Dumb idea for Mini Mash?

[Froyd]

Is there any point in mini mashing 2 row vs using straight extract? Typically, mini mash recipes seem to use grains that are not otherwise available in extract form, but in the case of the recipe below, there's only 2 row to complement some light DME.

Long story:
I've been an extract brewer for many moons, but recently the bug to try all grain bit me. Not willing to invest anything in trying all grain, I opted for a 1 gallon BIAB version of the recipe below. It turned out....interesting... I normally brew 5 gallon batches so the small volume provided to be an unexpected challenge: improvised 2 gallon bucket used as fermenter had no spigot, had to use racking cane, racking cane too big, kept flopping all-over the place and splashing the fermented beer; too little volume to bother with keg, so bottled but introduced even more oxygen in the process; forgot what a PITA bottling is when not using my beer gun from the keg, and fumbled with a couple of the bottles causing extra splashing and possible contamination. It was a bleeping comedy of errors. Yet, the many saints who in heaven act as patrons for our craft must have taken pity because the rather basic pale ale turned out phenomenal for a couple of bottles and pretty dang good for the others.

Because of the many SNAFUs on brewday, I thought I'd try again, but this time using my more familiar 5 gal volume and kegging. Of course, my extract boil pot does not even come close to being able to make a 5 gal BIAB, so I thought I'd mini mash part of the grain and build up my gravity with extract. So, back to the opening paragraph: is this the dumbest idea you have ever heard of? Does this type of mini mash have any chance to recreate the rich flavor that made the 1 gallon BIAB version so delicious?


Fermentables

• 5 lbs 12.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 2 61.8 % 0.45 gal
• 8.8 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L [Steep] (40.0 SRM) Grain 3 5.9 % 0.04 gal
• 3 lbs Light Dry Extract [Boil] (8.0 SRM) Dry Extract 4 32.3 % 0.23 gal

Hops

• 0.75 oz Mosaic (HBC 369) [12.70 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 23.2 IBUs -
• 0.75 oz Mosaic (HBC 369) [12.70 %] - Boil 15.0 min Hop 6 11.5 IBUs -
• 0.75 oz Mosaic (HBC 369) [12.25 %] - Steep/Whirlpool 10.0 min, 194.4 F Hop 7 4.1 IBUs -
• 1.75 oz Mosaic (HBC 369) [12.25 %] - Dry Hop 4.0 Days

Yeast

• 1.0 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05) [50.28 ml] Yeast 8 - -

 

[AkTom]

Looks good to me.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Ought to be fine, and yes if you do not have room to mash a full grain bill, then using DME or LME to bring the gravity up is an option.

 

[madscientist451]

Using base malts in the mini-mash adds gravity points but also adds flavor.
I don't like the taste of mostly extract beers, unless there's a lot of hops or something else to cover up the extract flavor.
Brewing all grain isn't complicated and you can do it easily with what you have if you just add a $20, 5 gallon round cooler from Walmart.
-Pre heat the cooler with a gallon or so of hot tap water
-Heat your strike water in your kettle, use a strike water calculator.
-Mash in the cooler, meanwhile heat your sparge water in your brew pot.
-When mash is done, pull the bag and do a dunk sparge in your brew pot.
-Dump the wort from the cooler in and you're ready to boil.
For an extra $30 you can add a spigot to the cooler, but you can do that later.
A cheap SS vegetable steamer works as a false bottom, but you don't really need it if you are using a BIAB bag.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

Agreed (with @AkTom and @Hoppy2bmerry) that mini-mash / partial-mash / mostly-mash is not a dump or crazy idea. It's likely that most people update their equipment (@madscientist451 ). So 'partial-mash' isn't talked about much in forums - except when brewing high gravity beers (where it's 'mostly-mash' ).

If you decide to keep your existing equipment, over time you could adjust recipes to safely maximize the mash and boil size for your equipment. Rather than split the recipe 50/50 (base malt vs DME), you may be able to do an 80/20 split.

 

[Froyd]

Thanks for the input. I guess at the heart of my question was whether the extra effort has the potential to deliver a better beer than if I just used 6-7lbs of DME instead of the two row.

 

[BrewnWKopperKat]

[will] the extra effort has the potential to deliver a better beer than if I just used 6-7lbs of DME instead of the two row?

I think that, for you, the answer is yes. You brewed a one gallon version of the recipe in your original post and you mentioned that "the rather basic pale ale turned out phenomenal".

mini/partial/mostly mash is a good technique to get the ABV desired for a big beer. And the technique "scales down" to mid-range ABV beers. I suspect that most people don't use it (long term) for mid-range beers because (long term) they buy a larger kettle. Either way, mini/partial/mostly mash or 'all-grain', you are making good beer in the batch size that you want.