2 Batches from same grain?

Say I make my batch of Golden Pale Ale, get my volume for the boil collected in buckets, dump my grain into a clean bag and save that off to the side.

I finish my process and jug it, pitch yeast and clean up...

Can I go back, drop that grain into the mashtun/kettle and repeat the process?

I'm assuming it's possible and that it would be lighter?

Is that feasable?

I wouldn't mind getting two batches out of a stack of grain even if one's lighter...

Or would the sugars be too low to be usefull?

Add some extract and do a partial mash?


thanks,
jake

It's doable (look up partigyle in the search), but the first beer is usually a big'un, and the second one much smaller- like a wee heavy and 60 Shilling, I believe. How big is your golden ale? A Kolsch still needs a good amount of sugar left.

What you're describing is a parti-gyle mash. It used to be done all the time (that's where Belgians got the Trippel / Dubbel designations).

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elkdog said:

It's doable (look up partigyle in the search), but the first beer is usually a big'un, and the second one much smaller- like a wee heavy and 60 Shilling, I believe. How big is your golden ale? A Kolsch still needs a good amount of sugar left.

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What do you mean by smaller?

I would assume the sugars would be less i.e. less fermentation and less alcohol produced therefore a lighter beer.

Your talking about the second one being the wee-heavy and 60shilling types??

I just used it as an example, I am still tweaking a starting recipe for a Golden Ale.. no real numbers in stone yet.

Unless you were doing a really bad ass brew for the first, it would be a waste of time.
You would have to use such a lot of grain for this to work, as if you only used your normal amount, you would virtually get no sugars out of the mash and your extraction of tannins from the husk would make a horrible light ABV beer.

Hey, if you are really interesting in doing a partigyle, my old thread from last summer is really helpful, because it goes from me having absolutely no idea how to figure out how to calculate the recipe for it, to actually doing it...It's sort of the idiot's guide to partigyling.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f36/lets-partyyyy-gyle-pumpkin-porter-ale-one-mash-74927/

To do this, you need to start with a fairly large grain bill (i.e., 20#). The first 5 gallons of beer off that amount of grain could make a "big" beer, maybe a Barleywine, because the first couple runnings will end up at a high OG.

The later runnings could make a small beer because the wort will be much thinner by then.

If you start with a small grain bill, the later runnings will be so clear that you will end up with O'Douls. I am assuming you don't want to end up with O'Douls.

You can certainly do two beers frome the same mash...just not exactly the way you describe it. I would reserve the first and second runnnings in buckets and blend them to get a stronger beer, and a mild / session beer. You could also steep some additional grain in a grain bag to alter the second or first brew.

Different hops and yeast as well. Or you could do a small heavy brew of smaller batch size, say 2-3 gallons, and then 5 gallons of session brew. Just be careful you don't get an exterely strong beer, and then an extremely weak one...that would likely happen from your proposed method above.

Oh, and you would collect all the runnings initially, not brew a batch, and reuse the grain...NG.

Bjornbrewer and I just did this over last weekend. We brewed a 10G (actually 11g) RIS and then a smaller beer right after. Our OG on 11g was 1.089. It should have been 10g but we were running way too late and Bjorn had to go, so we cut it a bit short, sacrificing gravity a bit. We sparged again to collect enough for a smaller 5g batch, and added 3.5lbs of light extract to bump up the gravity to 1.065 or so.

This was all done on the fly, we really only planned out the RIS and guessed on the second beer.

Sorry, but I have no real useful technical information or numbers for you to work with.

Cheers.

Roman

Really interesting Ideas! I'll have to check this out sometime.

I've partigyled a few times and each time had a so so result and a bloody irritating day. The latter mainly because I do not have appropriate equipment I think. The former perhaps also for the same reason now that I think about it!. Anyhoo I kept at it thinking I could improve my process and still make 10 gallons (the whole point for me was more beer & less work of course.) Finally I kind of gave up and simply brewed 2 separate 5 gallon batches in one day. And you know what? The process took *less* time, and was quite a bit more fun - oh and the beers were fantastic not having to make grain compromises like I had to for two beers, one mash. So I don't do that thing anymore, I just routinely do a double brew day!

FWIW and YMMV and WTF of course. Also you might disagree and that is A OK!
Steve da sleeve

On a whim I decided to partigyle a Smoked English Barleywine mash into a Smoked Porter as well. After the barleywine sparge I just added the Porter's specialty malts to the grist, brought the mash back up to temperature and sparged. If you need to up the gravity just add some DME/LME.

This is a good learning experience for any brewer. And you maybe surprised at how good the second batch comes out; I certainly was when my Smoke Porter ended up taking third place at the state fair.