1st Partial Mash Questions (it's long, sorry)

So I finally brewed my first partial mash. I was a little apprehensive about taking that step, mostly because I wasn't prepared for it equipment-wise. After reading abunch of posts on here, I decided on a method and went to it. Thanks everyone for the information.

So, here's what I did:

1 lb. 2 row
1 lb. Munich
8 oz. Crystal 10L
8 oz. Crystal 40L
8 oz. Belgian Biscuit
8 oz. Carapils

Mashed 1 hour in 1 gallon water. Heated water to 170 degrees, dumped in grains, stirred for a bit. Temp came down to 155 degrees and stabilized. I covered the pot and let it sit, checking temp every 5 minutes or so. After 45 min, I noticed the temperature dropping below 150, so I turned the burner on (low) and stirred the mash until the temp came up a couple degrees.

At 1 hour, I slowly poured the mash through a strainer into another pot, then slowly poured the wort back through the grains in strainer. Luckily I have two small (8 qt) pots that my strainer fits into, so the wort didn't have too far to fall. I did this 4 or 5 times, till it seemed to clear out a bit.

Then I slowly poured 1 gallon of 170 degree water through the grains into the pot, and poured the port back through the grains into the brew kettle.

The rest of the brew was pretty straightforward...I had already warmed up the rest of my brew water, dissolved 6 lb. of extract into it, and was bringing it to a boil when I added the mash. The whole mess came to a boil about 10 minutes later.

Now for the questions:
So was my method sound? Was I being overly or underly anal?

Is there any way to test for starch conversion at this point (yeast already pitched and in the primary), or do I just have to sweat it out?

Any suggestions for what to do differently, short of stepping up to all grain? I will make that move eventually, but I don't feel I'm done exploring the extract process yet.

I didn't set out to do this brew as a partial mash, the guru at my LHBS told me I would have to mash with the grains I chose. This is supposed to be a Fat Tire clone, which seems like the trendy thing on this board. I will post results when it gets done. Thanks in advance for your wisdom.

flingdingo said:

Now for the questions:
So was my method sound? Was I being overly or underly anal?

Is there any way to test for starch conversion at this point (yeast already pitched and in the primary), or do I just have to sweat it out?

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Sounds to me like you did a pretty good job.
As far as conversion goes, I don't thinkyou can check it now but most 2 row is highly modified and will convert in much less than one hour. I'd bet you easily got complete conversion. Did you hit your target OG?

I don't know if you were overly or underly anal, but I've never poured back through the grains. Pouring hot water through there is good though. I'm still new to the process myself, so maybe pouring back through is something I should be doing.

rewster451 said:

I don't know if you were overly or underly anal, but I've never poured back through the grains. Pouring hot water through there is good though. I'm still new to the process myself, so maybe pouring back through is something I should be doing.

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I second that. I guess the pouring it back through the grains would be equivalent to returning the first runnings to the mash.

One thing I theorize about partial mashes is, that the mash temp doesn't matter as much if most of the fermentable sugar comes from extract. This extract will have a fixed dextrin/maltose ratio and if you want to have a higher bodied beer, you may want to mash your partial mash at a fairly high temp and create almost only dextrines (alpha amylase activity) to compensate for all the Maltose in the extract (at least the extract I used had a high maltose/dextrin ratio and produced faily dry beers).

Kai

RichBrewer said:

I'd bet you easily got complete conversion. Did you hit your target OG?

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The guys at the brewstore said to expect around 1.050 - 1.055 with this recipe. I got 1.060!!

Kai, if I left out the two row and only steeped the grains, wouldn't my OG be much lower, like 1.048 - 1.050? I have done a couple extract w/grains brews with a pound or so of crystal malts, and they all came out between 1.045 - 1.050 OG.

flingdingo said:

The guys at the brewstore said to expect around 1.050 - 1.055 with this recipe. I got 1.060!!

Kai, if I left out the two row and only steeped the grains, wouldn't my OG be much lower, like 1.048 - 1.050? I have done a couple extract w/grains brews with a pound or so of crystal malts, and they all came out between 1.045 - 1.050 OG.

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I did't say leaving out the 2-row. I just theorized on getting all the body (dextrins) for the beer out if the grains if the extract lacks body.

Again, do what the recipe calls for. I was bringing this up as something that I thought about after some of my extract brews were rather dry.

Kai

Sounds like you did fantastic and probably should keep your process. HOWEVER... If you were to try something different, I would suggest pouring sparge water, not your mash water back through the grains. Reason being, you are trying to rinse more sugars out of the grains. Mash water is already has a certain concentration of sugars (hopefully), and therefore can't extract many more sugars from the grains like pure sparge water would which has no concentration of sugars and hence could suck more out of the grains.

But I've never done a partial-mash before, so this may not be relevant.

flingdingo said:

At 1 hour, I slowly poured the mash through a strainer into another pot, then slowly poured the wort back through the grains in strainer. Luckily I have two small (8 qt) pots that my strainer fits into, so the wort didn't have too far to fall. I did this 4 or 5 times, till it seemed to clear out a bit.

Then I slowly poured 1 gallon of 170 degree water through the grains into the pot, and poured the port back through the grains into the brew kettle.

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I did something very similiar to this recently. My concern with this procedure is hot side aeration. Pouring the wort back through the grains like this several times is definately going to aerate the hot wort, and IMHO is really of limited benefit as far as clarification goes. It probably doesn't make that big a difference, since the aeration was to a small volume of wort, and you're probably going to drink it before it has a chance to stale anyway. When I did a partial mash I just dumped the wort thru the strainer once, but I lined the strainer with cheese cloth to filter it.

Also, it seems to me that pouring water through the grains, however slowly, is not going to do a particularly good job of rinsing the sugars out of the grains. This method is fine for steeping, but probably not for a partial mash. What I did was dump the grains from the strainer into the sparge water, stir them up good and let set for 5 mins, then dump the wort back through the strainer. This is closer to what happens with a batch sparge, and should do a better job rinsing the sugars from the grains. You could even do that twice for better efficiency.

El Pistolero said:

Also, it seems to me that pouring water through the grains, however slowly, is not going to do a particularly good job of rinsing the sugars out of the grains. This method is fine for steeping, but probably not for a partial mash. What I did was dump the grains from the strainer into the sparge water, stir them up good and let set for 5 mins, then dump the wort back through the strainer. This is closer to what happens with a batch sparge, and should do a better job rinsing the sugars from the grains. You could even do that twice for better efficiency.

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Good point.

El Pistolero said:

I did something very similiar to this recently. My concern with this procedure is hot side aeration. Pouring the wort back through the grains like this several times is definately going to aerate the hot wort, and IMHO is really of limited benefit as far as clarification goes. It probably doesn't make that big a difference, since the aeration was to a small volume of wort, and you're probably going to drink it before it has a chance to stale anyway. When I did a partial mash I just dumped the wort thru the strainer once, but I lined the strainer with cheese cloth to filter it.

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I try to save a six pack of each batch to sample after a few months, although it doesn't always survive. I will definately try to save some of this brew for 3 - 6 months and see if I get any off flavors.

My understanding of hot side aeration is that it is mainly a commercial brewery concern. What I have read and been told is that it is much more of a problem when the wort is falling 8-10 feet into a kettle. When it is falling 12 - 18 inches into one of our kettles, the effects are negligible.

Who knowS? I sure don't. For me, this kind of thing is half the fun of homebrewing. The other half, of course, is cinsumption.

El Pistolero said:

Also, it seems to me that pouring water through the grains, however slowly, is not going to do a particularly good job of rinsing the sugars out of the grains. This method is fine for steeping, but probably not for a partial mash. What I did was dump the grains from the strainer into the sparge water, stir them up good and let set for 5 mins, then dump the wort back through the strainer. This is closer to what happens with a batch sparge, and should do a better job rinsing the sugars from the grains. You could even do that twice for better efficiency.

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Like I said, this was my first attempt at a partial mash. I don't get the whole batch sparge concept, maybe you could give me a quick explanation?
I'm certainly open to other methods for my next brew.

flingdingo said:

I don't get the whole batch sparge concept, maybe you could give me a quick explanation?

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Quick and Easy Batch Sparging.

Thanks. It's clear as mud now.

El Pistolero said:

Quick and Easy Batch Sparging.

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Quick and Easy?!?

What's wrong with doing it the way Charlie Papazian does it in the Complete Joy of Homebrewing?

A strainer, 150°F water, and a homebrew in the other hand. That seemed quick and easy to me!

I'll be sparging for the first time on Saturday and planned on using Papazian's method unless someone can tell me a better way that's just as simple and low cost (ie. NO cost).

DP said:

What's wrong with doing it the way Charlie Papazian does it in the Complete Joy of Homebrewing?

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I don't think there's anything wrong with the Pap's methods and they should work fine for you. Some of his methods are rock solid, while others I would call 'gateway' methods designed to hook people onto the hobby with easy, adequate results recognizing that they'll probably upgrade their process as they get more into things.

Cool!

An Update - I racked my Fat Tire to secondary last night. Gravity was 1.016, and it tasted great. Looks like I did something right.