temp was lower than it said it was. Stir well 10 minutes before taking your temp, let it sit covered for that 10 minutes and it may give you a better reading next time.

Get those temps down, too. You want it in the 60s if at all possible...just tape some ice to it until you find a better solution.

dude thanks again for all your help but I swear to god every other time you answer one of my questions I have to go wikipedia something...hahah I appreciate the help and I actually enjoy the research it helps me remember things better....

lol, hey...i've been there! Hell, the more I talk about stuff, the more it gets ingrained into my knowledge. You guys are helping me be a consistently better brewer!

Cheers!

Its downstairs fermenting right now im doing all I can to get it below 70 but its stuck around 72...Im going to work on getting something to help cool it down..

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Put a wet t-shirt on it, like your fermenter is wearing the shirt. If you have a fan, set up the fan to blow over the wet t-shirt. Those two things alone will really help reduce the temp of your fermenter.

If you have some kind of vessel that you could put the entire setup in, and put some water in the bottom so the t-shirt can wick up the water to stay wet, that would help too. Or, you can just re-wet the t-shirt every so often.

mpcondo said:

your expecting 85% efficiency with the stove top brew in a bag method?

what are you doing to get such a high efficiency?

most brewers that use BIAB (that i know of) are lucky to hit 70%.

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I was being sarcastic. I guess sarcasm doesn't translate well through typing. But I would expect anywhere from 60-70% efficiency with that method. Although his PM method is ****ing rad a produces damn good beer.

Sorry for the late post. Been busy as balls.

lol, I'll admit I didn't see the sarcasm. I don't think I've ever gotten above the high 70s in efficiency with this method and usually it's lower...65 is about the norm.

DeathBrewer said:

lol, I'll admit I didn't see the sarcasm. I don't think I've ever gotten above the high 70s in efficiency with this method and usually it's lower...65 is about the norm.

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Well i generally pray that the grains will convert well at 1.5 qt/lb of grain. JK!!!

I have been reading too much of the debate forum. But yeah man thanks again DB, I honestly owe everything to you for being nice enough to post **** like this, and being a metalhead, i decided to read what you wrote with that long ass hair. Whenever your in Socal, shoot me a PM, i'll hook you up with some "Black Metal Brew"

But in all seriousness, if your new to brewing, skip all extract and do this, its what I did and it makes some damn good beer.

I'm not sure why I didnt try this before but all I did was move the fermentor from its spot on a shelf down to the basement floor and im already sitting at 68 degrees.....airlock activity has slowed down quite a bit I hope its not to late and that unwanted flavors are already out...

Yeah, use that floor! It'll suck the heat right outta that thing. 72°F is not terrible anyway, I'm sure it will be fine.

Just wanted to say my beer turned out great. I made 2 5 gal batchs. An amber and a blond. It was deffently a hit at my 4th of july party. It was a bit rough in the begening but once I got the hang of it all went well. I cant wait to get my next one going. Thanks again Deathbrewer!

My maiden voyage is a PM because I read your thread but since I've seen you point out how important temp control is I need to know how if I should keep brew at same temp range (68-72) for secondary as I did for my primary. And bottling temp???


Thanks for all the help, I can't wait to crack one open!!

Just wanted to say thanks for this tutorial. I just brewed a Stone clone, Russian Imperial Stout last night with this technique and it was flawless. I didn't have the stupid clips for the grain bag, so I was always messing with that, but other than that, it was great.

I'll drink my first bottle to your health!

I want to add this thread rocks!
I have not had the pleasure of doing my first brew. I would have but somehow life gets in the way and the $$ for equip and supplies got sucked up into a bathroom remodel. Damn water leak damage!

I just got a mini mash kit from AHS..
This is my first attempt at a mini mash. All of my other brewing has been extract.

AHS tells you to steep the grains in 2.5 gallons of water at 155 deg for 45 minutes. Next, pour 170 deg water over the grain bag(1 qt per 2 lb of grain) directly over the brew pot then continue....

Since I have 3.375lbs of grain and if I use the mash ratio of 1.5 qts of water per lb of grain that would bring me a little over 5 qts.(1.25 gallons) of mash water.

My question is.. the recipe is for a 2.5 gallon partial boil, If I were to take the remaining water(1.25 gallons) and use that to sparge the way deathbrewer has described in this thread will that work? Or should I just follow their directions. What would be the difference?

Thanks in advance!
carl_g

You would want to use more than 1.25 gallons for sparge. Account for absorption.

I would use 2 gallons for the sparge. Dunking or pouring over, either one works.

Make sure your MASH is at 155°F, not the water. You want the water to be hotter and the temp to drop to 150-155°F when you add the crushed grain.

DeathBrewer said:

You would want to use more than 1.25 gallons for sparge. Account for absorption.

I would use 2 gallons for the sparge. Dunking or pouring over, either one works.

Make sure your MASH is at 155°F, not the water. You want the water to be hotter and the temp to drop to 150-155°F when you add the crushed grain.

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Hey thanks.. I used your method and I nailed the og 1.050!
I can't wait to try it.

I found your instructions very helpful DeathBrewer and appreciate you taking your time to put all that together. I hope you don't mind but I wanted to be able to print it out and have it handy with me when I was brewing so I created a pdf of your instructions. If you want you can add the link to your original post so folks will have a easily printable copy to use when they are brewing.

Partial Mash PDF



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I hope this doesn't end up being a double post my first one never showed up.

I found your instructions very helpful DeathBrewer and appreciate you taking your time to put all that together. I hope you don't mind but I wanted to be able to print it out and have it handy with me when I was brewing so I created a pdf of your instructions. If you want you can add the link to your original post so folks will have a easily printable copy to use when they are brewing.

The file size is almost 7mb but the pictures will print out nice and crisp. If I lowered the dpi to low to make the file size smaller the print quality would have suffered.

Partial Mash PDF



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Thanks, DeathBrewer!

Finally got around to doing a partial mash on my most recent brew over the weekend, loosely based on your method. This will be one kick-ass ESB!

I used two pounds of two row in addition to the regular steeping grains and everything went exactly as planned - I hit my mash temp dead on and kept it there for an hour. Sparge was at exactly the right temp as well. My OG was exactly where I expected and it's furiously bubbling away as I type. :rockin:

Yeah, it added about an hour and a half to my brew time but I think the end result will make this well worth it!

BTW - I use a stainless "steamer basket" to keep the bag off the bottom of the kettle during the boil (when using it as my "hop bag")...kind of a "poor man's false bottom". (The little do-dad in the center unscrews.) Works great!

DeathBrewer said:

Thanks, i'm certainly working on the back problem.

my absolute favorite recipes for this method are my dunkelweizens. it can be as simple as:

Grains:
3 lbs Wheat Malt
2 lbs Munich Malt
¼ lbs Chocolate Malt (pale chocolate is wonderful in this recipe)

Extract: 3 lbs Wheat Dry Malt Extract

Hops: 0.75 oz Tettnanger, hallertau or saaz (at ~4% AA)

Yeast: WLP 300

ferment in the mid 60s if you can

EDIT: i think i'll make this recipe this weekend

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I'd like to try partial mash brewing and this looks pretty easy to get my hands on and inexpensive. However, being a first timer, I am pretty overwhelmed by all of the choices in grains when you look for "wheat malt' "munich malt" etc.

For example, midwestsupplies.com for wheat malt has:
pale wheat
cara wheat
chocolate wheat
white wheat
red wheat
dark wheat
unmalted wheat

The different wheats show different usage percentages. I assume you wouldn't want to use cara wheat (recommended usage up to 15%) or chocolate wheat (recommended usage 1-5%) in this case. Even white wheat (usage up to 50%) appears to be insufficient. Or is that okay since you're adding 3 lbs of DME in addition to the grains?

So do you typically stick with a pale wheat since it's up to 80% or do white and red at 50% usage work, too?

Munich gets even more confusing to me because it lists some under the category of color malts and some under the category of caramel (crystal) malts.

Is this a case of no wrong answer or do I need to be pretty careful about what I choose?

white malted or red malted wheat is what you want. all the others are specialty grains.

you want straight munich malt...not caramunich or something like that. it needs to be a base malt, not a specialty grain.

that "up to 50%" is BS...as long as it can convert (has diastatic power/is a base malt) than it will work.

carbon111 said:

BTW - I use a stainless "steamer basket" to keep the bag off the bottom of the kettle during the boil (when using it as my "hop bag")...kind of a "poor man's false bottom". (The little do-dad in the center unscrews.) Works great!

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This is a great idea. it would have made mine a bit easyer. Thanks for shareing. I'll be useing this next time for sure.

DeathBrewer said:

white malted or red malted wheat is what you want. all the others are specialty grains.

you want straight munich malt...not caramunich or something like that. it needs to be a base malt, not a specialty grain.

that "up to 50%" is BS...as long as it can convert (has diastatic power/is a base malt) than it will work.

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I don't want to hijack this thread or anything, but I am having trouble finding resources with the information that you provided. Is there somewhere that spells out what is considered base malt vs. specialty grain? As a noob the names Munich 10L, light munich, and dark munich malt don't really mean a whole lot. And they're all listed under color malts just as the wheats I posted were all listed under wheat/rye malts even though some were specialty grains.

Please forgive my ignorance.

What website are you looking at? I can tell you what is what.

EDIT: N/M...checking out midwest supplies now...

BTW - I use a stainless "steamer basket" to keep the bag off the bottom of the kettle during the boil (when using it as my "hop bag")...kind of a "poor man's false bottom". (The little do-dad in the center unscrews.) Works great!

Click to expand...

I tried this recently as well, but what I didn't account for is water under the false bottom.. so the normal 5.5qts per 4lb (1.375 qts/lb) seemed to have a noticable more density of water/grain above the steamer than when i've had before.. So, next time I use I'm adding the volume under the false bottom to the total liquid... finally understand why that field is important in all the brewing software So just a tip for beginners playing around with this like me

The way they list it is confusing. Stupid, actually.

Look for "diastatic power"...it's basically how much the grains can convert.

Here's a decent explanation of diastatic power (or DP):

Diastatic power - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It states that anything about 35° Lintner can self-convert. Higher and it can convert other grains (such as specialty malts or unmalted adjuncts [corn, rice, wheat, etc.].)

As for midwest...they don't really list the diastatic power

Base Malts:
White Wheat
Red Wheat
Pale Wheat (if you look at the product sheet it shows you that the diastatic power is 200)

Specialty (flavor) malts:
Carawheat (product sheet does not even list diastatic power)
Dark Wheat
Chocolate Wheat

Adjuncts (non-malted, not specialty grains):
Unmalted Wheat

The Rye Malt SHOULD be a base malt, but it doesn't mention it in the product sheet, so I don't trust it.

As for the Munich:
Munich 10L is a base malt (it can only convert itself, tho, not much if anything else)

Light Munich is a base malt (doesn't show DP, but does show that it can be used for 100% of the grain bill...this would be a better bet if you are using other grains as it's DP is probably higher.)

Bonlander Munich is a base malt with a DP of 40

Dark Munich is *probably* a specialty malt

Vienna is also very good stuff, similar to Munich, but a little lighter in flavor and more diastatic power.

Use specialty malts as a VERY SMALL portion of your grain bill. Most of my recipes use little to no specialty malts, as the base grains still have tons of character.

Oh, and this thread was made for questions hijacking is not possible

After 6 batches of extracts and specialty grains, we've decided to take the plunge to the partial mash.

We stopped at our LHBS and picked up supplies for a Rye IPA. We're going to be brewing it tonight. We only have one large pot, so we're either going to try to find a cooler or just sparge by pouring the water over it. The difference in cost between grain and extract is insane.

The recipe:

2# 6 Row
2# Rye
1# 10L Crystal
1/2# Victory

7# Pale LME

1oz Amarillo (8.6%) 60'
1oz Amarillo 45'
1oz Amarillo 30'
1/2oz Amarillo 15'
1/2oz Amarillo Dry Hop

The profile is:
OG: 1.072
57 IBU (probably will be a little higher since we'll be doing a late extract addition)

If you have a couple of smaller pots, you could just heat up water in those and pour it over the bag. You will need a colander or something to hold the bag so you don't burn the **** outta your hands.

Thanks for the info above DB. I have looked at Northern Brewer's website and Austin Homebrew and they have layouts that do make a lot more sense... At least I can find grains there even if I don't end up buying them there.

Speaking of only having one pot. I have a stainless steel pot that I use for brewing, but I do have a hard anodized pot as well. Would the hard anodized pot be serviceable as sparge pot or mash pot, then just poured into the ss pot for resuming the brew? Or is using hard anodized a nono?

A hard anodized pot isn't a problem. I've used everything from aluminum to ceramic to stainless, all work great. I have yet to find any unobtainium

I have some on my computer, it just doesn't carry the Microsoft logo.

Use Ubuntu.

Now, back to your previously scheduled question about partial mash brewing.

One more acolyte here.

Did my first PM Dunkelweizen on Saturday per your fine instructions. Even though I let the LHBS guy talk me into a small bag instead of the large on (I was forgetting that you are supposed to clip the bag over the edge of the pot and really let the grain spread out), I still got what I think was good efficiency out of it. I was pleasantly surprised I had only dropped to 149° after a full hour, and I finished up at 1.054 OG using 3.89# LME.

Pitched it on a cake from a straight Hefeweizen I kegged that morning (Wyeast 3333) and it took off great within 12 hours. Now to wait...

THANKS!

DeathBrewer -

I am going to be trying this method out this week. I have never done a partial mash before, how do you know when you have reached conversion during the mash?

Search "Iodine test" (also earlier in this thread IIRC).

These are great instructions and will help out a lot in my journey to all grain. Thanks Death Brewer!

Sorry if this is OT but I was looking at a variant of this for my first partial mash. I plan to only mash the specialty grains and use extract for the base malts. I've got a dutch oven that should hold the 3lbs of grain and about 4 gallons I'll have. I plan to heat the water on the stovetop and after doughing in I'd get the mash back up to temp. Once I got the temp up I plan to cover the heavy pot and put it in my oven, at the same temp. I'll use my probe thermometer to make sure it stays at temp for the full 30-60, or til conversion. Meanwhile I'll heat my full boil water on my turkey fryer to 170 and just sparge in that for the suggested 10 minutes. Add back the steeping water and commence w/ the boil...How's that sound?

You cannot mash specialty grains. You can cut down your base malt, but without enough base malt (and the enzymes they contain) you are not "mashing". Mashing is converting the starches into sugars, which can't be done without the enzymes.

3 lbs is plenty for a decent partial mash, however, depending on your recipe.

Your method sounds fine, except when you say that after doughing in you'd "get the mash back up to temp"...it should already be at the right temp after you dough in. You can use this strike temp calculator to help you hit your temp exactly: Green Bay Rackers--Mash Calculators

DeathBrewer said:

You can use this strike temp calculator to help you hit your temp exactly: Green Bay Rackers--Mash Calculators

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Very handy! Thanks.