reuse a mash to create a lighter beer

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Dave the Brewer

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Theres a thread around here some where that I was reading about a week ago. It was about creating a mash for a high gravity wort, then adding a little more grain to the mash (reuse what has already been mashed) to make a lighter beer. Where is this thread, I can't find it. I'm pretty sure I wasn't dreaming, although I do dream about brew often. :D If you can't find the thread could you let me know if I'm understanding this correctly, or possibly making stuff up?
 
I posted one called "Party Guile" brewing. The point was to make as many different beers as possible from the same mash to fill up empty carboys as quickly as possible...

The actual technique is called "partigyle" so searching for that should help you out.
 
irish/english brewers used to make a barley wine strength ale, then session/table beer, then a kiddie beer out of the same mash. just keep straing water through it... :)
 
You don't actually add grain, you start with a large grain bill. I'll probably do this in the future for my barley wines, because five gallons is way too much of the stuff.
 
Yeah, a friend of mine did the barleywine thing recently. Said he mashed 33 lbs of grain and used the first runnings for a barleywine that came out at 5 gallons of something like 1.09-10 OG wort. Then sparged and got 8 gallons or so of pale ale wort at 1.04-05 OG. Sounds like a fun brew.
 
Sweet, partigyle is exactly what I was looking for. I'm brewing a Belgian Strong Ale Saturday; I'm going to give it a shot! Thanks guys
 
I did it for the first time with the 08-08-08 RIS. I only managed to get about 3 gals of ~1.040 wort out of the deal. I'm about to keg it, so we'll see how it tastes.
 
Pardon me for being the skunk at the party :) (pun intended). But it seems to me that you'd just continue to extract more and more tannins using a process such as this. Thereby making a really nasty tasting beer with the second and third runnings.

Seems to me you'd be better off just making a good beer rather than trying to squeeze every last bit of sugar out of the grain.
 
abracadabra said:
Pardon me for being the skunk at the party :) (pun intended). But it seems to me that you'd just continue to extract more and more tannins using a process such as this. Thereby making a really nasty tasting beer with the second and third runnings.

Seems to me you'd be better off just making a good beer rather than trying to squeeze every last bit of sugar out of the grain.

The Majority of profesional brewers doing this for 100s of years would disagree.

You need to know what you are doing though.
 
I have a second runnings batch brewing right now. Granted, I added @3 of honey, and a pound of corn sugar, but I am gonna give it a shot. I boiled it down to about a 4 gallon batch, and followed a honey steam beer recipe, from one of my many beer books. It looks, and smells good. We'll see what it's like soon. It's almost time to transfer it to the secondary. That should give me somewhat of an idea if it's gonna taste good, or not. I think I might even check it tonight. It's been 10 days in the primary.
 
orfy said:
The Majority of profesional brewers doing this for 100s of years would disagree.

You need to know what you are doing though.

Maybe so, but hundreds of years ago the main goal wasn't necessarily making the best tasting beer possible. It was because the water was unfit to drink and they needed to find some way to use the grain before the rats ate it up or mold ruined it.
 
:off:
A bit off topic here, but I've been considering a split batch to squeeze 10 gallons of lighter beer from a 6 gallon boil. My thought is to adjust a pale ale recipe to a much higher gravity (like 1.065-70) @ 6 gallons. After it's boiled and cooled to fermentation temp, split it into 2 carboys (3 gallons each) then top each off with 2 gallons of water (resulting in 1.038-1.042), pitch same or maybe 2 different yeasts.

Pro's:
no airation needed like back in the extract partial boil days.
requires smaller equipment than a 10 gallon full boil.
likely a somewhat quicker brew day.

Con's:
requires more hops due to reduced extraction from the higher gravity wort.
possibly reduced efficiency due to less sparge water?

Does anyone see any holes in this idea?
 
Here is some food for thought. The second and third running's are really no different than a batch sparge that is collected and fermented in a different container, and a lot of use batch without trouble. So why would Party Gyleing be different?
 
abracadabra said:
Maybe so, but hundreds of years ago the main goal wasn't necessarily making the best tasting beer possible. It was because the water was unfit to drink and they needed to find some way to use the grain before the rats ate it up or mold ruined it.

I think Orfy's point was... it is a method that has been used for 100's of years (up to today) not a method used 100's of years ago....although I would agree...beer is a perfectly acceptable substitute for water. Fro man agrees!:fro:
 
Well, I'm going to give it a shot, and turn the second runnings into a lager. Even if it were to taste like crap because of extracted tannins; the only thing I will have wasted is the time it took to run the second wort off and boil time.
I'll let you all know how it is.
 
I can certainly understand why a commerical brewer or "Professional" as Orfy put it would use this method. It makes economic sense to try and squeeze every bit of sugar out of the grain if you're trying to make a profit. Also at the prices today I can understand why this method would be attractive. But as a craft brewer I am trying to make the best tasting beer possible not the cheapest.

Simply my opinion, if you like the taste of second and third runnings go for it. To me they taste nasty.

Everybody does not have the same sense of taste. You lose some sense of taste as you grow older. And just like eyesight & hearing some people have a greater abiltiy than others.
 
Simply my opinion if you like the taste of second and third runnings go for it.

Everybody does not have the same sense of taste to me they taste nasty[/QUOT

so you add ALL the water and the grian, and drain the MLT one time?
 
I was going to ask the same thing, Jeff.

If second and third runnings taste so nasty, and it's nothing more than what one might sparge, and you want to make the tastiest beer possible, do you sparge and then add all that nasty stuff to your wort?


TL
 
Dave,

I brewed a stout a couple weeks ago. When I reached the capacity of my boiler (8.5 gal) I was still getting runoff that was still at a 1.030+ gravity. I decided to do a second runoff and make a lager, too. I didn't get as much volume (4 gal), but it looked good. It was a bit weak, so I added 2# honey and a pound of corn sugar.

I checked the gravity this morning. It was at 1.008, and it started at 1.034. Time to transfer to the secondary, and let it lager at 35* for a while. Plus it needs to clear up a bit too. I tasted the gravity sample, and it was pretty darn good. :drunk:

It wasn't to malty, and I think I hit the perfect amount of hops. 1oz. Tetnanger pellets for 60 minute, 1oz. Fuggle pellets for 20 minutes and 1oz. Fuggles pellets for 5 minutes.

This might turn out to be a really good beer.

Just give yours a try, it might be better than you think.
 
abracadabra said:
I can certainly understand why a commerical brewer or "Professional" as Orfy put it would use this method. It makes economic sense to try and squeeze every bit of sugar out of the grain if you're trying to make a profit. Also at the prices today I can understand why this method would be attractive. But as a craft brewer I am trying to make the best tasting beer possible not the cheapest.

Simply my opinion, if you like the taste of second and third runnings go for it. To me they taste nasty.

Everybody does not have the same sense of taste. You lose some sense of taste as you grow older. And just like eyesight & hearing some people have a greater abiltiy than others.
I'm assuming you fly sparge, but to all us batch spargers this seems almost like we do anyways. I sparge twice on my 5 gallon brews and I don't see why upping the grain bill to a high gravity beer and then sparging with more water would make a difference.
 
z987k said:
I'm assuming you fly sparge, but to all us batch spargers this seems almost like we do anyways. I sparge twice on my 5 gallon brews and I don't see why upping the grain bill to a high gravity beer and then sparging with more water would make a difference.

It couldn't be said better.:rockin:
 
From what I have read, you won't be extracting wort ruining tannins until your run off gets below 1.008 or 1.011 or some where around that gravity. I did end up getting 5 gallons of second runnings, and the gravity never got that low. The gravity of the full run off ended up being about 1.049. There were plenty of sugars waiting to become a wonderful beverage. Just because its cost efficient, doesn't mean its not craft brewing.
 
abracadabra said:
Pardon me for being the skunk at the party :) (pun intended). But it seems to me that you'd just continue to extract more and more tannins using a process such as this. Thereby making a really nasty tasting beer with the second and third runnings. Seems to me you'd be better off just making a good beer rather than trying to squeeze every last bit of sugar out of the grain.

You're a little off the mark AB. I assume you sparge your mash several times to extract your wort. With this you sparge the mash once to get the first wort. Then you sparge again to get the next brew. That's why its best to have a higher OG in the first sparge so the second sparge isn't too weak. You wouldn't do it everytime and probably shouldn't be done unless you understand what you are doing.
 
If you sparge too long you will run tannins out of your grain. The big problem is the pH not the SG (although running past 1.010 is just going to give you lots to boil down). Regardless, you should have no trouble producing, delicious tannin free beers from a partigyle.

My twist on this would be to brew a RIS and a Pale Ale from the same batch. If you mash your base grains (English Pale, maybe some Munich and a bit of wheat) then steep the specialty grains (different for the two beers) you can make two distinct beers from one mash, each with a balanced recipe.
 
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