First partial mash

[ploppythesausage]

Hi, I've decided to make the leap from extract + every ingredient under the sun, to partial mashes (now that I understand a lot more about malts, yeasts etc).

I roughly know how I'm going to go about doing it I was just looking to see if anyone else has experience with what I'm planning.

I have a 25 litre FV, a 15 litre stockpot and a 9 litre stockpot and am planning to brew in the bag. Having looked at Death Brewers post (but lacking the ability to do full boils) my plan is as follows:

- mash (BIAB) as much as I can in the 9 litre pot and sparge (by tea-bagging) into the 15 litre (or vice versa?), then add the wort from small pot (as much as I can anyway) into the big pot and boil.
- Fill the 9 litre pot with water, and also boil, but this time using DME
- Combine in the FV, top up if necessary (looking to hit about 20 litres).

Anyone else tried this?


PS. Is the grain left over in the bag totally spent at this point or could I dunk it in water to make a smaller batch of low ABV beer (perhaps mixed with fruit/juice)?

 

[SilverZero]

If you have mashed AND sparged, the grain is pretty well done, but the whole idea of sparging goes back to when one would take the first runnings and make a big beer, then take the sparge/second runnings and make a smaller one from it, so you could go that route.

I'd mash first in the bigger pot, to get a thinner mash and a better efficiency.

 

[aiptasia]

First, are you using a base malt where a mash is really necessary (two row, six row, etc.) or are you using the DME for your base and just doing BIAB with adjunct malts that don't actually require conversion?

If it's the latter, you probably don't need to do a sparge. You can just steep the adjunct malts in a grain bag (tea bagging) at 150 * f for 30 minutes and dunk the bag a few times to prevent compaction and thoroughly mix the water with the grains. This is pretty much what I do with most of my batches. It's not actually a true mash because no enzymatic starch conversion is going on. Adjunct malts (non-base malts) usually have their starches already converted so all that is required to extract them from the grains is a simple steeping in hot water.

Sparging is usually only done where the brewer wants to get the maximum quantity of sugars out of the grain. It literally means "sprinkling" hot water over the grains to get the maximum efficiency from the grain, which may or may not be important to a home brewer. Fly sparging is tricking water continuously over the grains, collecting the runnings, and then adding them to the first runnings to get every little bit of sugar out of the grains. Most homebrewers do batch sparging by adding a larger batch of warm water over the grains and collecting the runnings from the mash tun. The converted 10 gallon water coolers are perfect for doing this and can be recirculated to both extract the most sugars and clarify the beer a bit (the grains become their own filter in the bottom of the mash tun).

Many home brewers prefer quality over quantity, so using first runnings without a sparge is often just fine and dandy. You will have to spend a little more on grains, say $5.00 or so on a typical 5 gallon batch, but this is easily absorbable on a small scale. Commercial brewers would have to spend maybe $500 more on a batch which would have to be passed along on their bottom line, which is less economical. Therefore, sparging makes much more economic sense to them.

 

[ploppythesausage]

Thanks, a lot of reassuring info here.
Yes I'll be mashing with a base malt. The DME is only to make up for lack of capacity for grains.

If I get this right though, I should be able to mash in the bigger pot and skip the sparge. Then I can take the bag of grains and 'sparge' into the smaller pot (either pouring water through it, or just sitting the grains in the water) and make a smaller batch of weaker beer.