Anyone try a Belgian Partigyle? Here's my plan...

OK, I was thinking about a fun New Year's brew that I could do on Jan. 1 and keep until NYE next year, and I landed on a Belgian tripel. I'm only planning on doing 3 gallons of it, since I don't drink many dubbels and tripels. So now I'm thinking, what if I make a tripel with my first runnings, and a saison with my second and third runnings? I'll need to add some grain between batches, but here's what I've ginned up so far, using BrauKaiser's partigyle spreadsheet and Hopville (don't have Beersmith on the work computer!)...

Batch #1: Belgian Tripel, 3 gallons

I'm shooting for the following:
OG: 1.087
FG: 1.009
IBUs: 31.1

Mash:
8 lbs. Pils
.5 lbs Munich

Mash in 4.7 gallons at 150F for 90 minutes, I'm assuming about 68% efficiency on the first runnings.

Added in boil:
1.5 lb candi syrup
3 oz dark candi syrup

Hops:
.8 oz Styrian goldings @ 60 min
.3 oz Styrian goldings @ 30 min
.3 oz Styrian goldings @ 15 min

Primary ferment with WLP550 @ 66F for six to eight (?) weeks, possibly secondary, bottle condition for 9-10 months.

Batch #2: Saison, 5 gal

Again, shooting for:
OG: 1.05 or so
FG: under 1.009
IBUs: 36.4

Add to mashtun:
4 lb Pils
1 lb Munich
.5 lb Acid malt

Mash 3.8 gallons at 150F for 90 min, batch sparge with 3 gallons

Added in boil:
1/2 tsp Burton salts
1.5 lb clover honey
3 oz dark candi syrup

Hops:
.75 oz EKG @ 60 min.
.5 oz Styrian goldings @ 30 min.
.5 oz Styrian goldings @ 15 min.

Add 2 tsp. of coriander seeds at flameout

Ferment at 70F, raising slowly to 77F over three to five days. Primary for three or so weeks, secondary for a week.

This is still in rough draft form...I've only done one saison in the past, which I liked a lot, but I've never done a lot of Belgian styles, so any input would be welcomed. Anything that doesn't look right or you think could be improved, let me know.

Also, has anyone else ever done a Belgian partigyle like this? Results?

Cheers

I am going back and forth on this idea myself. I want to do a 3 gal barleywine or tripel or something huge and take the second runnings and make a pottersbier for February drinking. So my biggest concern is yeast choice because to save money i want to use the same yeast starter (a huge starter). so do I make a barleywine with trappest ale yeast or go the full nine and do a tripel.

I feel like Belgians would be some of the best candidates for a parti-gyle... Even if you miss your anticipated OG you can still load it up with sugar to make up the points, or just call it something different.

I was about to ask why you're doing another mash with the saison rather than just simply capping the mash and sparging, but then I realized, if you're using the same kettle for both beers, adding base malt and doing another full mash is pretty ingenious.

phenry said:

I feel like Belgians would be some of the best candidates for a parti-gyle... Even if you miss your anticipated OG you can still load it up with sugar to make up the points, or just call it something different.

I was about to ask why you're doing another mash with the saison rather than just simply capping the mash and sparging, but then I realized, if you're using the same kettle for both beers, adding base malt and doing another full mash is pretty ingenious.

Click to expand...

That's part of the reason, plus I'd like to get a full five gallons of saison, which I'm not sure I could get from the initial grains if I'm just making 3 gallons of tripel. The other alternative would be to add more grains up front, drain enough of the first runnings to make my tripel and then use some of the remaining wort plus the sparge to get 5 gal of saison-strength wort. I suppose there's more than one way to skin a partigyle...

Hi, I am brewing now, and trying to get a tripel, and saison. I started with a five gallon recipe for the tripel and used only the first runnings - about 2.25 gallons of wort. I then added to the mashtun 2# vienna malt and added as much of the sparge as possible at a few degrees above mash temp and mashed for another hour. Then drained and sparged with remaining sparge water. I ended up with about 4 gallons of saison wort added some sugar to the boil. I am totaly guessing at this point on amount of hops to use. The triple Specific Gravity pre boil was temp adjusted to about 12% abv potential. The saison was about 5% abv potenital - so I added some sugar to that one and will later add some sour cherry to secondary for that one.

How am I calculating all of this? lol

well i completely ballsed that up with a potential 13% saison so i just put the two together for a ton of barley wine.

will try again with some more pre thought

Hey Guys, I brewed this up in 2016 and I wanted to share my results with you guys just in case anybody else wanted to give it a go:

I started by mashing:

12 lbs Pilsen
1.5 lbs Munich
0.5 lbs Acid Malt

In 4 3/8 gallons at with a strike temperature of 162. Then I BIAB mashed at 150F for 90 minutes. The initial yield of the first runnings without any sparge was 2.8 gal at 1.088. I set this aside for the base for the tripel.

Due to the size limitations of my pots, I did a "hybrid" sparge with a batch sparge of 4.75 gallons at 180F followed by a fly sparge of an additional 2.25 gallons at 165F. This yielded an additional 6.75 gallons at 1.024 and I kept this separate from the first runnings to use as a base for the saison.

Using my pre-boil target gravities of 1.059 and 1.034 as a guide, I did the mixing portion of the program:

1. Move 6 pints to the tripel to bring the volume up to 3.75 gallons. Gravity now 1.083/1.024.
2. Cross mix 2 pints (1.075/1.027)
3. Cross mix 3 more pints (1.068/1.030)
4. Cross mix 4 more pints (1.065/1.034)
5. With my saison at my target gravity, move 4 pints from saison to tripel to achieve 1.059/1.034.

NOTE: Your mixing schedule WILL vary. Be ready to do some rough math to get it to work.

I then added my candi-syrup and honey in the appropriate boil vessel and followed the hop schedule as directed.

In the end I ended up with 3.6 gallons of 1.088 wort for the tripel and 4.4 gallons of 1.053 wort for the saison.

The saison fermented out in about a week to 1.001 (6.8%). This was by far my driest beer to date.

The tripel took some extra babying and eventually fermented out to 1.018 (9.9%). I took a gravity sample at 3 weeks to find that it had stalled at 1.034. I swirled it and moved it to a location about 3 degrees warmer and it finished out in another 3 weeks or so.

This was my first high-gravity beer so it might have been my fault, but the yeast didn't really bottle condition the beer very well in the end and I was left with a relatively flat result for the tripel. Perhaps I should have used a yeast more tolerant of high ABV%.

Also, in retrospect, I should have just added the high gravity to the low gravity until I reached the target gravity for the saison pre-boil and then added it back to the tripel until I reached its target pre-boil gravity.

Edited for typos

I did a Golden Strong and Belgian Pale Ale out of the same wort in a slightly different way last year. I mashed a simple pils and vienna grain bill, to collect about 11 gallons of 1.055 wort. The wort was all boiled together, with about 30IBU of hops at different times (I'm going from memory here - the actual recipe's on an old computer - but you'll get the gist of it). After the boil (and trub losses), 9.2 gallons of 1.060 wort was split two ways - 5 gallons of wort for the golden strong, brought up to 1.075ish with an addition of dextrose. 4.2 gallons of wort for the BPA watered down to 5 gallons at about 1.050. The BPA also got an addition of steeped crystal malt. Both beers turned out nicely.

Partigyle might be an English technique but certainly not limited to English beers.

I did a Dubbel/Tafelbier partigyle once. That was my usual method, collect three fairly equivalent volume runoffs, and blend them together to control my gravities. In this case, like most, the big beer got most of the first runnings, the small beer SOME of the first runnings but most of the second runnings (with the remainder second in the big beer), and 3rd runnings split between them.

I also did a partigyle quick sour once. That was more interesting.

I did a joint 50-50 wheat-pils sour mash (had to be a sour mash, kettle sour wouldn't work here). That soured wort was split (I think in half but would have to dig up my notes), and the 2nd lauter runoff went to a Gose, which got salt and coriander added to the kettle.

The other half of the sour wort got an additonal mash of Beechwood smoked malt, for a Lichtenhainer.

Then I think split the 3rd runnings of the original mash between them.

I think they ended up at similar volumes and gravities. The Gose was more tart, as intended. It worked quite well.