Parti-gyle fun

[stuknkrvl]

Hey all,

I've worked up a recipe for a barleywine and I want to parti-gyle the batch so I can have a beer to drink while I'm waiting for the barleywine to mature.

The recipe (see the attached pic) is for a five gallon batch, but I'm concerned because every video or article I can find on making a parti-gyle indicates a much smaller batch for the strong beer than for the weaker beer (for example, three gallons of a DIPA and five gallons of a bitter/pale ale).

I've looked for parti-gyle calculators, but I can't find anything that makes a lot of sense to me.

My question, essentially, is should I adjust my recipe (for total volume, hop scheduling, etc.) for a smaller batch of big beer as I've seen in the examples, or - based on my recipe - do you think I can get away with batch sparging my grain bill for a second, and likely much much weaker, beer?

As an aside, I do have a couple pounds of maris laying around that I've not had any use for as of yet. Maybe I could toss that in for the second mash?

Thanks!

 

[Kent88]

I don't use beersmith, so I'm not entirely sure if I'm reading this correctly, but that is a monster barleywine. For reference: http://beersmith.com/blog/2011/10/07/parti-gyle-brewing-two-beers-from-one-mash/ & http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.2/moshertable.html

This recipe, with 23.75 pounds of grain with some honey for a 6 gallon batch (you said 5, I read 6), is the base brew that you want to split? That could be problematic, but I'm not sure my assumptions are correct

Assuming you can get the efficiency you're looking for, if you want to split this into 2 gallons barleywine and a 4 gallon small beer, then you're looking at something like 2 gallons at 1.179 and 4 at 1.089. If you're going for a fifty-fifty split, you're going to get something like 3 gallons each of 1.159 and 1.079. (Can someone verify those numbers? I'm not super confident about it). Barleywines of 1.179 and 1.159 seem like they would be tough to ferment out with the software already describing a 1.119 wort producing a 13% abv beer, but I don't know what your experience is with high gravity worts and I don't know what kind of tolerance your yeast have.

Be sure to write about what happens here, I've been planning to parti-gyle for some time (am thinking a doppelbock and an ale-toberfest, but I don't have the aeration system I want to use on the big beer) and I want to know how things turn out.

 

[stuknkrvl]

@Kent88 - Thanks for the info. I'm still a couple weeks out from brew day, so things may change between now and then but I'll definitely keep you posted.

One thing I will mention about my plans to get it fermented out is the BeerSmith recipe pic is a little misleading. I saw a Brewing TV video where they said adding honey to the beer at high krausen can help the attenuation by drying out the beer and boosting the alcohol. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Stay tuned!

 

[Qhrumphf]

There's a direct relationship between water to grain ratio and gravity of your first runnings. A thicker mash will produce higher gravity first runnings but less of them, and a thinner mash will produce more runnings but lower gravity. Unless you want to go with blended runnings (which I HIGHLY recommend for a host of reasons, simply using first for one beer and sparging for a second is certainly easiest but produces the worst results), the higher the gravity of the first runnings (and bigger the beer unless doing an extended boil) the smaller the batch size needs to be.

Rather than repeating myself, this thread has some input from a number of us who partigyle regularly on our processes: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=566633

 

[thaymond]

Partigyle is a very attractive concept in getting a huge beer and a session beer out of the same mash. Last May, I was able to successfully partigyle a Scottish 80/- and a Wee Heavy.

The brewing process I use is BIAB, so you'll have to adjust based on your own system.

I used 20 ish lbs in my mash, and made it l.25 qt/lb. It was the absolute limit for my 10 gallon pot. I took first running only for the Wee heavy, which out me about 4.5 Gallons per boil. I added this to an empty 7.5 gallon pot. Without squeezing, I then sparge out another 7.5 gallons of hot water into my 10 gallon boil kettle which gave me preboil volume for my scottish. If your looking for specific measurements for preboil gravity, you could use a measuring cup to add first runnings to the second running in order to make the gravity.

I boiled 1 gallon down to 2 pints in a 10 qt stock pot for the Wee heavy. I rinsed the pot with another 2 quarts of water, added to the Wee heavy pot. I boiled for 60 minutes on both beers.

I ended up, after boil on both, 3.5 gallons of 1.100 wee heavy and 6 gallons of 1.044 Scottish 80/-. My total yield was 8 gallons after trub loss. If I did it again, I'd water down the Wee heavy to about 8% instead of the 11% that it turned out. It was phenomenal, but I could only enjoy one at a time. The Scottish was 4% and maintained some of the character of the original wee heavy mash.

I have been using a similar process for my subsequent beers, only splitting the batches evenly to do yeast/hop experiments. I'll evenly split my volumes for a total of 11 gallons. Not true partigyle since I have two even strength beers, but I get twice the amount out of one mash, which I like.

I'm interested how your process and other's processes differ from mine. It has definitely added some time to my day, but rekindled interest in homebrewing after I did this.

 

[jtratcliff]

You can also cap your mash for the 2nd beer. Add more base malt to up the gravity or add more/different specialty malts to further alter the character of the small beer.

 

[mbobhat]

I would further the point about capping after the 1st mash with more grains or specialty grains. Just keep in mind that the high alcohol beer you don't want to end up too syrupy, so practically keep the unfermentables low in the barley wine, the high gravity will stop the final gravity from getting to low without any unfermentables. In the second runnings if you didn't do anything you would end up with a beer with less body, so you could add a lb of crystal or so, you can def add some more base malt as well just to up your numbers if you'd like, maybe a few pounds. My first parti gyle I had issues with the less-bodied second beer than I'd have liked.

 

[Kent88]

I saw a Brewing TV video where they said adding honey to the beer at high krausen can help the attenuation by drying out the beer and boosting the alcohol.

I really like that episode, here is the recipe for the wookiee & ewok, in case you couldn't find it: http://brewingtv.com/recipe/2010/12/9/the-wookiee-the-ewok.html . Before the honey addition the big beer was only 1.092.

Qhrumphf suggests blending runnings, that sounds like a good idea. If you have enough kettles you could keep sparging until runnings are below 1.012 and (assuming you batch sparge?) put each running into a different kettle, and blend to make what you want.

 

[schiersteinbrewing]

I recently did a RIS and partygyle, for normal beers I hit 80% mash efficiency with a such a large grain bill (28lbs) I only hit 60% mash efficiency. You probably won't hit the numbers BeerSmith has. Have some DME/LME on hand to compensate.

 

[Qhrumphf]

I recently did a RIS and partygyle, for normal beers I hit 80% mash efficiency with a such a large grain bill (28lbs) I only hit 60% mash efficiency. You probably won't hit the numbers BeerSmith has. Have some DME/LME on hand to compensate.

If your efficiency is going down with a partigyle, you're probably not performing it in an optimal manner.

Aside from shortening the brewday for two batches, the main point of partigyling is allowing all the extra sugar that remains in the grains from brewing a large beer to not go to waste, without having to do a stupidly long boil. I've found that if I multitask with staggered brews (one mashes while another boils), that's not significantly longer than a partigyle takes me, so really it's just to gain some extra efficiency.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Also try using this: http://braukaiser.com/wiki/index.php?title=Batch_Sparge_and_Party_Gyle_Simulator

Others have made calculators as well, but I haven't used them, but I've had great results with Kai's. You just have to make sure you put good data in (grain potential, deadspace, etc).

 

[stuknkrvl]

I boiled 1 gallon down to 2 pints in a 10 qt stock pot for the Wee heavy. I rinsed the pot with another 2 quarts of water, added to the Wee heavy pot. I boiled for 60 minutes on both

This is great, but I wonder if you can clarify this part of your process.

When you say you "rinsed the pot," are you saying you performed a batch sparge or do you mean you added water to reach your preboil volume and gravity?

 

[thaymond]

This is great, but I wonder if you can clarify this part of your process.

When you say you "rinsed the pot," are you saying you performed a batch sparge or do you mean you added water to reach your preboil volume and gravity?

I pulled a gallon of the first runnings and rendered down to a thick syrup. Once I began to see large bubbles, like when you're making candy out of sugar approaching soft ball stage, I cut the temperature by adding water to the syrupy wort. I swirled then poured this into the original first runnings, which was boiling on my burner. I noticed I had some residue on the pot, so I used more water to rinse the pot, getting more sugars off of the size walls. The end result was a very heavy flavor of dark stone fruit, raisins, and plums. I highly recommend this for your Wee Heavy.

 

[Knkbrand]

I recently did a RIS and partygyle, for normal beers I hit 80% mash efficiency with a such a large grain bill (28lbs) I only hit 60% mash efficiency. You probably won't hit the numbers BeerSmith has. Have some DME/LME on hand to compensate.

Same thing happened to me. My efficiency was way off, but like schiersteinbrewing, I threw in some DME to hit my goal OG.

 

[stuknkrvl]

Awesome, thanks everybody! I'm excited about this brew. This is all great advice. Probably gonna fumble through a good bit of this, but I'll keep you posted. Brew day is next Saturday, I'll post pics and specs.

 

[stuknkrvl]

Update - After adding a few pounds of DME and a pound and a half of honey, I calculated (with a little help from the forum) the revised OG for the barleywine came to 1.113 and the OG for the small beer was 1.048. Built up a 3-ish liter starter of WLP099, tossed a little in the small beer, bulk of it in the other. As of last night the gravity for the barleywine was 1.008 and the small beer was down to 1.003. Planning to rack the barleywine for bulk aging. Gonna cold crash the small beer and bottle it pretty quick. Both are pretty tasty!

Question - this is the biggest beer I've ever brewed and I've never bulk aged anything. Will there still be enough yeast after racking it over and aging it for several months to bottle condition it for carbonation?

 

[Kent88]

Given the amount of time you'll probably be bulk aging, and the high alcohol (and probably high hop) environment, I'd recommend you add some yeast when you bottle, probably some dry champaign yeast or another pitch of the same stuff.

1.113 down to 1.008? That's 13.78% abv! I guess that honey really dries it out, and the high-gravity yeast certainly did their job. How did the mash go? What volumes did you get? What did you do for aeration?

 

[stuknkrvl]

15.32% if you use the alternate equation for higher gravity beers on the Brewer's Friend app ☺

The mash went all kinds of wrong. Used different equipment than usual to accommodate the size of the grain bill, had trouble maintaining temp and came in way under my anticipated efficiency. Preboil gravity of 1.064, bumped it to 1.085 by adding three pounds of DME and increased the boil time from 60 to 75 minutes to hit an OG of 1.101. Calculated the gravity of 1.113 after adding in the honey.

Ended up with about 4.5 gallons of each beer after pouring off a little of the barleywine in to the small beer just to even out the volumes.

Aerated the barleywine for three minutes, small beer only about one minute. Pitched both at 64F. Aerated the barleywine two more times for 75 seconds at 15 hours and again at 42 hours when I added the honey.

Pretty sure the barleywine is still fermenting, but I'm concerned about autolysis so I figure I better go ahead and rack it. There's still a ton of yeast in suspension, but there's a solid two inch yeast cake at the bottom of my carboy!

Looking forward to trying the small beer in a couple weeks. Meanwhile, gonna bottle my wheat beer today and I'm brewing a porter Tuesday.

Cheers!

 

[Kent88]

Interesting. With something that had so much mass, and probably being mashed a bit thicker, temps shouldn't be swinging all that much.

Did you aerate just by shaking the carboy, using a "fishtank"-type aerator, or did you hit it with pure oxygen? 42 hours seems a little late to be aerating, but I suppose with that much honey the yeast should have been able to scavenge the oxygen quickly.

I think autolysis isn't much of a concern until you hit 4 weeks. I hope not anyway, I just had a lager sit for that long because the temps in my garage got a little low and I wanted to give it a little extra time. But if it is pretty much done you might as well rack it off.

 

[stuknkrvl]

My go-to/standard mash tun and HLT are ten gallon igloo coolers. I might have squeezed the mash in there, but I was concerned I'd overflow so I used 15 gallon tanks (see the pictures). I've brewed with them before, just been a while since I've used them and I didn't take in to account the variables for that particular equipment.

I aerate with pure oxygen with the oxygenation kit 2.0 from Northern Brewer.

 

[stuknkrvl]

Update - Bottled this monster last night. OG 1.113, FG 1.002 - 16.1%!!

Very boozey strong right now, definitely needs several months to mellow out before it's gonna be drinkable. If it's anything like the RIS I brewed last year, my guess is it'll be getting good right around winter time. The honey I used was a Texas Mesquite blossom honey, and you can just taste it in the background. Looking forward to cracking one of these for Christmas.

Cheers!

 

[Kent88]

Nicely done!

How was the small beer? I assume it is gone by now?

You never really specified your exact recipe. You posted a picture of a recipe in that software, and mentioned the brewingTV episode, but I don't know if you said you tried following one of those exactly, or if there were any variations. Could you be specific about the recipe?

Anything you'll change next time you brew this? Any advice you'd like to give to those of us who have been seriously contemplating a parti-gyle brewday?

I find it particularly interesting that you added the honey at 42 hours and aerated then, but you haven't noticed (or just haven't said anything about) any oxidation.

 

[stuknkrvl]

Kent88 -

The small beer is pretty tasty, still have a couple bottles hanging around.

We're in the middle of a move right now, so things are beyond crazy at my place. Give me a couple days and I'll get back with all the details and answer all your questions.

Cheers!

 

[stuknkrvl]

@Kent88 :

Thanks for bearing with me while we got through the move! Finally have my brewery all unpacked and organized, heading to the LHBS today to check out the wares and stock up for my next brew!

This is gonna be a long post, so grab a beer...

Recipe -

The Incredible Hulk - American Barleywine

5.5 gallon batch, all grain (sort of... had to improvise a bit)
75 minute boil (planned for 60, went over to try to increase the OG)

18 lb 12 oz Maris Otter
2 lb Victory malt
1 lb 8 oz Crystal 80
1 lb 8 oz Texas mesquite blossom honey (added at high krausen)

2.5 oz Chinook (13%) @60
1 oz Cascade (5.5%) @25
1 oz Cascade (5.5%) @5

WLP099 Super High Gravity Ale

95 minute mash (original plan for 60 minutes, but had some issues)
Planned mash temp was 150, actual was 148 at the start, and I lost a ton of heat, ended at 141

I had so many problems with this brew, but all of it is on me. I a 15 gallon mash tun that I've brewed with before, but hadn't used for a long time prior to this brew. I was way off on hitting my temps and my efficiency suffered a lot. I ended up with a pre-boil gravity of only 1.064 (7.25 gallons volume pre-boil), so I tossed in 3 lbs DME and bumped it to 1.085. OG ended up with ~4.5 gallons at 1.101 after the boil.

Second Runnings -

Bruce Banner - Party-gyle

Same grain bill as above (obviously), but I charged the mash with an additional 1.35-ish pounds of Maris I had laying around. I didn't note down how long I let the mash rest, but I'm guessing it was an hour since that's my typical mash length. Came in way low on the pre-boil gravity again (volume 8 gallons, gravity 1.025), so I tossed in another 1.75 lbs DME and bumped it up to 1.036. After a 60 minute boil I had right at five gallons with an OG of 1.048.

I changed up the hop schedule on this one just for grins, used HBC438 (15.7%) with half an ounce @60 minutes and half an ounce again @3 minutes.

My home made stir plate crapped out on my unexpectedly as I was getting ready for this brew, so my plan to make a massive 4.5-ish liter yeast starter went out the window. I went old school and made a one gallon starter wort and just shook it up as often as I could to mix some oxygen into suspension and build up the yeast count. I did that for about two days and split it between the two brews, again being astoundingly non-specific about how much went in to each, just that I decanted as much of the spent wort as I could and dumped most of the yeast in to the barleywine and the rest in to the small beer.

I oxygenated the barleywine for a full three minutes, the small beer for a minute (my usual). At that point I stuck the small beer in a corner and didn't mess with it again until bottling day.

I oxygenated the barleywine for a full minute again at 15 hours, and then again for one minute fifteen seconds when I added the honey at around 42 hours. By my math (which may or may not be very accurate) the honey would have pushed the OG up to 1.113. I did not pull a sample for gravity when I added the honey because I wasn't confident that I had mixed it thoroughly (all I could do was rock the carboy back and forth for a bit). I'm not sure if that makes a difference one way or another (does anyone out there know??). FG was 1.002, 16.1% according to the "alternate equation" ABV calculator for high gravity beers on the Brewer's Friend app.

As for oxidation, I can't say simply because I haven't tasted the barleywine as of yet. I bottled it on the 5th of May, and at that time I didn't taste any off flavors, but I can't say how much it will have changed once it carbs up and conditions. My thought, based on observation of the fermentation and on something Michael Dawson said in an episode of Brewing TV, is the 099 was still chugging along strong and possibly still multiplying (I've never seen such a massive yeast cake) that it sucked up any oxygen I put in there and put it to good use repairing cell walls so they could handle the high alcohol environment.

The small beer is very tasty. Sort of hop forward, but not bracing like an IPA or even a bitter, but it had this kind of crisp finish to it like a strong black tea. I'm not sure I would use the HBC438 in any of my other recipes, but it worked out really well for this batch since I was just looking to have a little fun and swag out a beer to keep me busy drinking while I wait for the barleywine to get some age on it. FG for this one was 1.002 as well, 6.04%.

As for what I'd do differently, I could kick myself for not messing around with those larger mash and hot liquor tuns before brew day. It would have benefited me to be more familiar with them in terms of lost volume and temperature swings. I also would have done a little more research in to adjusting my grain bill for potential lost efficiency with a big beer like this.

Advice for people contemplating a parti-gyle - do it. Honestly, it was fun as hell. I had some challenges, but I ended up learning a lot from them in the long run, and I ended up with two beers for the price of one. I will definitely do this again some time. I will say, though, it was good that I had a buddy with me on brew day. There was a lot of heavy lifting involved, and it was nice to have someone that could help.

Hope this answers your questions for now. Let me know if you have any others, and I'll keep you posted on how the barleywine tastes. I was planning on keeping them in the closet until at least Thanksgiving, but frankly the curiosity is killing me and patience is not my forte.

Stay tuned!

 

[Kent88]

I appreciate the follow-ups, I know it can be easy to forget about this part.

Will stand by for further updates.

Do you have any plans for another crazy brew day? Maybe a triple or quadruple decoction? Turbid mashing? Crazy adjunct in the mash?

 

[stuknkrvl]

A decoction brew is tops on my list for exbeeriments, but it's gonna have to wait until I can get a chest freezer and set it up for fermentation temp control. I really want to start doing some lagers like a dopplebock or a pilsner that would really benefit from decoction, but I live in Texas so I'm limited for the time being.

For now though I'm gonna focus on reworking my recipes and getting them where I want them. I've written ten recipes for various brews. So far I like them, but I'm not sure I love them just yet so I'm gonna brew and rebrew till I get them dialed in. I'm one of those snobby perfectionists. It's a curse, but at least I recognize it, right?

By the by, I opened a bottle of the Hulk last night... I wasn't very happy with it. It had no carbonation yet (I bottle condition all my beers - no kegging equipment yet - so it takes a long time with the bigger ones) and it was still pretty sweet/syrupy. Also my fault. I had planned to dry hop the batch, but I rushed it in to bottles so I didn't have to drive across Texas with a carboy full of beer sloshing around in my truck. I'm gonna give it some time and reevaluate it, but I think I may be going back to the drawing board with this one. Maybe a different yeast? 099 is a pretty demanding and particular strain. You have to do a lot to keep it happy, and frankly I wasn't prepared for the extra work and ended up cutting some corners when I probably shouldn't have. I've seen a lot of recipes that do very well with a good clean fermenting American ale strain. Super high alcohol content sounds like a fun time, but it's all just a hot mess if the beer doesn't taste good. I'll happily sacrifice ABV points for a superior quality brew.

On a loosely related note, my wife is super happy now because we moved to a bigger house and my equipment is no longer taking over her kitchen. This pic is just my storage setup, but I like the looks of it. Everything all neat and ready to go for brew day any time I'm ready.

Cheers!

 

[Kent88]

I would imagine that doing a big beer like that, kegging would be a great help. I'm considering making a belgian dark strong ale, will be using yeast nutrient in the wort, adding fresh yeast at bottling, using belgian cork-finished bottles, and plenty of priming sugar. I would think time would fix your carbonation issue.

Maybe next time you could time it out, make a small / session beer before, and pitch that yeast cake. I have no idea how many cells your beer was supposed to need, or how many cells your starter provided. Maybe overpitching in this case isn't a bad idea.

A lagering fridge/freezer is a great investment, go for it.

 

[mbobhat]

How's the big beer tasting now? I'm always looking for a good big beer recipe worth waiting for.

 

[stuknkrvl]

@mbobhat - Sadly, it's destined to be dumped down the drain. Seems I had some kind of insidious, slow working infection somewhere in my equipment (guessing my bottling bucket or bottling wand) and I've had to dump everything I brewed since January - DIS, porter, small beer (second runnings from the barleywine), amber, and the barleywine itself. Strange because the first three listed here were solid, very drinkable beers and didn't show any signs of trouble until a couple months after going in the bottle, when they all started turning in to sour tasting (not in a good way) bottle gushers. Bought a new bucket, wand, and auto siphon along with an industrial sized barrel of PBW and I'm back to the races.

It's been a month or so since the last time I opened one of the barleywines. The last one wasn't gushing, but it didn't taste right either. I'll open another and let you know how it turns out.

 

[stuknkrvl]

@thaymond - Brewing the wee heavy today. Gonna take a shot at doing the concentrated wort addition that you suggested. Thanks for the tip!

I'll keep you posted!

 

[Kent88]

Sadly, it's destined to be dumped down the drain. Seems I had some kind of insidious, slow working infection somewhere in my equipment (guessing my bottling bucket or bottling wand) and I've had to dump everything I brewed since January - DIS, porter, small beer (second runnings from the barleywine), amber, and the barleywine itself.

It's been a month or so since the last time I opened one of the barleywines. The last one wasn't gushing, but it didn't taste right either. I'll open another and let you know how it turns out.

That is awful dude. All that work... reminds me of when I worked at a dairy farm and forgot to set the bulk tank to chill the milk and we had to dump it. Just sucks.

You going to make another parti-gyle anytime soon? Did you ever get that lager fridge you were thinking about?

Before thanksgiving I did a single decoction mash. I think you said that was on your list of things to do. Some advice, have a friend over to help you stir, be very confident in your stirring utensil, and heat the thick mash in a big kettle that can comfortably handle more than what you're putting in there.

I've been fermenting it in my biggest cooler (lid open) and using the swamp cooler method to keep it cool. I started off with adding a gallon of water to the cooler and then a 10lb bag of ice (which was probably overkill). That seemed to keep it pretty cool. I'm calling it a kellerbier so I wont have to age it for too long, just let fermentation finish, bottle, and bottle condition.

 

[stuknkrvl]

@Kent88 - Yeah, it's been painful. I was actually pretty proud of that porter. No plans for another parti-gyle any time soon. Combination of three kids and the holiday season has me hurting for brewing time and cash. Probably give it a go again in a couple months so I can let the barleywine age till the following winter.

I did get the lager fridge, and it works like a champ! Paired it up with a Johnson digital temp controller and I've been enjoying the ability to set it and forget it where my fermentation temps are concerned. I highly recommend you get one. The swamp cooler method works, but it's labor intensive and you can find a great little fridge for cheap. I traded a fifteen gallon demijon for the one I got on Craigslist.

A decoction brew is definitely high on my bucket list for brewing experiences. Just a matter of planning it out in terms of time. Already have to barter with the wife for time on a regular brew day as it is!

Let me know how that kellerbier turns out. You'll be my inspiration for a decoction session.

Cheers!

 

[Kent88]

Glad to hear you got your lager fridge. I have been running mine, a small fridge that wont fit a 3-gallon carboy, with an arduino that runs code that I mashed up myself. Not as elegant or user-friendly as other systems I've seen around the internets, but it works for me.

If this kellerbier turns out then I think I'll have a parti-gyle of my own mostly planned out. I'll make a gallon of doppelbock and I'll make the rest into a somewhat warm-fermented kellerbier that I might need to beef up with a little pils DME. I'll have to decoct again, as my 3-gallon mash tun pretty much maxes out at 6lbs of malt so it gets tough to do a multi-step infusion mash, so I need to figure out different methods of adding heat. Although I should probably just try a single infusion with a grist that includes some melanoidin malt, too.

But that has been put on hold for a bit, I have some Wyeast-PC Belgian Dark Strong yeast that I *need* to use in the next week or so. I also have some more of their PC Hellabock lager yeast that I ought to do something with. And after that I should really keep working on perfecting my sweet stouts.

But I'll keep you posted with the kellerbier. For now I can tell you it was 5lbs light munich, which was allowed to soak for a bit at ~132F before I pulled the decoction. After pulling the decoction I added a pound of dark munich malt to the mash tun and went back to stirring the thick mash as best I could. I got really nervous about scorching it, so I'm not sure I really got it to the degree of boil that it should be brought to. I forgot to get my volume indicating "dipstick" calibrated before I started sparging so I ended up winging it (and leaving out the pound of pils DME I had planned to use), adding a couple ounces of low AA hallertau at the beginning of the boil, and at the end of the boil I tried diluting to 1.050ish, which didn't give me the full 3 gallons I had hoped for.

It wasn't the greatest brew session, but I don't think I screwed it up to the point where the beer would be undrinkable. I really hope it turns out well. Next time I try a couple new methods, one being time intensive, I wont be doughing in at 4pm the night before a road trip and with a beer I plan to give away as a gift and don't have time to replace.