Favorite Partigyles?

Now that I've brewed a couple of partigyles, I'm hooked on the process. I like that I can brew a big beer and still get good efficiencies w/o having to boil for hours. I also like that the process is flexible so I can brew two similar strength beers that have similar grain bills and mashing.
Lastly, I love how low tech it is (other than using a spread sheet to calculate everything

So far I've done:
Barleywine/Bitter
Dark Strong/Light Weak (not a real style, just playing around )

I've got a planned:
Wee Heavy/Scottish 70
Golden Strong/Munich Helles

What are your favorite partigyles?

can't say I've done any yet, but I just now got into all-grain brewing so I may be plaing around with one soon. I plan on brewing a golden strong, how did your Munich Helles turn out? What grains did you use, german or Belgian pils?

I haven't done the Helles yet.
When I've planned each batch, I've picked one beer to be the focus, and I let the other one pretty much come out as it may with the OG & size. With the Golden Strong/Helles, I'm picking the Helles, so I'll use German Pilsener and I'm thinking about doing a decoction mash, which would be a first for me.

thats probably the way to do it, that way you end up with at least one beer more or less how you like it. Sounds very cool.

for a while, i was doing a small beer for EVERYTHING i made.

I'd usually switch the hops (just for fun) that i made with the original batch. in other words, i use bittering for aroma and aroma for bittering

no matter what you make, if it's a really small beer and is just the second (or 3rd) runnings from a regular beer, go really light on the bittering and really high on the end hops.

nothing like a 2.5% free "peasant" beer to gulp down on a brew day when you don't want to get hammered. a little tannin flavor never hurt anybody!

Thanks DeathBrewer. I hadn't even thought about making a 3rd beer from the runnings. That sounds similar to a "table beer" I see references for from back in the day.
Now I'll need to expand my capacity of Better Bottles and add another fermentation fridge. Thankfully SWMBO doesn't go in the basement anymore

I've been thinking about this the last couple weeks. With a newborn and a 3-year-old, brewdays are too far between. It sounds efficient to get two beers in with only the extra time of a second hour-long boil.

I only have one burner and one big pot, so here's what I'm thinking:

- During first mash, over-heat water for second mash and put in a cooler for holding
- Drain first runnings and begin boiling
- Add a pound or so of fresh grain to the mash tun and the hot water, stir and let sit while the firsts are boiling
- Cool, transfer, and pitch the first batch
- Drain second mash and continue as usual (can use a smaller pot here for sparging, I guess, if volume is low?)

Does that sound about right for the technique? Are there any concerns with mashing the second half for such a long time? I guess you could wait and start the second mash until after the first is done boiling and just mash during the cooling phase, but the hot grains are going to be sitting there no matter what, might as well put water on them, right?

You should be pretty well done mashing after you sparge your original recipe, but if it cools too much then the sugar rinse might suffer a little bit.

goose_on_fire, that sounds pretty similar to what I've done, and I just bought another burner to speed up the day.
I've been aiming for two 5 gallon batches, so I end up mashing and sparging once - this goes into batch #1. Batch #2 is from the 2nd and 3rd sparge.
The runnings for the last sparge have been 1.023 & 1.026, so still getting good sugars. Maybe enough to get a 3rd beer as DeathBrewer suggests.

goose_on_fire said:

Are there any concerns with mashing the second half for such a long time? I guess you could wait and start the second mash until after the first is done boiling and just mash during the cooling phase, but the hot grains are going to be sitting there no matter what, might as well put water on them, right?

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I haven't been worried about this too much. I've used the 1st sparge water to mash out, so my 2nd and 3rd sparges sit in the tun for 30 minutes each, hopefully just getting more sugars out.
My efficiency was 77% with 21# grain, and 73% with 26# grain, so it seems to work well.

My only one to date was an English Barleywine and an ESB. It worked out very well.

Only done one, Irish red/American Winter Brown. Documented here https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/just-learning-about-parti-gyle-brilliant-85936/

Ok, the AWB is a made up style. It's an American Brown made big, but its pretty good.