BIAB Parti-gyle

I've been using BIAB/ no chill for all grain brewing for a couple of months--converted a keg to an electric keggle with PID controller.

Saturday I did 2 batches, attempting to get a higher gravity (brandy wine) and a mild. I was shooting for 10 gallons total, but wanted a milder brew at around 3-4% that I could drink in a 2-3 weeks, and a heavier beer to age for several months like a brandywine.

Grain
12 lb 2 row
3 lb malted rye
1 lb biscuit
1 lb amber
1 lb crystal 40

heated 9.25 gallons to 154, mashed in, for a 90 minute mash (temps were 149-150 entire mash)

Drained off 6 gallons to a 7 gallon kettle, started boil #1

Hung the grain bag over the keggle, and refilled with 5 gallons of water.
Heated the "sparge" water to 160, put the grain bag back in for the "2nd" mash, and added 1/2 pound of carafa II dehusked.

I let the 2nd mash go for 30 minutes, then hung up the bag to grain, and started boil #2

Batch #1 used 1 oz of magnum hops at 60 minutes, ended up with 5 gallons OG 1.070.

Batch #2 used 1 oz fuggles (20 minutes before flame out), ended up with 4.5 gallons OG 1.030.

S-33 for both.

total time was 2 1/2 hours from mash in to both brews in fermenters,

Pitched the starters the next day. Really vigerous fermentation from batch 1, not so much with batch 2.

tim

Sounds interesting. Why the 2nd mash though? My impression is that everything would have been converted in the first mash and doing the mash a second time may have just made the second runnings more fermentable. Is that what you were shooting for? Typically, partigyle is one mash, multiple sparges to collect worts of different gravities.

Also, no bittering addition for the mild?

Let us know how it goes!

When you were calculating the 9.25 preboil volume, was that what you would normally use for a biab of that size grainbill? Meaning calculated with mash, sparge and grain absorbtion volume? I see you drained off 6 gallons. Was the other 3.25 gallons all lost to the grain? Or was their stuff left behind.

And when you added the 5 gallons for your "second runnings" was that to ANYTHING of the 3.25 gallons.

Traditionally in partigyle brewing, what would be your sparge in a normal brew session would be your second runnings. So if you biab'd with an initial water volume based on mash and sparge, and didn't include any of the "leftover" wort in the second batch, I don't know that you actually got much out of your second beer.

I don't see any gravities of the two beer, to know if you got anything more than a kids beer out of the second dunking.

Did you take readings?

Revvy said:

Did you take readings?

Click to expand...

He did. His Barleywine was 1.070 (which is too low according to BJCP), his mild was 1.030...definitely in kid's beer territory.

Sounds like instead of partiglye, he re-used grains to make a separate beer (including re-mashing).

I missed the grav readings. Yeah, had he NOT gone with 9+ gallons and instead of gone with something along the lines of 6 or 6.5 with the first dunk, the gravity would be higher. But aqt 1.070 he's more like an amberish kind of ale.

And it souds like then that he did get decent extraction out of the second batch. Not a kids beer, but something quaffable.

It'd take some tweaking, but I guess a successful partigyle can be done with biab. I don't know if the info in my old partigyle thread would be helpful to adapt to biab, but some folks have found that the "real time" process of that thread helpful in getting their minds around how to come up with them. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/lets-partyyyy-gyle-pumpkin-porter-ale-one-mash-74927/

Yeah, I know I missed the OG with the first, not really a brandywine. I could have boiled off another gallon to get closer to 1.100, or I can add 2 pounds of candi syrup later on. I was simply trying out an idea I had, and figured as long as I didn't scorch anything, I would at least end up with 8-9 gallons of beer.

The 2nd "mash" wasn't really for any further conversion but was time for the 1/2 pound of carafa II to steep in the mash water. The 2nd runnings ended up right where I wanted at 1.030--was really wanting a low abv beer I could have after working in the sun and not get hammered. Here in Raleigh, its going to be hot until september.

As far as volumes, I started with 9.25 gallons, drained off 6.5 (1st run) added 5 gallons then drained the bag, leaving 5.5 gallons in the keggle. Total 14.25 gallons of water added, and total 12 gallons pre-boil, leaves 2.25 in the grain (0.125 gallons/pound).

I'm looking to do something similar, however I've never tasted a 3% beer. How does it taste?

Sure you have. It's called Bud Light. This is a great idea tho. If I can figure out the numbers and find a bigger beer I want to try, this is definitely on the list of things to do. It would let me brew 10 gallons without a 10 gallon kettle

The 3% beer ended up as a nut brown, because of the extra 1/2 pound of carafa II I steeped. Mild nut flavor, dark brown, definitely not BMC. A little too heavy of a flavor for an after lawn mowing drink.

The 1.070 is still in primary.

I just did something like this last weekend. I did a normal no-sparge BIAB mash and then moved my grain into a separate pot and "sparged" with 1.5 gallons of water to make a mini-batch. I ended up around 1.035 for the mini batch and 1.056 on the regular batch.