My first gimpy attempt at partial mash

[Torchiest]

Okay, tomorrow morning I'm going to try a partial mash, uh, sorta. This is my grain bill:

1.50 lb Caramunich Malt
1.00 lb Munich Malt
1.00 lb Pale Malt
1.00 lb Vienna Malt
0.13 lb Chocolate Malt

I'm going to put this in my smaller 5 gallon pot with two gallons of water and keep it around 155ºF for an hour, then pour it through a strainer into my larger 7.5 gallon pot, pour through another couple gallons of 170ºF water, add my extract and go like normal. Does that make sense, or am I missing anything? Does that grain bill look feasible? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I don't have any cool equipment yet, so this is a very wannabe attempt, I realize.

 

[BierMuncher]

Sounds like a...sound plan.

What's your extract?
What's your final recipe your going for?

 

[Torchiest]

I'll be adding eight pounds of wheat LME and two ounces of Halletauer hops. It's meant to be a Weizenbock. I just couldn't see a way to get the recipe right without doing a partial extract. Skipping some of the malts would totally change the character of the brew.

 

[BierMuncher]

I'll be adding eight pounds of wheat LME and two ounces of Halletauer hops. It's meant to be a Weizenbock. I just couldn't see a way to get the recipe right without doing a partial extract. Skipping some of the malts would totally change the character of the brew.

Wow. 8 Lbs of extract and 4.5Lbs of grain.

That is a huge beer. Sounds awesome. I expect to see some pics...

 

[Torchiest]

Yeah, BeerSmith predicts 1.082 OG. We'll see.

And I will be photo-documenting my first partial mash, without a doubt! :rockin:

 

[Brewsmith]

Looks like that plan is good to go. What yeast are you using?

 

[Torchiest]

I'm going to use White Labs WLP300 Hefeweizen Ale. There is supposed to be a Wyeast variety that is better for Weizenbocks, but they don't carry any Wyeast at my LHBS, so I figured this would be close enough.

 

[Brewsmith]

Have you done a starter? For a beer that big it's probably a good idea.

 

[Torchiest]

Oh yeah, I've got two starters waiting in the wings for the double brewday tomorrow!

 

[Brewsmith]

Sweet, what else is brewing?

 

[Torchiest]

My Trois Pistoles Semi-Clone is the other one. I'm going with a regular extract with specialty grain steeping procedure for that one. I'm going to try to have some overlap with the brewing to speed the process. My goal is to knock out two brews in five hours or less.

 

[eriktlupus]

should be doable in under five

 

[Hops-4-Life]

Yeah, BeerSmith predicts 1.082 OG. We'll see.

And I will be photo-documenting my first partial mash, without a doubt! :rockin:

I look forward to the post brew update - I love big beers and I want to do another wheat brew myself!

 

[Torchiest]

Currently steeping the grains for the first brew of the day. I'm using it as a warm-up for the main event. Should be mashing in about an hour.

 

[Torchiest]

Well, I'm mashing right now, and it's going mostly smoothly, I think. I had the water right at 172ºF when I added it to the grains, and it was right at 158ºF when I checked the temp after adding the water.

I put the flame on very low to keep it warm, but while I was in the washroom checking the progress of my first batch, which is cooling, the temp crept up to about 172ºF in the mash. I turned the heat off and am going to just let it cool for the rest of the mash, about 30 minutes. Is that going to be a problem?

I'm feeling pretty RDWHAHB about the whole thing; since I've got 8lbs of LME to add during the boil, even if this part doesn't work out, I'll have a plenty strong beer.

 

[Cregar]

Good deal Torchiest

I just finished my first partial last night.. all went well, but I came up about 2 to 3 point off my OG. Oh well... not bad my first time. I do know I need to buy a wort cooler, to much of a pain in the arse using the sink.

Good luck and keep us updated

 

[skifast1]

As a fellow partial-mash n00b, building a simple 2-gal cooler-based MLT should give you some ease-of-mind re: controlling the mash temp (besides being really easy and kinda fun to make)

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=19413

 

[Torchiest]

Well, I had a couple problems (maybe) which were unrelated to the mashing part of the deal. I added more water after rinsing the grains, but then I didn't have enough room to boil after I added my LME. So, I had to remove and dump about 1/2 to 3/4 of a gallon of wort before the hop boil.

BeerSmith predicted an SG of 1.082. I hit 1.064. Now, I figure a significant part of that is because I lost about 1/8 of my wort. So that would put the predicted gravity at maybe 1.072. I still missed that target, so I'm not pleased, but, oh well.

It's funny because the first brew I did was the most perfect extract brew session I've ever had. I thought it was funny that I should be moving to partial mash right as I'd apparently mastered the extract process. Back to n00b status, though.

Anyway, it was fun doing the partial mash portion of the brew, and I felt more legit. Also, I did two full brew sessions in five hours, which was satisfying.

 

[Cregar]

My main problem was I didn't have a big enough pot for boiling the water for the mash... I was suppose to boil 8.25 quarts and was only able to get a little below 8 quarts. I am going to have to get a bigger pot (2.5 gallons).

Plus I was to busy making sure everything was going ok, I forgot to take a sample to measure my efficiency.

Live and learn

 

[Torchiest]

Yeah, I didn't do that either, so I have no idea how efficient I was. I used a two gallon pot for the mashing, which worked out pretty much perfectly for 4.5 lbs of grain. I'm not sure when I'll do another partial mash. I only did this one because I had no choice with the malts I needed.

It was an interesting experience. I was on a super tight schedule, which increased my stress factor substantially. If I was only doing one batch instead of two, and had more time, it would've been better. Still, I was pleased to successfully knock out two batches in five hours.

 

[BierMuncher]

That's a productive day and at worst, you'll end up with a nice session beer for those summer afternoons.

One thought, when I was doing PM's I would hit the burner for about 30 seconds at a time when trying to maintain temp. Your 158 is on the high-good side, so you could have allowed the mash to sit for a while and still been above the 150 threshold. 172 gets up around the "tannin release" temp so ya wanna be careful.

As far as boil capacity...no solution there except to make sure you have two bigger pots to split the batch up and allow for a full boil divided by two.

I used my 7 1/2 gallon (primary) bucket to combine the mash wort and the dissolved (not yet boiling) DME wort. I would combine them and then I would divvy them back up into the pots and get to boil. THis way I could simply split my hops and treat each pot the same.

Great job...10 gallons of brew in 5 hours....

 

[Torchiest]

As far as boil capacity...no solution there except to make sure you have two bigger pots to split the batch up and allow for a full boil divided by two.

I used my 7 1/2 gallon (primary) bucket to combine the mash wort and the dissolved (not yet boiling) DME wort. I would combine them and then I would divvy them back up into the pots and get to boil. THis way I could simply split my hops and treat each pot the same.

Interesting. I actually have three pots: 2gal, 5gal, and 7.5gal. I used the 2gal for mashing, the 7.5gal for the main brewing, and the 5gal was where I had my "sparge" water. It would've been perfect if I hadn't added that extra bit of water I had on the side. I'll remember that for next time though. I need to post some pictures, but SWMBO took the camera as soon as I came home, so that'll have to wait.

 

[Torchiest]

Okay, got the pics uploaded:

Started out at the crack of dawn. Actually, it was about an hour before dawn when I got started. You can see the 5 gallon and 7.5 gallon brewpots on gas burners, and two buckets of LME and the 2 gallon brewpot on the little stand on the right. The white table was set on its side to protect me from the wind. I'm about 100ft from a lake there and it gets gusty!

Added ~6qts of 172ºF to the grains and nailed 158ºF! That was satisfying.

I'm pretty sure this is the right consistency to have.

A little bit came over the top and made a small mess. No big deal, although the temp got up to about 170ºF while I was chilling my first batch of the day. I turned off the heat and let it slowly cool off for the rest of the hour.

 

[Torchiest]

After the hour of mashing, this is what I had. I thought it looked pretty good.

This is my set-up. I had a collander in a muslin bag, which was set inside a bigger collander. I couldn't get all the grain in the collander at once, so I did it in four shifts. I'd fill up the inner collander and then pour ~170ºF water through the thing, about 1.5 gallons per portion. It worked out pretty well in terms of ratios.

I know this has got to be one of the most ghetto set-ups in history, but it worked out okay for me, and it was pretty fun. Plus I managed to go partial mash with no additional equipment investment lol.

 

[Cregar]

very cool

I had to do mine in the kitchen using a 3 gallon round cooler. I was very happy on how it worked. I didn't even think about taking pics, too bust re-reading to mak sure I was doing it correctly. Just wish I would have checked my efficiency.

 

[Torchiest]

Yeah, me too. I'm not sure if I'm figuring it right, but it looks like I had 50% efficiency, according to BeerSmith. Not very good, but I didn't expect much, so it's okay.