Water quantities in a parti-gyle recipe

Hi there folks,

My friends and I are feeling pretty adventurous and want to try brewing a parti-gyle recipe (this will be our third all-grain recipe, tenth recipe overall).

"Brewing Better Beer" by Gordon Strong gives away a recipe for an English Barley Wine/Brown Ale combo. Simplifying, it goes like this:

1- Mash 31lbs of Maris Otter for 90 minutes at 150F
2- Mash-out at 170F
3- No sparge, collect 8 gallons at 1.082 (then boil 120 minutes, adding hops)
4- Add 1.5 lbs crystal 80 and 1/4 lbs chocolate in the mash tun
5- Fill the mash tun with 170F water and steep for 30 minutes
6- Collect 7.5 gallons at 1.040 (then boil 75 minutes)

My main question is: how much water in each step ?

Let me do the math, and you tell me if it is correct.

The grain absorbs 0.13 gal/lb, and we may include (as BrewPal does, but I fail to understand how to do a no sparge with this software) a "system loss" of .25 gal. So if I want to retrieve 8 gallons in step 3, I should strike with 12.28 gal, then mash-out using decoction. The Maris Otter is now saturated in water, so step 5 should only account for the water absorption of the Crystal and Chocolate, so if I want to retrieve 7.5 gal in step 6, I should add 7.7 gal.

Overall, this gives a water-to-grist ration of 1.58 for the main recipe, which seems about right.

Is everything right? Any comment or technique I should know while brewing parti-gyle? Thanks

EDIT: Added question in #9: My MLT is probably too small for 31# of grains + 12gal of water. Is it alright to divide this in two mashes (i.e., two parti-gyles with half the ingredients each time)?

1. if you're capping the mash, don't mash out. you want the enzymes ACTIVE for the second beer.
2. you're correct in working backwards to find your mash volumes. if you need 8 gallons of first runnings, you need to calculate how much 31# of grain will absorb, add that to 8 gallons, and add in your dead space, etc..... all of which you've calculated already.

so, sounds good! partigyle is an awesome way to build your pipeline, btw.

A quick plugin of 31# MO to brewpal, with a strike volume of about 12 gals says it'll yield a pre boil value of 1.145, much higher than your 1.08ish value is there something I'm missing?

Also regarding the previous post's concern over mashing out killing the enzymes, doesn't it not matter with crystal and chocolate malts since they don't need to be mashed just steeped?

Thanks for the answers, people.

@SouthBay: Thanks for checking that out! Confidence is a non-negligeable factor in the success of a brewing session

@HopOnHops: For BrewPal, you should set your efficiency at about 55%; if you do a no sparge, then you're missing quite a lot of sugars. Also, I think you're right with regards to the enzymes; those are two malts with fully converted sugars.

HopOnHops said:

A quick plugin of 31# MO to brewpal, with a strike volume of about 12 gals says it'll yield a pre boil value of 1.145, much higher than your 1.08ish value is there something I'm missing?

Also regarding the previous post's concern over mashing out killing the enzymes, doesn't it not matter with crystal and chocolate malts since they don't need to be mashed just steeped?

Click to expand...

I understand what you're saying, but if you poke 6 LBS of your favorite crystal malt into tasty brew, you get different OG values from "Steeped" vs "Mashed"

@william_shakes_beer: how come? I'm not sure I get that. Both Crystal and Chocolate do not contain starch, AFAIU, so you're only extracting the fully converted sugar. What's the subtility I'm missing?

Micha said:

@william_shakes_beer: how come? I'm not sure I get that. Both Crystal and Chocolate do not contain starch, AFAIU, so you're only extracting the fully converted sugar. What's the subtility I'm missing?

Click to expand...

I've never done the mash to compare actuals, I'm only going from the software. Perhaps there's an error in the math? Are you certain that *all* the starch is converted to sugar? Perhaps for some of the less heavily roasted malts, there's still some residual sugars that get converted by the enzymes in the base malt. Seems to me like the software just uses one extract figure for mashed and one for steeped, irrespective of the roast.

I don't have answers, only questions.

last time i parti-gyled, i used my typical 75% to calculate the grains i needed. Essentially, the second beer _IS_ a batch sparge for the first one. so, you can calculate the total gravity points that will be garnered from the mash, and then divide it into 2/3 for the first runnings, and 1/3 for the second runnings..

for example: 31# of grains, to make 10 gallons of beer, at 75% efficiency, will get you ABOUT 1.086 beer. The first 5 gallons will be considerably more concentrated, containing 2/3 of the potential sugars (86gp x 10 gallons = 860 x 2/3 = 576 gp / 5 gallons), which is 1.115 OG. the second 5 gallons will contain appx 1/3 of the sugars, and be appx 1.057 OG. of course, thats WITHOUT capping the mash for the second beer, and these are approximate numbers.

make sense?

@SouthBay: Makes sense. The 2/3, 1/3 ratio is guesswork and should include how much of the liquid is boiled out, but basically, this should be correct.

While I'm at it; I realized that my cooler isn't probably large enough for 31# of grains + 12 gal... I'm planning on parti-gyling twice, with half of everything each time. This will take time, but I've already taken my day off for it. Is that realistic ? Will the result be equivalent ?

Thanks!

Yeah itll work. It may take some extra time though. And if youre mashing twice, why not just make two beers instead of partigyling? Itd be easier to control and plan for