Simplifying easy "small beer"

[EdmontonBoil]

Recently, I've been trying to get more bang for my buck on brew day by (trying to) make small beer out of the last runnings of the mash. This works especially well with a larger beer or after 10 gallon batches, where there's a little extra sugar in the mash that may be harder for a hasty brewer to carefully extract with a batch sparge. The impediment to doing this originally was the difficulty of heating extra water for a sparge, but recently I've started throwing in around 5 gallons of cold sparge water out of the tap and I've been able to get between 1.015-1.020 (again, if I've got a heavy grain bill). After throwing in some brown sugar while heating the wort, it wasn't difficult to get something fermentable and drinkable by tossing in some extra hops on hand and boiling while I cooled my "main" beer. I also dry-hopped, to get a bit of extra flavor out, and used saison yeast to maximize alcohol. The result: perfectly drinkable session beer that took about 45 minutes extra on brew day for five gallons.

The key to making this easy for me, given my brewing setup, was using cold sparge water and being willing to improvise and throw in other fermentables that I have on hand. It'd be even better if I had a lb or so of malt extract, but I've been doing all-grain for a while now and don't have any on hand, so...

Anyway. Just throwing it out there for anyone that finds it useful.

Cheers!

 

[VikeMan]

What's stopping you from heating sparge water?

 

[madscientist451]

I've made a second small beer many times by rinsing the grains again.
If I dry hop using a bag, sometimes I'll save the hops and use them in the boil of the small beer.
I've added sugar, corn syrup, honey, apple juice and frozen apple juice concentrate to bring the gravity up.
I've also added a pound or two more grain to the original recipe, then take a gallon of the first runnings to mix with the small beer runnings. The original beer comes out about the same as usual and the small beer gets some more flavor.
Last fall I was going to freeze the skins left over from wine making ( a white wine) and toss them in the fermenter with a small beer, but I was short on time and didn't have the freezer space for the skins. Maybe next year.
Usually the resulting brew isn't all that great, and I'll "blend in the glass" with another beverage I have on hand (usually cider or mead)
that also needs some help, with the hope that the blend is better than the individual parts.
There are some good part-gyle recipes out there that I've made, but sometimes its fun to just "wing it" and be experimental.

 

[EdmontonBoil]

What's stopping you from heating sparge water?

For me, it's really a logistical thing: space on my gas stove for an extra pot. By the time I pull out the wort for my main brew and find out whether there's enough sugar left for a small beer, I'm heating the wort for the boil and there's not space for an additional pot on the stove to heat for another sparge. So the most honest answer is, square footage. I could probably figure out a way to heat extra water, but if the small beer isn't super simple, I really won't do it.

but sometimes its fun to just "wing it" and be experimental.

Exactly.

I've also added a pound or two more grain to the original recipe, then take a gallon of the first runnings to mix with the small beer runnings.

This seems like a great idea. I've been trying to replicate something similar by being a bit lazy at the end of my sparge and leaving a bit of extra wort from the original batch at the bottom to bring up the final beer, but your suggestion would make things a little more deliberate and controlled.

Usually the resulting brew isn't all that great,

Do you have any sense for what makes it work or not work? My current theory, based on a small sample size, is that a successful small beer will have to do with a) which additional fermentibles I add, b) the yeast selection, and c) the hops, but... writing that out actually makes it seems stupidly obvious. ...I'm not sure if you've found certain things that regularly improve drinkability.

 

[madscientist451]

Including some of the first runnings works and you don't need to add anything like sugar that might throw off the flavor. Following an established parti-guiyle recipe works, someone else has figured out the details to make it brews be balanced in the different flavor areas. There are numerous articles on how to do it. Winging it and tossing in this and that usually doesn't work for me, but it ends up being close enough to being good that I drink it all anyway....
Using some DME instead of adding sugar would be a step up and going light on the hops would be a good idea, since there isn't as much maltiness to balance the bitterness.

 

[hottpeper13]

what i like to do is add additional stuff,this requires the sparged wort to be 150* or so for steeping (mini mash). In a grain bag I put 1 lb of pils malt and a flaked grain. Note that flaked barley will dry it out and rye will give it a better mouth feel. I use the flaked barley when I want the second runnings to be an Irish stout from a RIS main mash, flaked rye when it's a CDA. Pale beers get flaked wheat.