Need some advice: party gyle BIAB

[HBC]

I am in the 200+ gallon brewing range with experience thus far, and NEVER have tried the party gyle concept. I understand there are multiple methods, and I know I will try variants of it in the future. However, I am wanting to work with one variant now and need some advice/correction to my method that I have interpreted. Again, I know it can be down in other ways/but I am trying to focus on what size kettles and time frame I have. Thanks for your help!

My method
-Brewing an Irish Red (BIG BEER) in the 1.65 OG range.
-Doing Brew in a bag method--and usually mash out temp of about 170 to stop conversion. **I think I will avoid this mash-out routine in order to keep the grain more usable for second runnings.
-After mash out of First 1.65 OG beer, I will pull the bag, and just let it drain (no sparge). It may result in a log OG big beer, and I am okay with that.
-I will set the grain aside and after finishing the Big Beer, will pull the bag w/grain and place in a kettle of higher temp 165-degree??? water, where we can pull second runnings/and hope for a Small beer OG of about 1.032...
- I expect to dunk the biab for about 20-30 minutes???

Can you let me know if the procedure above will result in beer?? I know the first runnings BIG beer will be fine-- as I have done a no-spare BIAB many times before. But Unsure if I will stop conversion with my methods.

THANKS AGAIN GUYS!

 

[boydster]

I'm in the middle of a BIAB partigyle brew day right now, my first partigyle as well. I did a regular mash for an amber ale, pulled the bag and let it drip to get my boil volume, then basically did a dunk sparge in a second kettle with 160F water. I let the bag soak in the second kettle for about 15 minutes, stirred a little throughout, then pulled it out and squeezed it to get the volume I wanted (3 gallons in this case). The conversion was done entirely during the initial mash, so whether you mash out your first brew or not, it should not effect the conversion for your second batch. By not mashing out, I can only guess but I would imagine you are keeping more of the sugar in the grain/water mixture since the sugars will be less soluble at a lower temp than they would be at 170. Your process that you outlined will definitely result in beer.

 

[HBC]

We shall see! I have taken a sample, and it seems pretty dang watery (even with stirring and letting it sit).

I decided to leave it in the mash/bag covered at 160-165 while I am boiling my main batch. There is no penalty here in experimenting since I would have normally taken the spent grains to the chickens at this point!

Will report back- it could be a simple process for my future BIAB party gyle rendition or a flop... never know....cheers.

 

[RM-MN]

The success or failure of your partigyle will depend a lot on the quality of your crush. If you crush or grind your grains very fine, you will likely get the majority of the sugars out when you drain the bag. That would leave little sugars for the second "small beer".
If your crush is a little coarse, the longer time soaking while your first runnings are boiling will extract more sugars.

 

[MaxStout]

Looks like a good plan. Mash the first one, hoist out the bag, let it drain a bit. Then sparge the grain bag in a smaller volume of water for the second one. If I understand the parti-gyle method as it would apply to BIAB, since conversion is completed in the first runnings, all we're doing is claiming some of the remaining sugars in the second.

I have not tried a parti-gyle yet, but am considering it as I will be doing a Russian imperial stout next and would like to make a "bonus beer" from the grain. The RIS will be a 5-gallon batch at around 1.100, and I hope to get 2 or 2.5 gallons of some nice brown ale from the second runnings.

 

[boydster]

The success or failure of your partigyle will depend a lot on the quality of your crush. If you crush or grind your grains very fine, you will likely get the majority of the sugars out when you drain the bag. That would leave little sugars for the second "small beer".
If your crush is a little coarse, the longer time soaking while your first runnings are boiling will extract more sugars.

So I found this to be true today. I crush pretty fine, and I got great efficiency on my main brew but had a lower-than-desired gravity on my small brew even after boiling it down to just 2 gallons. I may end up blending the two later on, we'll see.

 

[HBC]

Royal fail on the second runnings,...'kinda'. I ended up with a finished OG of about 1.022 -- not enough for a respectable beer at all.. so I cranked it up by adding some sweet stuff (sugar), and got it over 1.03 before pitching my yeast. I am sure it will be drunkenedded... will just not win any awards.

I did however find my first runnings were MUCH higher efficiency than normal -- in the 85% range (with NO SPARGE -weird!!), which is the exact reason the second runnings likely sucked.

 

[CountryGravy]

Royal fail on the second runnings,...'kinda'. I ended up with a finished OG of about 1.022 -- not enough for a respectable beer at all.. so I cranked it up by adding some sweet stuff (sugar), and got it over 1.03 before pitching my yeast. I am sure it will be drunkenedded... will just not win any awards.

I did however find my first runnings were MUCH higher efficiency than normal -- in the 85% range (with NO SPARGE -weird!!), which is the exact reason the second runnings likely sucked.

I'm a little late to this, but I listened to a Brew Network episode last night and they were talking parti gyle.

They sated that Red Hook will often set aside their first runnings and their second runnings, and then blend the two into two beers of different styles.

In application, this would mean that you could set aside your first runnings which had a higher OG than you were expecting. Use some of the second runnings to dilute that wort down to your expected OG. Then, you would remove the excess down to your anticipated boil size and add the removed wort to the second runnings to boost the OG in the second batch.

That made sense in my head, but let me know if it didn't come out right...

 

[HBC]

I'm a little late to this, but I listened to a Brew Network episode last night and they were talking parti gyle.

They sated that Red Hook will often set aside their first runnings and their second runnings, and then blend the two into two beers of different styles.

In application, this would mean that you could set aside your first runnings which had a higher OG than you were expecting. Use some of the second runnings to dilute that wort down to your expected OG. Then, you would remove the excess down to your anticipated boil size and add the removed wort to the second runnings to boost the OG in the second batch.

That made sense in my head, but let me know if it didn't come out right...

Nope... that TOTALLY Makes sense... and I would normally do that in most circumstances but my main brew (big beer of the two) is for a work party and they asked for that specific beer from me. If I combine, I know it probably would kick ass.. but it would not be that recipe.

THAT IS DEFINITELY something that I will consider in the future though-- GREAT tip!

 

[mbbransc]

I did a BIAB partigyle 2wks ago with an Imperial Stout (1.100) and Pale Ale (1.045). I cold steeped all my specialty grains separately and added to kettle after mashing IS. I underestimated my loss of efficiency with such a large grist and had to add 1.5# DME to IS and 1# DME to the APA. Two weeks into fermentation and IS is down to 1.018 and APA 1.008. The IS tasted awesome. The APA tastes decent but is a li'l too thin. I'm planning to dry hop the heck out of it.

 

[HBC]

I did a BIAB partigyle 2wks ago with an Imperial Stout (1.100) and Pale Ale (1.045). I cold steeped all my specialty grains separately and added to kettle after mashing IS. I underestimated my loss of efficiency with such a large grist and had to add 1.5# DME to IS and 1# DME to the APA. Two weeks into fermentation and IS is down to 1.018 and APA 1.008. The IS tasted awesome. The APA tastes decent but is a li'l too thin. I'm planning to dry hop the heck out of it.

Ahh... good idea: I have some fresh hops that I harvested last yard from my garden that I could use to dry hop.. I added sugar to mine to get it to the 1.032 range... and know that the mouth feel will be way off.... so might as well make it fresh and hoppy!

 

[boydster]

I had a bag with some maltodextrin that I used to thicken up mine - didn't help with boost ABV or anything, but at least helped balance the bitterness from the hops so it isn't quite like drinking a hop tea. I like the idea of using extract, I might try to keep some on-hand for situations like this in the future.

 

[lazarwolf]

Late to party, but...I think this is a great method, and it cuts your grain costs dramatically. Current planning brew day with 2 beers. Beer one a big IPA biab. And beer two a dme strawberry blonde, I use the second running to add flavor complexity etc. So for about $15 extra I get way more beer. Yum. By the way, I no chill, and only do a 15 minute boil on the second batch.