Starting first partial mash tomorrow - some questions.

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EddieB428

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I transferred my first beer into my secondary this past weekend, using my brother's Mr. Beer kit that I modified by adding a real airlock to the lid. I know the Pale Ale didn't need a secondary but I needed to free up my Better Bottle for another small brew...the Ale Pail is reserved for a 5 gallon batch of a La Fin du Monde clone that I'm starting soon.

Going to try making a Brown Ale with a partial mash using DeathBrewer's procedure. Wanted to start today but still have to work out some math and I didn't have enough time before work (stupid closing shift on a holiday).

Here's the recipe I'll be using for a 2.5 gallon batch along with mash calculations, someone please let me know if I have them right or wrong.

Brown Ale - Partial Mash - 2.5 gallon batch
1 lb 6 oz Briess 2-Row Brewer's Malt
4 oz Briess Crystal 60L
4 oz Briess 6-Row Chocolate Malt
2 lbs Briess Golden Light DME

.5 oz Cluster @ 7.9% AA - 60 Minutes
.25 oz East Kent Goldings @ 4.5% AA - 15 Minutes
.5 tsp Irish Moss - 15 Minutes

Safale US-04 English Ale Yeast

From what I've been reading I'm looking at using a mash thickness of 1.25 qt/lb. That would be 2.34 qt of water. If I go down to 2.25 qt which is easier to measure I'd get 1.2 qt/lb which is close enough. Using some calculators I'd need a strike temp of ~166* to drop to ~150* after adding the grains. The recipe I'm basing this off of (only change is the hops, doubling the Chocolate malt, and using DME instead of LME) says to mash at 150* for 90 minutes. Now the sparge water should be around 170* but I'm iffy on the amount. I read somewhere to use 2 qts per lb of grain so that would be 3.75 qts...does that sound right? After mash/sparge top off boil pot to a 3 gallon boil size.

Going to leave this in the primary with an ambient temp of ~62* for 3-4 weeks before bottling.

Please let me know if this is correct or what corrections need to be made.
 
Are you doing a full volume boil (starting with about 3 gallons of wort and boiling to 2.5 gallons)?

If so, you have enough volume to use a lot more grain and less extract in your recipe.

I might suggest:
3.25 lb 2 Row
8 oz 60L crystal
4 oz chocolate malt
1 lb DME

4 lb total grain x 1.5 qts/lb = 6 quarts of mash water at 166 deg water to bring the mash temperature to 152-154 deg F for 60 minutes.

When you drain you should have about 1 gallon of wart with about .5 gallon of water absorbed by the grain bed. Use 1.5 gallon of 175 deg water to rinse the grains. Top off the water and add the DME. You should have 3.0 gallons of 1.042 wort pre boil.

Good Luck
 
EddieB428 said:
I transferred my first beer into my secondary this past weekend, using my brother's Mr. Beer kit that I modified by adding a real airlock to the lid. I know the Pale Ale didn't need a secondary but I needed to free up my Better Bottle for another small brew...the Ale Pail is reserved for a 5 gallon batch of a La Fin du Monde clone that I'm starting soon.

Going to try making a Brown Ale with a partial mash using DeathBrewer's procedure. Wanted to start today but still have to work out some math and I didn't have enough time before work (stupid closing shift on a holiday).

Here's the recipe I'll be using for a 2.5 gallon batch along with mash calculations, someone please let me know if I have them right or wrong.

Brown Ale - Partial Mash - 2.5 gallon batch
1 lb 6 oz Briess 2-Row Brewer's Malt
4 oz Briess Crystal 60L
4 oz Briess 6-Row Chocolate Malt
2 lbs Briess Golden Light DME

.5 oz Cluster @ 7.9% AA - 60 Minutes
.25 oz East Kent Goldings @ 4.5% AA - 15 Minutes
.5 tsp Irish Moss - 15 Minutes

Safale US-04 English Ale Yeast

From what I've been reading I'm looking at using a mash thickness of 1.25 qt/lb. That would be 2.34 qt of water. If I go down to 2.25 qt which is easier to measure I'd get 1.2 qt/lb which is close enough. Using some calculators I'd need a strike temp of ~166* to drop to ~150* after adding the grains. The recipe I'm basing this off of (only change is the hops, doubling the Chocolate malt, and using DME instead of LME) says to mash at 150* for 90 minutes. Now the sparge water should be around 170* but I'm iffy on the amount. I read somewhere to use 2 qts per lb of grain so that would be 3.75 qts...does that sound right? After mash/sparge top off boil pot to a 3 gallon boil size.

Going to leave this in the primary with an ambient temp of ~62* for 3-4 weeks before bottling.

Please let me know if this is correct or what corrections need to be made.
Click to expand...

I would mash in with 2qt./lb. and sparge with 3 qts. of water. Personally, I like to get close to the same amount of wort from 1st and 2nd runnings.

The strike and sparge water temperatures are dependent on grain temperature, what you are mashing in and how much heat you lose during the mash. Without this information, I can only get you close.

To be safe, I would shoot for a mash temperature of 152 and mash in with 3.75 qts. at 160 degrees. This should get you real close. Have both cold and boiling water ready to add in case you miss your temperature by more than a couple of degrees. Sparge water at about 180 will be fine.

Be sure to account for dead space, if any, in whatever you're mashing in and add sparge water accordingly. You should end up with 1.2 gallons of wort after sparging.

Add 1.8 gallons water and your DME to the kettle and you should be very close to your target volume at the end of the 60 minute boil. Top off with water to reach your target volume in the fermenter.

Your fermentation schedule sounds good. Be sure to take a hydrometer reading before bottling.

Hope this helps.

Bob
 
Just finished the mash in. I upped the 2-row a couple ounces to make an even 2 lbs of grain since I knocked .1 lbs of DME off the recipe so I didn't have to open a new package for just a little DME. Used 2.5 qts of water for 1.25 qts/lb. Overshot the strike temp by a few degrees when I went to get my wife to help but a little cold water brought it down. After mash in the temp was 152*, I think it's a 2 gallon pot so there's not a lot of dead space. Put the lid on and stuck it in the oven set on warm. The lowest temp mark on the oven is 175* and the marks are in 25* increments so I'm figuring warm to be about 150*. Going to give it 60 minutes in the oven and I'll check the temp and give it a stir about 1/2 way through. I'll go with 1.5 gallons of sparge water and use Deathbrewer's tea bag technique.
 
Brew day is done, everything cleaned, and the fermenter is sitting in 65* ambient temperature. My OG came out at 1.046 but that's without factoring in the wort temperature. I figure the actual OG is probably around 1.050 +/- a couple points. This beer is mainly for my wife so I gave her a taste of the wort before I pitched the yeast and she made a funny face. Maybe a little too much on the hops, but I told her that the flavor will mellow out with time once stuff starts settling out.

All in all it was a good experience with the partial mash, I'll definately do it again. Now to wait a couple more months until both my beers are done so I can try them side by side.
 
Since brewing the Brown Ale on Tuesday I've been running the process over in my head and picked up a few errors. I'm sure the beer is fine, but it's good to realize what went wrong and how to fix it.

The first thing is I don't think I crushed my grains well enough. I used the rolling pin in a ziploc bag method and after reading some more I'm pretty sure I didn't do a great job. I don't think my LHBS can mill it for me either. The store is rather small and it's more of a wine making store. I didn't notice a mill anywhere in there.

The second thing was I didn't cool the wort fast enough. I completely forget to buy a couple bags of ice to aid in the cooling. As a result I had to rush through the last steps so I wasn't taking up the kitchen and pitched the yeast at a higher temp than I should have. From now on I'm going to cut the boil volume down and boil up some water the day before to make an ice block out of. Can't afford a wort chiller anytime soon, and besides, SWMBO made a comment when I told her I was going to spend $20 on a second 20 qt pot.

I thought I had a good idea in using the nylon bag as a filter when I poured the wort into the bottling bucket before transferring it to the carboy. Too much gunk still got through. I have to work on the whirlpool method for the next beer.

I checked on the fermentation yesterday and there was about an inch of krasen with the airlock bubbling along 1-2 times a second. Today the krausen is gone and the bubbling has slowed. I know there's still action going because I can see tiny gas bubbles escaping from the beer. Going to leave it in the primary for 3 weeks and bottle it up.

On a better note, my brother has a ton of empty bottles he said I could have, along with a couple small kegs. Don't know what size or type of kegs they are yet though.
 

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