Polygyle Mashing - Anyone Done It?

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dinokath

dinokath

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Was listening to a Jamil and Tasty podcast about big beers and Jamil talked about a technique he dubbed 'polygyle' mashing, a take on the centuries old partigyle mashing.

I am going to brew a big beer but am out of mash tun space in my 10gal cooler and was going to simply split my grain bill in half and do two mashes and each off separately, effectively doubling my mashing time on brew day, but after hearing about this, I wanted to know more.

There isn't much out there on the subject really after doing some looking around here and searching for 'polygyle'. Not much out on the www either when doing a search.

From what I gather, based on the podcast, you take your grain bill, divide it up into what will fit in your mash tun and then mash the first set of grains, run it off, toss the spent grains, then add the unmashed grains to your cooler, heat up the runoff from the first mash to your strike temp and mash again, run it off and the sugar will effectively double, with minimal loss of sugars. Jamil though that it was osmotic pressure (?) that prevented the sugar from the first running to 'seep' into the second mash, thereby extracting the sugar at the same rate as the first mash. Sounds like crazy talk, I know, but he's a fricking award winning brewery owner/homebrewer so the guy knows what he's talking about, right?!

Link to podcast

So, anyone try it?? :mug:
 
Hmmm. Sounds like, essentially, the same thing but called something else! Interesting. Thanks for the post! Reiterated mashing.
 
hmm...based on what i think he's describing, you could partigyle your partigyle...as long as you had somewhere to store your second runnings (extra fermenters)?
would double your boil too, but if you had some spare hops sitting around and an extra packet of dry yeast, you could double your beer output too!!
 
Haven't listened to the podcast yet, but skimmed through the byo article. Might add more after listening and reading more thoroughly as I am curious about this as well. I believe I've heard of this before and I've got some thoughts.

Were I to try this kind of method I would split the grist, mash as usual with half the grist first, and collect the first runnings in a kettle small enough to fit in an oven, and collect further runnings in a separate kettle and use those further (more dilute) runnings (and probably some more water) for the liquor when I mashed the second half of the grist.

While mashing the second half of the grist, I'd keep the first runnings of the first mash in a low oven (~200F). Right before I would start collecting wort from the second mash I would get the kettle out of the oven and put in on a burner. Then I'd collect wort from the second mash (sparging if necessary) and boil for a little longer than I normally do.

There may be no good reason for it, I just don't like the idea of putting all that high-gravity wort back onto another grist. I also like the idea that I'm getting my normal efficiency out of the first half of the grist, as once that comes out of the mash tun I'm not getting any more out of it, it is either going to be dried for spent grain baked goods or composted. I can't go back and get more sugar from those grains.

I guess its time to see what the experts (that being Jamil, I still question some of the articles that BYO prints) think, and if I'm just making things more complicated. I could make it still more complicated by making a decocted doppelbock using this method. Definitely more complicated than just figuring out what your mash-tun maxes out at and substituting some extract.

I would really like to hear how a brew day goes using this method. I would also really like to hear how the beer turns out.
 
dinokath said:
I am going to brew a big beer but am out of mash tun space in my 10gal cooler and was going to simply split my grain bill in half and do two mashes and each off separately, effectively doubling my mashing time on brew day...
Click to expand...

What is the batch size and weight of grain?

If you mash with 1.25 qt/lb, you can mash up to about 24 lbs in a 10 gallon cooler.

What you are suggesting sounds like a total PITA to me. I don't have much free time anymore, and anything that even seems like its going to be a hassle or would increase the chances of having problems isn't for me.

Some options:
-Reduce batch size so you can use your existing mash tun.

-Get a 5 gallon round cooler at Walmart for $20, put a BIAB bag in it increase your mash capacity for not much money.

-Get a cheapo 5 gallon pot , a BIAB bag and some old blankets, you can
get two mashes going at the same time. An extra pot comes in handy if you ever want to do a side boil/reduction of first runnings.

Or just go with your original idea of doing back to back mashes, at least you'll get predicable results and you can do other things while waiting for the mash to finish.
 
madscientist451 said:
What is the batch size and weight of grain?
Click to expand...

This is going to be a 27lb grain bill for a 5 gallon batch of stout. A session beer really. Using my average efficiency of 86%, it will finish up around 14.2% and then spend some quality time in a Balcones barrel. :D

What piques my interest on this, in no particular order:

- A commercial brewery does it. They don't like to waste money as a rule. There has to be some sound logic behind it.

- The fact that you don't lose much efficiency. What 'logic' would dictate is that the first running would leave behind sugar in the second mash. According to Jamil, who, let's face it, knows his $hit, it doesn't. It is good enough for Heretic AND Evil Twin Brewing.

- That's TWO commercial breweries employing this technique during a collaboration

- Again, it defies what we would think is logic! Putting sugar BACK into what we tried so hard to remove it from??? That kind of talk 200 years ago would have landed you in the lunatic asylum!

During the podcast they discuss simply using DME to bump up the brix, which one could certainly do. IMHO that's cheating. I really like staying true to style, so much so to the point that when I brew a German style beer, I don't violate the purity laws - ever. I spend the extra time in the lager phase to clear the beer naturally, no finings. No yeast nutrient either. Would anyone ever know? Nope. I would though, and that's enough for me. For me, at this point in my 'brewing career', DME is good for making a canned starter wort, but since grain is WAY cheaper than DME, I make mine from 8.5lbs of grain and get 48L of canned wort for about $12, the cost of some propane and about an hour of my time. :rockin: But I am straying off topic....

I think I have convinced myself to do it. I'm going to make my monster beer and see what it does. I will report back for sure, but I am confident it will do just what Jamil says it will do, simply because Jamil said it would and that guy has the brewery and the medals to show for it.

Unfortunately it will be at least a couple months before I do because of requests for brews from friends, my own zymurlogical needs (heh heh) and a lack of being able to fit more than three fermenters in my fermentation chamber. I think a new Father's Day gift is in order...
 
Try: "parti-gyle technique"
However, you'll learn the technique is to produce 2 "batches" of wort to boil from one mash and not the other way around.
 
runs4beer said:
Try: "parti-gyle technique"
However, you'll learn the technique is to produce 2 "batches" of wort to boil from one mash and not the other way around.
Click to expand...

Correct, this is a clearly the opposite. I partigyle to get starter wort sometimes, but only when the grains are as light in color.

I may partigyle this particular batch though and see what kind of gravity I get from the sum of the spent grains. My problem though is fermentor space. May do it anyway to see just how much more sugar can be extracted!
 
dinokath said:
This is going to be a 27lb grain bill for a 5 gallon batch of stout. A session beer really. Using my average efficiency of 86%, it will finish up around 14.2% and then spend some quality time in a Balcones barrel. :D
Click to expand...

I'm always up for an experiment, so its worth trying.
But it would be way easier to mash 24 lbs in your 10 gallon cooler and then make up the gravity from 3 lbs of grain with either extract or sugar, or a combination of the two.
With that much grain, and that much alcohol, I doubt you'll be able to tell the difference.
Hope you post your results if you try Polygyle.
 
madscientist451 said:
I'm always up for an experiment, so its worth trying.
But it would be way easier to mash 24 lbs in your 10 gallon cooler and then make up the gravity from 3 lbs of grain with either extract or sugar, or a combination of the two.
With that much grain, and that much alcohol, I doubt you'll be able to tell the difference.
Hope you post your results if you try Polygyle.
Click to expand...

Oh I will post them. For sure. I am am going to do it. Like my post earlier, it would be easier, sure, but I would know I cheated and, as GI Joe taught us all those years ago, "Knowing is half the battle".

I didn't leave extract brewing for all grain so I could go back to extract when it was convenient, you know? Did our Belgian and German forefathers use extract? Hell no! (I don' think they did, did they??). Did they brew stupid high ABV beers? Probably not. LOL.

Sipping away on a KBS stout right now, smoking a Melanio and planning tomorrow's brew day. Indoctrinating a neighbor into the world of homebrew by putting together a Spotted Cow clone from Austin Homebrew. It's an extract, ironically, but he wants to get into the hobby and I am starting him off easy. He's doing all the work, I am sitting back and directing his efforts, so he'll see if the work is worth the effort (it will be, I know it) and since he's using my equipment, he can decide if he wants to take the plunge. What he doesn't know is that we'll be brewing into the wee hours of the morning on Sunday, cooking up a Kolsch, which will be double decocted, just for the hell of it, but more for nostalgia of it.

Drinking and posting. They DO mix! Prost!
 
Parti-gyle. I've done it a couple of times. I did a barleywine, then made a mild from same mash. Also, a strong scotch ale, then a 60-penny.

My rule of thumb is, on the 2nd batch, I'll get half the gravity and have the quantity. So, if I do 5g of a 1.100 barleywine, I can still get 2.5g of a 1.050 mild. Something like that.
 
passedpawn said:
Parti-gyle. I've done it a couple of times. I did a barleywine, then made a mild from same mash. Also, a strong scotch ale, then a 60-penny.

My rule of thumb is, on the 2nd batch, I'll get half the gravity and have the quantity. So, if I do 5g of a 1.100 barleywine, I can still get 2.5g of a 1.050 mild. Something like that.
Click to expand...

Right, partigyle but I am talking about polygyle. This is something somewhat new? Appears there was a BYO article on something similar a few years back but on the podcast I referenced earlier, Jamil said he does the polygyle on his collaboration brew Evil Quadruplets. I am looking for anyone who has done a polygyle before. Partigyle has been done since, what, the middle ages, to create beers for the kiddies to drink and not die of dysentery. Hell, it's what everyone drank! No wonder they called it the dark ages, no one could remember a damn thing! :)
 
dinokath said:
e".

I didn't leave extract brewing for all grain so I could go back to extract when it was convenient, you know? Did our Belgian and German forefathers use extract? Hell no! (I don' think they did, did they??). Did they brew stupid high ABV beers? Probably not. LOL.
Click to expand...

They used what they had. If they needed to bring up the gravity, adding sugar was (and still is) an accepted practice, except in Germany, because of the Reinheitsgebot.
So for the actual Polygyle method, the first amount of grain will be mashed and sparged as normal? And then mash and sparge the second amount of grain.
Or were you going to do a full volume mash with no sparge?

I found a blog about barleywines where the author talks about a reiterated mash:

Method 6 – REITERATED MASH
General process goes as follows: You have two mash tuns with similar grainbills where your essentially going to use the first runnings from both tuns. 20 lbs of Grain in one 5 gallon batch o beer! First you infuse 6.5 gallons of water into 10 lbs of grain for 30 minutes at 154 degrees. From this you should get about 5 gallons of wort at 1.065-1.070. Sparge with 3 gallons and add that to the 5 gallons. Together it should be somewhere in the 1.060-1.065 range. Heat those 8 gallons up to strike the second mash tun and rest at 148 for 1 hour. Drain and you should have a wort of an OG of 1.110. This should produce a beverage of 11%-12.5% Abv

Link to the blog:

http://www.nordeastbrewersalliance.org/education/nicks-tips-for-brewing-high-gravity-beers/

Edit #2:

If you use the search term "reiterated mash" you'll find several articles from BYO and other magazines that explains the method.
It looks like reiterated mashing has been going on for about 10 years and the "polygyle"
term is the same thing but its what Jamil wants to call it.
Looks like it works pretty good, I might try it.
 
madscientist451 said:
They used what they had. If they needed to bring up the gravity, adding sugar was (and still is) an accepted practice, except in Germany, because of the Reinheitsgebot.
So for the actual Polygyle method, the first amount of grain will be mashed and sparged as normal? And then mash and sparge the second amount of grain.
Or were you going to do a full volume mash with no sparge?
Click to expand...

I started off doing exclusively German beer and was a 'snob' about adding anything except the four ingredients to my beer. Only recently have I begun to delve into anything other than the four ingredients and to date the only beers I have made that violate the laws is a RIS aged with bourbon and oak and a Westy 12 clone that uses Belgian Candi Sugar. I need to lighten up, I know. Heh. I do have a few on deck that will clearly violate the laws and am REALLY looking forward putting them together!

I am still trying to decide exactly what I am going to do, but what I think I am going to do is exactly how he describes it in the podcast - produce my regular stout recipe in the first mash, using my regular method of batch sparging. Dump the spent grains in the garden and then use just base malt to bring the SG up to where I need it to be. He talks about using a grist hydrator, which makes total sense, so I will do the math on grain absorption, add that amount of water to the wort created from the first mash, heat the wort from the first mash to the required strike temperature, add it to the grist and let it convert.

Where I am struggling is my sparge method for the second mash. I think I am going to have to fly sparge because I don't want to overshoot my volume and have to boil any longer than 90 minutes to avoid the thermal load. BUT since I am not set up to fly sparge, I will need to do that, which means a sparge arm and learning how to do it, which doesn't intimidate me any longer but adds time to the brew day since the fly sparge is much slower than the batch sparge. You do get better efficiency but using 5 gallons at a time, it's what, an extra three bucks in grain? As I type this out and think about it, may just do the math on lower efficiency expectations and up the grain bill to compensate. BUT it would be cool to up the brew game and do a fly sparge....

Decisions, decisions...
 
dinokath said:
Right, partigyle but I am talking about polygyle. This is something somewhat new? Appears there was a BYO article on something similar a few years back but on the podcast I referenced earlier, Jamil said he does the polygyle on his collaboration brew Evil Quadruplets. I am looking for anyone who has done a polygyle before. Partigyle has been done since, what, the middle ages, to create beers for the kiddies to drink and not die of dysentery. Hell, it's what everyone drank! No wonder they called it the dark ages, no one could remember a damn thing! :)
Click to expand...

Sorry man, I really thought you mistyped. I have no idea what a polygyle is.
 
Haven't listened to the podcast or read the article, but I did something like this last year.

Two mashes, about 25lb of grain in each mash in a 10g tun. First runnings out of each mash went in one kettle, the sparge went in another. Both were about 8 gallons pre-boil and were 2 hour boils. The first kettle ended up with an OG 1.137, the second 1.095.

Given the high gravity of the second batch, i considered that i could have got a third beer out of it, but it was already a very long brew day. In the end, I think I actually liked the second beer better. It was a fun experiment, but I don't anticipate doing it again anytime soon.
 
dinokath said:
I think I am going to have to fly sparge because I don't want to overshoot my volume and have to boil any longer than 90 minutes to avoid the thermal load. BUT since I am not set up to fly sparge, I will need to do that, which means a sparge arm and learning how to do it
Click to expand...
My primitive method of fly sparging requires a 1/2 gallon pitcher and a mash paddle.
I scoop the sparge water out of the kettle with the pitcher and gently pour it into the mash tun, using the mash paddle to diffuse the water.
Basically just lean the mash paddle on one edge of the tun, and slowly pour right through it.
I set my run off slow enough that I don't run the grain bed dry.
Its really much easier and quicker to batch sparge and just takes maybe a little more grain.
Its nice to have fly sparging in your bag of tricks, but not really necessary.
 
My buddy and I did a polygyle (NOT partigyle) today using Strong's JW Lees inspired Barleywine recipe on page 2 of Brewing Better Beer (slightly tweaked). Put the recipe for a 6 gallon batch into Beersmith and then did a couple more profiles for it divided to just get a few more numbers.

30.75lb grain. 13.31 gallons water total. Mash tun 10g. Boil kettle 10g.

1st mash. 15lbs grain. 6.66g strike water (so a thinner mash just so I could have strike and sparge water at same levels and mainly because my HLT is only 7g). First runnings = 5.21 pH (my water is extremely soft (close to RO) and added 10 grams CaCl2 after dough in) and collected 4.63 gallons. Batch sparged with 6.66g water. In total, roughly collected 11.25 gallons (had to estimate as one pot with wort has lousy markings). pH = 5.28. Gravity = 1.040.

Cleaned MLT. Meanwhile, heated worts for second mash. I couldn't fit all the wort and remaining grain in the MLT for the second mash so I did a batch sparge for the second mash as well. I mixed the two pots of wort a bit to try to get them equal in gravity (hot side aeration!).

2nd mash. 15.75lbs grain. 5.4g strike wort. First runnings = 5.13 pH, 2.92 gallons, 1.116 gravity. Batch sparged with 5.97 gallons wort also from first mash. Final runnings = 5.20, 8.83 gallons, 1.080. So the gravity doubled (though note there was 0.75 lbs more grain in the second mash; and of course the volume of liquid did not double).

Interestingly, yesterday I was listening to an old Sunday Session - 3/5/06 High Gravity - and Doc noted that Mike/Tasty will do this method (though Doc didn't have a name for it but he referenced doing a second mash with the wort from the first). Also, I listened to the 2015 NHC Brew Strong where JZ, Palmer, and Blichmann talked about trying this approach and Palmer noted that it was something that Chris Colby had done and blogged about (he might have been thinking about that BYO post linked earlier in this thread). So people have been doing it over the years.

Not a bad process and I may do it again. My mash efficiency was still low like it tends to be with high gravity beers, so it didn't seem to help me much there on my system. The biggest problem was not having big enough vessels to heat the first runnings (without splitting it up) and do the second mash as a no sparge.
 
Good to hear, let us know how it works out for you. I haven't done it since that last report but it's possible I'll try it again this winter.
 
I've done this - polygyle, reiterative mash, whatever you want to call it.
I brewed the 1850 wee heavy recipe in Greg Noonan's Scotch Ale book. He goes into detail about how it was done way back when.
I can tell you that it did work but added a lot of time to brew day. Results weren't any better than if I had mashed as much as possible and added extract to the boil to get to the desired gravity.

When all was said and done, we sparged the spent grain from both mashes to make a small beer too. That was a LONG brew day...
 
Well I took pictures but it's not terribly exciting.

First mash was half the base malt 3212g, plus 800g flaked corn and 800g torrified wheat. Mashed in 28L.View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1502693769.351727.jpg
Lower than expected extraction, which was not a great starting point.

I let the first mash drain for a few minutes, then pitched it and mashed in with 3212g of additional base malt. The temp had dropped from 66.6C to 60C, so I brought the temp up to 65 before the second mash. Then gentle heat was applied, to slowly ramp over the course of the mash.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1502693793.773562.jpg
The gravity actually ended up being about 20 brix, so it is additive.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1502693822.094702.jpg

Then I drained it and brought to a boil.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1502693838.704198.jpg
Added some RO water to the kettle to reduce gravity to the target of 1.060, or 14.7Brix.

View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1502693861.965257.jpg
Eventually I chilled it and split it between two fermenters as was the purpose of the mega brew: to compare two yeasts.


I would say that I learned:
1. Lauter efficiency suffered because I did not let the first mash drain fully - if I did it again, I would let the first mash drain into a bucket and add that back.
2. My induction burner and immersion chiller are not sized for more than a 5 gallon batch - they struggled
3. Despite 1 and 2, it was an effective way to increase wort production with marginal increase in time
 
Yeah I think it would be good for making high gravity wort at normal volume without boiling it down

On the master brewer podcast he said he hit 54 Plato
 
I use this technique with my Robobrew for anything over about 6kg of grain. This allows me to do two very thin mashes as opposed to one very thick one. Because the Robobrew is essentially a BIAB system, it is susceptible to stuck mashes during recirculating, which can cause all sorts of problems.

I was concerned about two things: loss of efficiency and overextraction. Short version is neither happened. Efficiency was almost identical to the bigger thick mash (and didn’t take much longer considering that I didn’t have to “unstick” the mash over and over) and I didn’t get any harsh or astringent flavours in the finished beer.
 

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