Partigyle-ing the 999 (kinda long, but educational)

The_Bird had a post in the big honkin' 999 thread about splitting this puppy up between two mashes/friends. I think my buddy and I are going to do that next weekend. If we could net 5gal of 999 and 10gal of "small" beer that would be awesome. But coming out with 5gal of 999 and 5gal of small beer would rock too...This post might be a little long but I've just got to get all of my thoughts together on this.

Having read this article on partigyle and looking at the charts it looks like I'm going to have to use MORE grain to get what I want. He's saying to formulate a 15gal batch and use this chart to figure out the gravities.

First off, we have to forget about the sugar thats going into the 999. Promash is telling me that we're getting 14 points from it. So, we're looking for a gravity of 1.105. The chart then says this:



That would mean I would have to formulate a 15gal recipe with a gravity of 1.070 based on the 999. Doing so, recipator gives me this as a grain bill:

37.5 lb. Pale Malt
3.26 lb. Munich
1.22 lb. C90
6.5 oz. Special B
0.61 lb. Chocolate

Doing this (according to the article) would give me 5gal of 1.105 and 10 gal of 1.053.

Thats a lot of grain but I guess I can swing it....the only thing I'm lacking is the .22lb of C90, I've only got a pound. I can get the darkest crystal my LHBS has though.

Now, where does efficiency come into this? Or does it not bc you're just dealing with 1st runnings?

Is there anything else I'm missing with this? Reading The_Bird's post made it sound SOO easy. Just split the mash, run off ~3gal from each for the BW and the next 3 for a smaller beer. My concern with that is that I wouldn't hit the 1.105 necissary for the 999 (before the sugar).

Oh yeah, real quick. What about the second, smaller beer? I was thinking something english with fuggles or EKG and S-04 or maybe Irish Ale yeast? Thoughts on that?

Ok, sorry this was long but hopefully this answered some questions for some folks and brought up others for more people.

As always

Linked here from the other thread. Since I have most of my ingredients for the 999BarleyWine already and I'm now going to have to ferment in cornies I've dropped the batch quantity from 5.75 gallons to 4.5 for the BW and will also have a 4 gallon small beer. I should be able to work this out with only adding 2 lbs base grain to the recipe. Also as you mentioned I had to calculate without the sugar, then add the sugar back in during the boil phase.

Details on my partigyle
http://www.beertools.com/html/recipe.php?view=7808

partigyle spreadsheet
http://www.antiochsudsuckers.com/tom/Tom-OsParti-GyleCipherinSheet.xls

1.0525 is *not* a small beer. IMHO, I'd split the grain bill you posted into a 5 gal batch and a 15 gal batch. It'd give you 15 gallons of "small" beer at around 1.030.

At least in my system using a batch sparge, I'd have to stop the runnings at 1.04x in order to hit the gravity you cited above. That would still be leaving a LOT of fermentables in the MLT.

When I do partigyle, I strive to squeeze as much fermentable goodness as I can out of the batch. That means taking the runnings down to about 1.010 or so and aiming for a gravity in the 1.03x range. By sparging more and settling for a lower gravity you can keep your grain bills more manageable and get more for your $$. Also, don't be afraid to add a pound or two of specialty grain with each successive running in order to change the beer further.

Unless you're planning on really boiling down the wort, I suspect you will be leaving a lot of fermentables in the MLT. If nothing else, you can get a batch of 1.105 (strong); a batch of 1.050 (normal strength); and two batches of 1.030 (small).

Alamo, I was reading that you should guestimate your efficiency based on what you would normally get for the OG of the whole batch (in my case what I'd get with a 1.077 10 gallon batch normally) So you won't get as good as the usual 1.050. I'm thinking around 65% for mine but we'll see.

I plan to make up any deficiencies in the BW by using more wort from the small beer. I may end up with less/lower gravity small beer but a BW that is right on at 1.119 (and a longer boil).

Also I didn't want to do the 10 gallon small beer as I'm not sure I'll like it... and that's a lot of beer!

I probably shouldn't refer to the second beer as the "Small" beer since that is traditionally the beer made from the 3rd runnings and is as mentioned around 1.030 gravity. What I'm looking to do with this parti-gyle is get the most sugars out of the recipe, make a smaller batch of BW (Since for the summer I'm fermenting in corny kegs) and end up with another beer that I can drink a few months down the road instead of a year.

Yeah, 1.053 is deffinalty not a small beer...I wonder then if I can keep the original grain bill and get what I want out of it....kinda like conpewter's doing. That would be MUCH easier and cost less than having to up the grain bill...

Another question I had. If we stick with the original 999 grain bill and split it into two mashes how much mash water should we go for? My thinking is the more the merrier. Like 3qt/lb but is that *too* much? I was thinking that we'd shoot for like 145* with 3qt/lb and a 2hr (maybe just 90min) mash to get a very fermentable wort.

Wait. 1.053 isn't small? So THAT'S why everyone tells me my brews are too strong for them. (I've only brewed one sub-1.050 batch so far out of 21 brews. Maybe two of them. I could be wrong. After all, I've been drinking all my beers!)

My bad. Carry on.

For the lower gravity beer I'm not sure yet what style it really lends itself too (or yeast for that matter) Will probably end up with a lot of hops in it and a neutral yeast to try to make something IPAish unless someone tells me it will work better as another style (I've been craving a hoppy beer lately).

May end up on a nottingham cake that is finishing up a pale ale right now (right next to the 1056 cake that the BW will get).

Best bet is to Mash out until your OG is getting too low, when considering your boil time. Then make whatever amount of HG beer you get.

As for the second beer The last batch we ran we came short on the second runnings and we just added 3 lbs of amber LME to kick it along. Don’t worry have a home brew

With that grain bill I might hit it with a Windsor dry yeast just to go with the chocolate

Sounds good. I did something very similar last December. I ended up getting 4gal of 1.104 barleywine and 7gal of 1.040 Mild. Grain bill was 20lbs Marris Otter, 2lbs Crystal 80 and 1lb Biscuit. The barleywine also got a boost from some dark molasses, which is traditional in a barleywine and adds to the characteristic flavor. The Mild was one of the best beers I've brewed so far. I really enjoyed it. The barleywine is still aging. I suspect it won't hit its peak until about Christmas of this year.

Here's the Parti-gyle thread if you are interested.

Chad

Nice Alamo, I'm planning on a 50-50 split for two 5.25 G batches. If I have crunched the numbers right I'll be upping the pale malt to 29 lbs and bumping the Munich and crystal to 2.5 and 1 respectively. That should give me a 1.0987(pre-boil before the sugar) batch and a 1.0658(pre-boil) batch. After adding the sugar and boiling I should have 1.119 and 1.070 respectively. I may have to tweak some because I don't think the default boil-off rate in the spreadsheet is realistic (1/3 G). I may just add water to the boil kettles to allow for more boil-off, not sure yet.

When it talks a 50/50 split we're basically talking of having the first 50% of wort drained from the tun in the BW and the other 50% in the lower gravity beer. So you have the 2/3 - 1/3 split of sugar but same batch sizes?

conpewter said:

When it talks a 50/50 split we're basically talking of having the first 50% of wort drained from the tun in the BW and the other 50% in the lower gravity beer. So you have the 2/3 - 1/3 split of sugar but same batch sizes?

Click to expand...

Thats the general idea, although it is closer to 60%-40%. Additionally, if you want to further tweak the gravities of the two beers you could for example take a gallon of each and swap them which would have the effect of bringing them closer together or take a portion of the small beers wort and add to the larger beer and boil the large beer longer to get an even higher gravity. The spreadsheet linked to above will make recommendations for this kind of thing if the gravities you want do fall into the natural 60-40 split.

Alamo: How big is your mash tun? will that 43# grain bill + water fit? The calculator at rackers.org says you'll need 16.88 Gallons of mash tun space with a 1.25 qt/lb initial infusion.

My MLT is 48qts but the plan is to split it into 2 different mashes between my buddy and I.

I think I'm going to wing it....do the original 999 with maybe a couple lb's more of base malt and just take 1st runnings....we'll see how it goes I guess. I could swing the bigger grain bill I posted above but......I really, really don't want to

I was pondering this some more over the weekend and have one (hopefully final) question, the answer to which may(or may not) cause me to abandon the attempt.

Does the calculations, splits etc. in the spreadsheet assume that your fly sparging? Over the weekend I was thinking about how fly sparging would cause the runnings to gradually decrease in SG over time while batch sparging each separate running would basically be relatively uniform. If the spreadsheet calcs, or more importantly the split tables, are assuming fly sparging and you batch sparge you might have to do some on the fly blending of the runnings at the end to get the gravities right.

Any thoughts?

I kind of doubt it because to my knowledge....partigyle=batch sparge....but I could be wrong.

From what I understand, it is compatible with both fly and/or batch sparging methods. If fly sparging, you are correct that your runnings gradually and (mostly) uniformly decrease in gravity as you collect more wort. (Assuming equipment does not cause channeling, the phase of the moon is favorable, etc etc)

If batch sparging, you could avoid on-the-fly blending of runnings by playing with your volumes. If you need to collect 6 gal of "first" runnings, and you have ~5 gal of usable wort in your mash tun at the end of your mash period, then you would infuse an extra "collectable" gallon before beginning to drain your "first" runnings. OR you could still blend them. That would work too.

Chriso said:

If batch sparging, you could avoid on-the-fly blending of runnings by playing with your volumes. If you need to collect 6 gal of "first" runnings, and you have ~5 gal of usable wort in your mash tun at the end of your mash period, then you would infuse an extra "collectable" gallon before beginning to drain your "first" runnings. OR you could still blend them. That would work too.

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I was thinking about this also. It appears that with the grain bill I plan and my 10gal cooler I will get a little under 5 gal with the first runnings. Since I would like to start my boil with 6.5gal of wort I need to sparge with an extra 1.8gal of water. This is probably not going to be effective with 25# of grain in the cooler.

So my plan is to only drain about 3.5gal at first. Then add the extra 1.8gal and drain then drain it all for my "first" runnings. Then I can do my second runnings with 2 sparges of about 3.25 gal.

By my estimates this will get me a decent sized "small" beer (about 1.059OG) but require about 2# of DME to get the gravity required for the barleywine.

Craig

Or of course, Option 3 is to do two back-to-back mashes and collect 3.25 gal from each. This avoids the DME infusion but adds a reasonable amount of extra work. Not saying it's "right" for you, CB - just throwing it out there so that any other readers have as many options as possible.

Along Chriso's idea....my buddy and I are splitting the mash into our 2 MLT's....should make things easier.

Chriso said:

Or of course, Option 3 is to do two back-to-back mashes and collect 3.25 gal from each. This avoids the DME infusion but adds a reasonable amount of extra work. Not saying it's "right" for you, CB - just throwing it out there so that any other readers have as many options as possible.

Click to expand...

I considered that option. And the option of just using 2 pots (I can get 2 turkey fryers) and boiling down 13gal for a 5gal batch in order to get sufficient efficiency. However I decided that a couple pounds of DME was not worth the effort. I guess i am not an AG purist . I have had good luck using DME in larger brews so i have no problem with that. My 8-8-8 RIS used a couple pounds of DME.

Craig