Parti-gyle sanity

So, since I just bought a new 58 quart mash tun, I figured I'd break it in by doing a parti-gyle RIS and dry stout.

so, here's my plan. I am gonna do r2eng's Double-W RIS (https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f68/double-w-imperial-stout-74932/), but dough-in with enough water to get pre-boil volume. So, dough in with about 11.5 gallons (11.5 - 3.5 grain absorption = 8gal preboil, 90 min boil), drain that off, then add another 8 or so gallons of water to the mash to get another 7 - 7.5 gallons of water for the small(er) beer.

Does this seem reasonable? What do you think my efficiency drop will be for essentionally no-sparging the main RIS? Should I add a few more lb of maris otter to make up the difference?

Yeah your gonna need a lot more grain. the recipe calls for 24.5 lbs. 11.5 gallons = 46 quarts. You mash ratio will be 1.87 qts/lb. You will probably only get a pre boil gravity of 1.065 ish. IMHO that is not high enough for your RIS. Also, with 46 quarts of water and 24.5 lbs of grain, you have probably overfilled your meager 58 quart mash ton.

Sorry but I don't see this working out without, a giant (and very thick) mash, a super long sparge and 2 super long boils.

Kai has a table on his wiki ( http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php/Understanding_Efficiency ) that shows the gravity of 1st runnings using various water:grain ratios:



Your recipe is 24.5lbs and you're talking about using 11.5 gallons of water (46 quarts), so you have a ratio of about 1.9 quarts per pound, so (according to Kai) you'll get about 1.066 wort out of that first runnings.

8 gallons of 1.066 worth, boiled down to 5 will end up with a gravity of 1.106 if I did my math right.

Walker said:

8 gallons of 1.066 worth, boiled down to 5 will end up with a gravity of 1.106 if I did my math right.

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Yeah that makes plenty of sense. But with only 5 gallons at the end of the boil you may only have 4 gallons of finished beer. If your OK with that then cool. Personally I aim for 6 gallons at the end of boil. 5.5 gallons in the fermenter and 5 gallons into the keg. Every time you transfer you loose volume to hot break, trub, hops etc...

But you still have to solve the fact that all that water and grain may not fit in you ton.

Also, Kai's numbers assume that you get very good (90%) mash efficiency. If your crush is not very fine then chances are you will come up a bit short.

Perhaps you can just supplement the RIS with some DME.

maida7 said:

Kai's numbers assume that you get very good (90%) mash efficiency.

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Ah... i was just thinking about that after posting the table. I wasn't sure what he was using for efficiency.

Under that table, it says :

Table 1 - Extract content or gravity of the first wort based on the mash thickness. 100% mash efficiency, 80% fine grind extract and 4% moisture content of the malt were assumed for the grist

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SO, I think he's assuming complete starch conversion and then 80% of the sugar extracted, or am I misunderstanding his terms?

maida7 said:

Yeah your gonna need a lot more grain. the recipe calls for 24.5 lbs. 11.5 gallons = 46 quarts. You mash ratio will be 1.87 qts/lb. You will probably only get a pre boil gravity of 1.065 ish. IMHO that is not high enough for your RIS. Also, with 46 quarts of water and 24.5 lbs of grain, you have probably overfilled your meager 58 quart mash ton.

Sorry but I don't see this working out without, a giant (and very thick) mash, a super long sparge and 2 super long boils.

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um...
rackers' calculator says 24.5 lb at 1.9 qt/lb will take up 13.6 gallons of tun space.

1.065 boiled down to 5.25 gallons will put me over 1.1, which, i'm fine with for a RIS

walker, I've seen that chart, that's kind of what I was basing this plan on. so, seems like i'm partially on base?

Walker said:

Under that table, it says :



SO, I think he's assuming complete starch conversion and then 80% of the sugar extracted, or am I misunderstanding his terms?

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i don't know what 100% means but i think 80% is the "Dry Yield Fine Grain" of the malt, typically around 80% for base malts

Walker said:

Under that table, it says :SO, I think he's assuming complete starch conversion and then 80% of the sugar extracted, or am I misunderstanding his terms?

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Yeah, he kinda looses me there. But from my personal experience you need a pretty fine crush to hit these numbers. I had my mill set at .037 ish and was always a bit under Kai's mash numbers. I tightened up to .032 ish and now hit the FW mash numbers very every time. But that only measures the mash or conversion efficiency. So while I get 100% conversion I'm only 80-85% in to the kettle because I loose some in the lauter. And then I loose a ton of points into the fermenter with all the trub and junk I leave in the kettle. My overall brew house efficiency is only 70-75%.

Have you been measuring gravities of your first runnings? I would recommend it. I've been doing so for the last year and I can now predict what my first, second, and third runnings (batch sparging) will be based on my qt/lb ratio. I usually get 78-82% conversion efficiency, according to the numbers in Kai's table. My take is that his numbers assume 100% conversion and dissolution.

As luck would have it, I am also planning a parti-gyle for this weekend, doing a Belgian Dark Strong and a Dubbel. First thing I would recommend is MEASURE your mash tun. I discovered that my 54qt is actually only 45qt up to the rim! The extra 9 I am guessing is the space between the top of the rim and the lid ceiling. Might be fine for piling ice or soda cans in, but not for mashing.

So I had to modify my plans and replace some base grain with LME so I could fit all the grains and water in. Will be different, but should still work out.

But back to your situation, if you use my conversion efficiency, your first runnings will be closer to 1.054 at 1.9 qt/lb. You need to mash closer to 1.5 qt/lb to get 1.066. But then you'll only get around 6 gallons of runnings. The solution to that is to scale up your recipe so that you get sufficient 1st runnings of the gravity you want, but not overfilling your MT.

Then thinking about the 2nd beer, my 2nd runnings are usually 50-60% of the gravity of the first for comparable volume. So if you short the volume a bit, you could get maybe up to the 1.040 range and over the boil get into dry stout range. Color calculations for the small beer are more difficult and I can't help you there. My point of view on that is to try it and see!

Hope this helps, I have been going over this alot this week, sorry if I'm geeking out.

Good luck!

Hey guys,

I'm doing a BIAB all grain session this weekend, and it will be my first shot at it. I am planning on trying to do a partigyle brew as well, and was wondering what the recommended procedure would be for no sparge BIAB partigyle brewing? My recipe is below. I plan to do a Imperial Stout and possibly a Brown Ale/Dry Stout/Porter, really whatever I end up with as my second beer.

8lb 2 Row
2lb Carapils
2lb Flaked Barley
1lb Roasted Barley
1lb Chocolate Malt

According to the BIABrewer.info calculator, I will be mashing with 10.5 gallons of water in my kettle since I won't be sparging and need all of my water volume at the beginning. Any idea how much water I should use the second time around? Am I re-mashing, or just sparging to get the second beer?

2blue-
Thanks for the info. Good tip on the mash tun, its still in transit, I haven't even seen it yet, lol. I'm currently using a 5g cooler for a tun - pretty tiny.

I've been thinking about this for about 5 hours / day for the last week. In the end, I'm just gonna go for it and see what happens. I take decent notes but never took grav readings of my runnings because I never had a refractometer until a few weeks ago.

I guess I'm most concerned with the RIS, and if I get another 5 gallons of beer out of the mash, that'll be good too.

jbrook-
you're going to make 5 gallons of a RIS with 14 pounds of malt? Is this a partial mash? i don't understand what you're trying to do....

jbrookeiv said:

Hey guys,

I'm doing a BIAB all grain session this weekend, and it will be my first shot at it. I am planning on trying to do a partigyle brew as well, and was wondering what the recommended procedure would be for no sparge BIAB partigyle brewing? My recipe is below. I plan to do a Imperial Stout and possibly a Brown Ale/Dry Stout/Porter, really whatever I end up with as my second beer.

8lb 2 Row
2lb Carapils
2lb Flaked Barley
1lb Roasted Barley
1lb Chocolate Malt

According to the BIABrewer.info calculator, I will be mashing with 10.5 gallons of water in my kettle since I won't be sparging and need all of my water volume at the beginning. Any idea how much water I should use the second time around? Am I re-mashing, or just sparging to get the second beer?

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Slightly less water the second time around because the grain absorption is no longer a factor. However 14 lbs of grain is kinda light for 2 standard size batches. I fear the RIS will be low gravity and the second beer will be very very small.

let me walk thru this and see if it makes sense:

instead of my lofty goal of running the 1.113 RIS off in one shot, I could mash at 1.5 qt/lb (roughly 10 gallons strike, minus 3.5 grain absorption leaves 6.5 gal of first runnings), run that off, sparge with 5 gallons, run enough off of that to give me 8 gallons of RIS wort.

then run the rest off into another kettle, sparge with enough to give me 7.5gal of small beer wort.

Is this a more realistic plan?

motobrewer said:

2blue-
Thanks for the info. Good tip on the mash tun, its still in transit, I haven't even seen it yet, lol. I'm currently using a 5g cooler for a tun - pretty tiny.

I've been thinking about this for about 5 hours / day for the last week. In the end, I'm just gonna go for it and see what happens. I take decent notes but never took grav readings of my runnings because I never had a refractometer until a few weeks ago.

I guess I'm most concerned with the RIS, and if I get another 5 gallons of beer out of the mash, that'll be good too.

jbrook-
you're going to make 5 gallons of a RIS with 14 pounds of malt? Is this a partial mash? i don't understand what you're trying to do....

Click to expand...

maida7 said:

Slightly less water the second time around because the grain absorption is no longer a factor. However 14 lbs of grain is kinda light for 2 standard size batches. I fear the RIS will be low gravity and the second beer will be very very small.

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It's only going to be ~7.5% ABV on the stout, but it's still technically an Imperial Stout.

I will definitely use less water on the second batch, and was thinking of doing a 2.5-3 gallon batch for the partigyle beer.

well i usually get about 70% total brewhouse eff, so 14lb of grain for me is only a 1.070 beer (for 5 gal, usually i try to get 5.25-5.5 in the ferm). Is there really enough extract left after that to get even 2 gallons of something over 1.020?

motobrewer said:

well i usually get about 70% total brewhouse eff, so 14lb of grain for me is only a 1.070 beer (for 5 gal, usually i try to get 5.25-5.5 in the ferm). Is there really enough extract left after that to get even 2 gallons of something over 1.020?

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I'm doing a 5 gallon batch, not 5.5 gallons. Could that account for the difference here? According to BeerAlchemy, I should get an OG of 1.075.

depends on your eff. 14lb at 5 gallons at 70% is 1.071, 75% is 1.076. what's your eff?

wait, i also saw 10.5 gallons of strike water? for 14 pounds of grain? that doesn't sound right. usually i mash at around 1.5 quarts per pound of grain, 14*1.5 = 5.25 gallons.

but i've never biab'd.

motobrewer said:

let me walk thru this and see if it makes sense:

instead of my lofty goal of running the 1.113 RIS off in one shot, I could mash at 1.5 qt/lb (roughly 10 gallons strike, minus 3.5 grain absorption leaves 6.5 gal of first runnings), run that off, sparge with 5 gallons, run enough off of that to give me 8 gallons of RIS wort.

then run the rest off into another kettle, sparge with enough to give me 7.5gal of small beer wort.

Is this a more realistic plan?

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The first batch sparge should only be 1.5 gallons. There should be no grain absorption on the sparge so 1.5 in = 1.5 out. 6.5 (first runnings) + 1.5 first sparge) = 8 gallons RIS pre boil.

Sparge the second beer with 8 gallons at once or 2 steps that = 8 gallons.

Have some DME on hand to bump things up if needed. Enjoy and let us know how it goes

maida7 said:

The first batch sparge should only be 1.5 gallons. There should be no grain absorption on the sparge so 1.5 in = 1.5 out. 6.5 (first runnings) + 1.5 first sparge) = 8 gallons RIS pre boil.

Sparge the second beer with 8 gallons at once or 2 steps that = 8 gallons.

Have some DME on hand to bump things up if needed. Enjoy and let us know how it goes

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ok, that seems logical. but, i understand that the grain is already saturated from the mash, but to me it seems that dumping 1.5 gallons onto 24.5 of wet grain, seems that some of it is gonna get held up somewhere...

december 18th is brewday. i'll try to take notes, but i might have to brew in my garage because i'm in wisconsin and it's cold, so space (and probably time for this brewday) is at a premium...

motobrewer said:

depends on your eff. 14lb at 5 gallons at 70% is 1.071, 75% is 1.076. what's your eff?

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Not sure yet, this is my first BIAB session. We'll see!

jbrookeiv said:

Not sure yet, this is my first BIAB session. We'll see!

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oh, lol. well, its your brewday, but i think planning a parti-gyle for this will be setting yourself up for failure.

i'd say just do a single brew if this is your first.

motobrewer said:

ok, that seems logical. but, i understand that the grain is already saturated from the mash, but to me it seems that dumping 1.5 gallons onto 24.5 of wet grain, seems that some of it is gonna get held up somewhere...

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You would still get around 1.5 gal out, but it would be hard to get that small amount of water distributed throughout the big mass of grains, so you might not get too many sugars out, i.e. an inefficient lauter.

I think you had it right the first time, the batch sparge can be 5-7 gallons depending on what you're going for. But you'll only need 1.5 of it for the first beer, the rest for the 2nd.

i think, with all the charts, calcs, etc, I should be good with this:

gonna bump the base beer up by 2lb of base malt (26.5 instead of 24.5 total lb)

then collect enough runnings into kettle #1 to get 5.25 gal 1.113 RIS wort, sparge and collect whatever's left over. There should be enough left over to create a 1.035-ish beer, I'm gonna spike that with a lb of DME for 1.045.