3rd runoff for low gravity?

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Hoosierbrewer

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I am going to brew a German light ale this weekend. I have 8 pounds of 2 row as my base malt (limited supply at brew store). Has anyone ever done an extra runoff to get a low gravity beer? I know that this was done sometimes in the past in England.

If so, how many gallons could I expect? Any tips?
 
What you are talking about is called "parti-gyle brewing" (sorry if sp is off) It was usually done from the later runnings after a big beer. I doubt if the 3rd runnings from 8lbs of 2-row is going to give you anything worth fermenting.
 
I did a parti gyle beer from 14 lbs of grain. I ran off three, thre gallon worts to end up with three 2.5 gallon brews. The first runnings were over 1.100, the second were around 1.048 and the third were under 1.030. It was under a 2% beer when finished.
 
Thanks for the thoughts. I was reading it in CHarlies first book the other night. I just thought that I would see if anyone had experience with it. I think that the english mild used to be made from later runnings.

It seems that you would have to have a lot of grains and a strong first beer to make it work. Any barley wine experience?
 
The act of batch sparging will bring forth several ranges of gravity. If you want a specific range of wort you can mix a strong with a weaker to produce the SG you want. I personally have done this at one time and it is very interesting to try. Most of the time I like 40 to 50 point beer as a rule.
 
To make it worth while. add a couple pounds of two row after the second runnings, and "remash". I've actually skipped my third runnings a few times, because there just isn't enough sugar left to make it worth while. If I do the third running, I get 86% efficiency. If I skip it, I get 80-83%. Heck, even my barleywine from a couple weeks ago got 81% with only two runnings.
 
Your grainbill is already going to give you a relatively low gravity beer and any additional runoff is going to be around 1.015 or less. There's really no more sugar in there for you. This only works when you use a huge grainbill for a big beer on first runnings and then use the residual sugar for a much smaller beer.

Brew one all grain batch and you'll get it.
 
Thanks everyone. As I move to a couple of high gravity beers later this year, I may try it. It may produce more beer for the money spent on grains. I am not experienced enough yet with AG to know if I will have the efficiency needed on the first 2 runnings.
 
I'm doing this right now - I made some experiment w/3rd runnings & bread yeast. It fermented out in 2 days and is now in the bottle. at bottling time, it was horrid. I suspect, it'll still be horrid in the future. Well, may have been better w/ beer yeast though =)

I don't think I'll bother w/it in the future.
 

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