Is this a good mini mash set up?

[Kevin79]

Hi everyone. I've been brewing extract recipes regularly for a year or so now. I feel pretty comfortable with my brewing process and this is definitely a hobby I want to stick with. I would love to go all grain, but I live in a condo with an electric stove incapable of sustaining a full boil and brewing outside is a big no no where I live. So I've made the decision to do mini mash recipes. First, I have to admit, I'm a little confused on the differences (if any) between the terms partial mash, mini mash, and biab. I've seen a lot of posts and videos of people mashing in their kettle and using a colander over it for sparging.

However the set up I've been looking at is the mini mash set up from morebeer. They recommend mashing your grains in the kettle, transferring to an insulated bottling bucket with a Nylon bag holding the grains to maintain temperature, and then let it sit for 45 minutes. Then you begin adding the sparge water, and then slowly collect the mash from the spigot for recirculation. Finally, you drain the mash from the bucket, back into your kettle, and proceed as if doing an extract recipe.

I can post a link to the actual directions from morebeer if I'm not being clear enough. The process seems very close to the processes for all grain which is what I want. I guess what I'm asking is mainly:

1. Has anyone had any experience using this (or a similar set up) that can provide any input. Is this a good set up?

2. Is there any advantage to using his method as opposed to simple biab (using a colander over the kettle)

Any advice, suggestions, comments as to how to make the transition as
easy as possible will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Demus]

Mini mash and partial mash pretty much mean the same thing; you are mashing for a portion of your fermentables. BIAB, or brew in a bag is a full mash in a large mesh bag right in your kettle. You absolutely could combine the techniques and BIAB in your maximum capacity for your kettle and stove, and then add malt extract to make up for any shortfall in original gravity. If you do it this way you could keep your boil volume down, add your hops with the gravity on the low side, (better utilization) and add the malt extract late with about 5 minute left in the boil. The you just chill and make up the volume with water like you do with any partial boil method. How big is your kettle? What's the maximum volume you can bring to a good full boil?

 

[Kevin79]

Mini mash and partial mash pretty much mean the same thing; you are mashing for a portion of your fermentables. BIAB, or brew in a bag is a full mash in a large mesh bag right in your kettle. You absolutely could combine the techniques and BIAB in your maximum capacity for your kettle and stove, and then add malt extract to make up for any shortfall in original gravity. If you do it this way you could keep your boil volume down, add your hops with the gravity on the low side, (better utilization) and add the malt extract late with about 5 minute left in the boil. The you just chill and make up the volume with water like you do with any partial boil method. How big is your kettle? What's the maximum volume you can bring to a good full boil?

I have a 5 gallon kettle. The most I can bring to a steady strong boil is 3 gallons.

 

[Demus]

You could do 8 pounds of grain with a 1.5 quart per pound ratio. Some water is lost to absorption of the grain, but you could compensate by rinsing the grain bag with how ever much water you lost, probably about a half gallon. This should get you half to three quarters of your fermentables for most recipes. Simply add extract near the end of your boil to make up the shortfall.

Thinking in terms of "gravity points" will be helpful using this method. Are you familiar?

 

[Kevin79]

I have a loose concept. Basically you are saying, for example if I were making up a recipe on brewing a 5 gallon batch of beer with a target OG of say 1.040 and using 8 pounds of grain. I should calculate the expected typical total ppg for the grain bill.

What I need to know is would I be calculating for 3 gallons or for 5?

Now say once I calculate the estimated OG and it comes to say 1.025. I would then need to calculate how much extract to add to raise the OG to 1.040. How would I make that calculation?

I'm also under the assumption that on brew day, I can just get the OG after mashing and then calculate the appropriate amount of extract to add to reach the target OG?

 

[chickypad]

You could do that technique you described in the first post but it seems more complicated than necessary. I'd personally just do your mini mash all in the kettle in a bag. You can put your pot in a preheated oven to hold temp, then at the end of the mash just lift out the bag and squeeze. You can sparge in a colander as you mentioned, or what I do with my 3 gal stovetop batches is dunk sparge in a second pot.

Now say once I calculate the estimated OG and it comes to say 1.025. I would then need to calculate how much extract to add to raise the OG to 1.040. How would I make that calculation?

I'm also under the assumption that on brew day, I can just get the OG after mashing and then calculate the appropriate amount of extract to add to reach the target OG?

Yes. So sounds like you're saying you've topped up to 5 gal after your boil and you're at 1.025 from your mini mash. That is 25 x 5 = 125 gravity pts. You want 40 x 5 or 200 gravity pts. To add the 75 pts you need about 1.67 lbs DME (which is about 45 pts per lb).

Most folks use a program or calculator like beersmith, brewer's friend, etc. when planning the recipe. You will need to measure your first few batches to find your actual efficiency from the mash to fine tune your calcuations, but you could start with something in the 70-75% range.

Edit: just be careful if you are going by measurements after topping off. It's hard to get wort and water to mix and it's easy to make a measurement error. I would personally measure your wort gravity before topping off, then multiply by that volume to get your current gravity pts.

 

[Kevin79]

The oven idea never occurred to me as a possibility! That helps a lot! When you say dunk sparge, are you just dunking the grain bag into heated water and then adding that water to your main kettle? If so how much water are you dunking it into?

 

[Demus]

You're on the right track. In gravity points 5 gallons of 1.040 wort would be 200 points (5 x 40). So that's your target regardless of volume. 200 points divided by 3 gallons is 66.66, or 1.066. Make sense? The basic concept here is adding or subtracting water doesn't change the amount of fermentables, so we need to think in terms of how much fermentables we have or need. Check my numbers but I believe 1 pound of LME in one gallon of water is 1.036, or you guessed it, 36 gravity points. I think DME is 40. Pounds of grain is tougher to figure because it depends on your mash efficiency which is influenced by a myriad of factors. In your situation, I'd just see what I got from the 8 pound BIAB and figure your extract on the fly. For example, let's say you BIAB 8 pounds of various grains, and end up with 3 gallons of 1.045 wort. Start your boil and hop according to your recipe, and while it's boiling do a little math. How many gravity points do you have? 45x3 =135. You wanted 200 so you need 65 more right? 65 divided by 36 = 1.8 pounds of LME, or 65/40=1.625 pounds of DME. Does this help? Simple right?

 

[Kevin79]

You're on the right track. In gravity points 5 gallons of 1.040 wort would be 200 points (5 x 40). So that's your target regardless of volume. 200 points divided by 3 gallons is 66.66, or 1.066. Make sense? The basic concept here is adding or subtracting water doesn't change the amount of fermentables, so we need to think in terms of how much fermentables we have or need. Check my numbers but I believe 1 pound of LME in one gallon of water is 1.036, or you guessed it, 36 gravity points. I think DME is 40. Pounds of grain is tougher to figure because it depends on your mash efficiency which is influenced by a myriad of factors. In your situation, I'd just see what I got from the 8 pound BIAB and figure your extract on the fly. For example, let's say you BIAB 8 pounds of various grains, and end up with 3 gallons of 1.045 wort. Start your boil and hop according to your recipe, and while it's boiling do a little math. How many gravity points do you have? 45x3 =135. You wanted 200 so you need 65 more right? 65 divided by 36 = 1.8 pounds of LME, or 65/40=1.625 pounds of DME. Does this help? Simple right?

Yes! That light switch in my head just turned on!

Thanks to both of you guys for taking some time to help me out. I really do appreciate it.

 

[chickypad]

The oven idea never occurred to me as a possibility! That helps a lot! When you say dunk sparge, are you just dunking the grain bag into heated water and then adding that water to your main kettle? If so how much water are you dunking it into?

For my 3 gal recipes I'm usually mashing 6-8 lb of grain, and I find I need about 4.5 gal of water mash + sparge. I can't mash full volume like many folks do with BIAB because it won't fit in my pot, so I usually mash with about 2.5 gal and sparge in a second pot with 2 gal. I do open the bag and give it a really good stir - and yes that water is heated to about 170*. With this simple technique I get 77-79% efficiency very consistently, without needing to change the crush from what I use on my bigger fly sparge system.

That much grain absorbs about 0.5 gal if you squeeze, so this gives me a starting boil around 4 gal. I've calculated all this to get me right on 3 gal in the fermenter with my boil off and kettle trub losses. If you're going to end up topping off anyway you don't need to dial your volumes in quite so closely (you just don't want to oversparge which is less of an issue with batch sparging like this). I do have to keep an eye on the boil at hot break with 4 gals in a 5 gal pot, you could go with a little less volume if you don't want to cut it so close.

 

[EarlyAmateurZymurgist]

I have more land that I can effectively use and a two car garage to boot; however, I recently switched from using a propane fired stove to using an Update International IC 1800 portable induction range for most of my batches. I primarily brew 3.5-gallon end of boil volume all-grain batches (which yield about 3.25 to 3.3 gallons to the primary and 3 kegged gallons). This batch size opens up a huge amount of possibilities for the apartment/condo brewer. A 3-gallon soda keg will fit into places that a 5-gallon keg will not. A 3.25 gallon batch can be fermented in a 5-gallon better bottle without using a blow-off tube. One can also use the white 5-gallon food grade buckets that are sold at Wal*Mart for less than $5.00 with the lid as primary fermentation vessels. Plus, 3.25 gallons of wort is around 17lbs lighter than 5 gallons of wort, depending on O.G.

With that said, if you have your heart set on brewing 5-gallon batches, Blichmann offers a 120V/20A boil coil for their 10-gallon kettle. This coil can be installed in most 14" diameter stock pots. Most kitchen circuits are 20-amp circuits. You can purchase Blichmann's Electric Tower of Power, or you can roll your own controller using an SSVR.