Best Bang for Buck on Partial Mash

My buddies and I are going to try a partial mash this weekend. We only have a 5 gal brewkettle, so our boil will have to be concentrated. We're going to mash either in the kettle or in a cooler we have. I'm thinking we should be able to use a 3lb bag of DME, or we have a 4lb can of Alexander's Wheat LME which we could use, and get the rest of the fermentables from the mash.

Now the question is, what style do you all think, in your various opinions, is going to show off the results of the partial mash the best?

Any pointers to recipes that only use 3 or 4 lbs of extract would be appreciated as well.

Thanks!

Moon

Moonpile said:

My buddies and I are going to try a partial mash this weekend. We only have a 5 gal brewkettle, so our boil will have to be concentrated. We're going to mash either in the kettle or in a cooler we have. I'm thinking we should be able to use a 3lb bag of DME, or we have a 4lb can of Alexander's Wheat LME which we could use, and get the rest of the fermentables from the mash.

Now the question is, what style do, in your various opinions, is going to show off the results of the partial mash the best?

Any pointers to recipes that only use 3 or 4 lbs of extract would be appreciated as well.

Thanks!

Moon

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Any light colored beer will benefit. I think wheat beers would work well with what you have. I did a partial mash Kolsch that came out great. I used 3.25 lbs of DME.

The 5 gallon pot is not a problem. Just plan your grain accordingly.

You may also consider mashing in you bottling bucket, line it with a mesh bag, and wrap in a blanket.

It looks like that for a ~1.050 OG, using 3lbs of DME we'll have ~5.25lbs of grain. What should my qts H2O to lbs grain ratio be for something like this? I was thinking more water would help maintain temp better. Is that true? 2 gal of water and 5.25 lbs grain has a ratio of 1.39. Should I go up or down from there?

Moonpile said:

It looks like that for a ~1.050 OG, using 3lbs of DME we'll have ~5.25lbs of grain. What should my qts H2O to lbs grain ratio be for something like this? I was thinking more water would help maintain temp better. Is that true? 2 gal of water and 5.25 lbs grain has a ratio of 1.39. Should I go up or down from there?

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To be technical the mash water to grain ratio is determined by the style of the beer. This isn't so important for a partial mash. 2 gal of water for the mash (add a bit more to account for that absorbed by the grain) is fine. Are you batch sparging (easy to do in bottling bucket with bag)? If so, use 2 gal. for that too. This leaves you with 4 in the pot, enough room to watch for boil overs and to add extract.

Yes, I think we'll be batch sparging. From the HBT wiki, it looks like we should dough in with 2 gal of water and batch sparge two times with 1 gal of water each time. Sound right?

4 gal is kind of pushing it in our pot. I think we'll add the DME as a late addition though, so we should have boiled down by then.

You could just batch sparge once with 2 gallons, just stir it up real well. Also, I suggest taking a SG reading after the mash and make a calculation as to how much extract to add. If you efficiency was real good you might not need to add as much.

4 gallons in a 5 gallon pot should be fine, just have some one watch it all the time. DME adds little volume. And yes, add it late, this will also help if you are trying to keep it light.

What style are you making, decided yet?

Do you have a wort chiller? It will make your life a lot easier. For my PM (>4 gal at the end), I cooled it in the tub, took 30 min. I am buy one for my all grain that is coming up.

Ok, 2 gal mash and 2 gal sparge sounds easier.

We did intend to take gravity readings both to figure out how much DME to add and to get an idea of what our eff will be for future ref.

We don't have a wort chiller. We've been doing 3.75 gal boils in this pot doing extract+steeping and have chilled by placing the kettle in a keg tub with water and ice. Takes about 30 min.

We do intend to move to 10 gal all grain batches as soon as we can since there's three of us (and 5 gal split 3 ways sucks!!!!).

We eventually intend to get a 10 Rubbermaid cylindrical to become an MLT. We have a typical rectangular cooler that I was thinking we'd mash in. If we got the 10 gal Rubbermaid would it be less effecient to mash in that because of all the extra space? The old cooler we have isn't the cleanest (though of course we'd clean it more thoroughly).

Some people say that the round one are more efficient. I don't know if I buy that and plenty of people use rectangular ones. When I used my bottling bucket I put a bunch of boiling water in it before hand to heat it up, dumped it, and started the mash. Dropped 1 degree over an hour. Hope for the same in the (rectangular) cooler.

Unless it is really dirty it should be OK. Doesn't have to be sanitary since you will be boiling it, but does need to be clean enough to to lend any off flavors (or dirt).