Moving to Partial Mash

Hi all, I've been creeping these forums for months just trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible, and I've learned a lot. All of my beers so far have been extract brews (no-boil Coopers kits) but I want to start moving up the scale and getting a little more control over the beers I make. The local shops around here are garbage, so I'll be ordering stuff from online soon but I had a question or two on partial mashing.
Firstly, money is tight and I cant afford to go out and buy a big boil pot. So what is the smallest amount of wort I can get away with by just "topping up" my fermenter with water?
I know that several pounds of grain will require more water, but is there a way to do say 4lbs of grain with a small amount of water and make up the difference in the end?
Cheers.

 

Welcome to HBT. I'm a real newb myself so what i have to say could be way off. I think you can, but with 4lbs of grain i would scale down my recipe. For instance i made a 1 gallon batch recently. I scaled down a popular recipe from here, from 5 to 1gal. In looking over my notes i had 2lbs of grain for that particular recipe, and topped up with water to 1gal when i was done(after mash,sparge, and boil). As to your question about the smallest amount of wort, i have no idea, but maybe someone with more experience will be able to help out.

 

Well, I would think the amount of water does depend on how much is in your minimash... for 4 lbs of grain, I would think the volume of mash water plus 2 to 2-1/2 gals of sparge water would be OK as far as obtaining a decent sugar extraction from your grain.
I've never done it, but I've read a few folks here who have done a full wort boil in 2 separate pots, so if you have 2 "large enough" pots you might be able to get away with that.
And my 2 cents as far as boil pots go, definitely wait until you can afford a good one... the last thing you want is a handle to fall off when you have 5-6 gallons or more of hot liquid to deal with. I got my brewpot (40 qt - an ideal size if you ask me) on ebay about 4 or so year ago, for about $90.
Good luck!

 

My first brew kettle was a set of 3 from Walmart. I got an 8, 12, and 16 qt stainless steel pot all for $17.
I still have them and use them to heat my water for my 5 gallon system, but I did use them for partial mash 5 gallon batches. I think I usually added about 2 gallons of water to make it a 5 gallon batch. (Of course, I used the largest pot for my boil kettle.)
BTW, you should really notice better beers. I used a couple of Coopers kits, and the IPA was really tame.I just don't understand how anyone could get good brew by boiling water and dumping in the extract and then chilling. I know I was not pleased with the results.

 

How big is your brew kettle?

That's what limits me in my PM brews. I mash as much as i can boil the runnings from and then add extract and top up to make 5 gallons.

 

Well at the moment I am limited to a 9qt pot..which is small. I also have a 5g rubbermaid cooler to mash my grains, but its the pot size that is limiting me to the amount of wort ill be able to boil.

 

Right now, you can get great deals on graniteware canning pots. I use a 4 gallon that I got for about 20 bucks. It'll give you a little breathing room until you can afford a better kettle (although I've been using this one for a couple years and it's been great for me).

If you use Beersmith, you can enter the size of your brewpot and it'll calculate the mash and sparge volumes for you to hit your kettle size. That's a big help in designing/modifying recipes for partial boils.