American IPA Pliny and the Blonde - parti-gyle recipe

After seeing a buddy do this and after reading Radical Brewing by Mosher I got inspired to try a parti-gyle batch. I had been wanting to make a Pliny the Elder clone, but the hops expense was kinda crazy. I decided to do a parti-gyle that gave me 2.5 gallons of Pliny and 5 gallons of Blonde ale. I looked closely at the Pliny recipe and also at Russian River's other IPA- Blind Pig. The grain bill is very close, there is just more grain and corn sugar in the Pliny recipe. So I used the Blind Pig recipe for 5 gallons at 1.058 and did 3 batch sparges of 2.5 gallons.

I collected the first 2.5 g in a 5 gallon pot and the 5 remaining gallons in an 8 gallon pot. Pretty simple. I added water to each pot to account for boil off: 1 gal in Pliny, 1.5 in Blonde

*add 1 lb corn sugar to Pliny pot.

Grain Bill

11 lbs pale malt
.4 lbs crystal 40
.4 lbs wheat malt

Hops for Pliny clone (2.5 gallon)-Used hops I had-not exactly the authenic profile...but the IBU is same ...236!
.65 oz Chinook 90 min
.65 oz Simcoe 90 min
.5 Simcoe 45 min
.65 oz Amarillo 30 min
.5 oz Centennial 15 min
1 oz Simcoe 0 min
.5 oz Ahtanum 0 min

Dry hop:

1 oz simcoe
1 oz Centennial
.5 oz Chinook

Blonde: 25 IBU

.3 oz Amarillo at 60
.5 oz Ahtanum at 20


Ferment both at 65-70 for 10 days, dry hop Pliny...none for Blondie.

This was a great sucess. The Pliny is still young, but will be awesome. The blonde is excellent, making my wife a very happy SWMBO, which means I can keep brewing with fewer eye rolls.

I realize this isn't a recent post but, wow. What a great idea. I going to brew this. Gracias.

I love everything about this.

mudshark23 said:

I realize this isn't a recent post but, wow. What a great idea. I going to brew this. Gracias.

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Hi Mudshark, did you ever brew this?

I am about to do it as a 5/10 split and just wanting some feedback/tweeks.

Cheers, Tim

I use beer smith for recipe building..how spot on was the beer color of the second running?

It was very light blonde for the second runnings, honestly it has been a long time since I brewed a batch but my memory is that the color was in the 5-7 SRM range.

Thanks... Thinking about trying a 20/20 split and capped the mash for the blonde to darken a bit and increase the og.

I'll do a variant of this on Saturday! I'll top the second runnings with 1# crystal 80 and half a pound chocolate, mainly for color. In hindsight, would you have added some LME to Blondie ? Or some oatmeal maybe?

Micha said:

I'll do a variant of this on Saturday! I'll top the second runnings with 1# crystal 80 and half a pound chocolate, mainly for color. In hindsight, would you have added some LME to Blondie ? Or some oatmeal maybe?

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Hey Micha, I thought the blonde was really good without capping the mash, or adding any LME or DME but I have never tried it any other way, so that's my two cents.

1lb of C-80 and 1/2 lb of chocolate would seem to add a lot more than a little color. Those malts in that quantity would make a malty brown ale, which might be great? If you just want a bit more body, I might add a 1/2 lb crystal or just some extract.

Cheers, best brewing

Tim

Well, it surely didn't go as expected, as my brewing partener didn't read the recipe beforehand, and asked the HBS to mix all the grains in a single bag. That is 11# Marris Otter, some crystal 40 and 80, a sparkle of chocolate, and malted wheat on top. After the necessary reprimands, and a change in the hop bill, we went on and still did a partigyle as per the recipe here (capping the second batch with 2# of the grain mix FTW). Will update if the ending product is beerable (hum).

Hey, at least you made do with your situation That will be a very interesting partigyle. The first runnings must have been pretty dark? Might be a great "winter ale" grain bill; malty and hoppy.

Cheers, Tim

That's genius

I want to reverse this... 5 gallons of Pliny and 2.5 of Blonde.
Most likely will need more grain- any thoughts re the amounts?

This may just require some dilution on your part: collect an extra 1.25 gallons of Pliny( 6.25 gal collected) and pour off the 1.25 gal into your other kettle and add 1.25 gal water, check the gravity then add in extract if needed and extra water for boil off. Hop to about 20 IBU. You will have 5 gal of Pliny in the first kettle, add a gal of water for boil off and you should be good to go.

You will simply need to up the grain bill a little to make a 6.25 gal batch of Pliny. The 5 gal recipe is widely available on the net.

Hope this helps,

Cheers
Tim

It does, thanks, but I am hoping to avoid the "move some around to different BK's" dance -- it was a drag last time (mental/math errors), which is why your simple method is so attractive.
I am likely going to add some more malt and take the first 5 gallon first runnings I get as the "Pliny". I will post up what happens.
cheers!

Action shot of brew day. I ended up doing a dark mild, that is beer on left. the "Pliny" is on right.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1424671256.735830.jpg

I mashed thin and drained off all 5 gallons to first BK which already held 1.5 gal water. 90 min boil.
Then I capped the mash with ~12 oz specialty grains for the mild and added 4.5 gallons, 35 min rest then drained to second BK, 60 min boil. Adjusted hops down due to low gravities.

after boil OG: Session IPA is 1.053 (5.3 gallons, w/o dextrose), and mild is 1.031 (4.2 gallons).

13# two row, 1/2# C-40 and wheat.

Next time I would add another pound or two of base malt, and smidge less C-40 to keep color lighter.