Need Help to Convert All Grain ingredients to Mini Mash

[BeerWomb]

Hello. Could someone kindly point me in the right direction to convert an all grain ingredient to a mini mash one. The recipe is as follows:

Honey Rye
2.5 lbs of pale wheat malt
1.5 lbs rye malt
3 lbs vienna malt
.5 lbs honey malt
1.5 lbs wheat flakes

All of those brings to a total of 9 lbs for grains to be mashed. My mash system is only a 24x24 grain bag and 6 gallon bottling bucket with spigot.

Could I sub the 2.5 lbs of pale wheat malt to 3 lbs of dried wheat extract?

 

[storunner13]

Hmm...Substituting the wheat malt for wheat extract would not be the best substitution since extract is usually 65% wheat, 35% barley. If you can do 5 lbs. of grain, I'd say your best bet might be:

2.5 lbs. Wheat DME
1.5 lbs. Vienna
1.5 lbs. Rye Malt
1 lb. Pale Wheat
.5 lbs. Honey Malt
.5 lbs. Wheat Flakes

If you can get flaked rye, though I've never used it, you get more rye flavor from it. So you could do .5 of both rye malt and flaked rye and put some vienna back in.

 

[halite]

You won't need that much. If you want to use dried wheat extract in place of the pale wheat, you need about 1.6 Lbs. This will give you the 12 gravity points that BeerTools says you should get from the 2.5lbs of grain.

 

[BeerWomb]

Hmm...Substituting the wheat malt for wheat extract would not be the best substitution since extract is usually 65% wheat, 35% barley. If you can do 5 lbs. of grain, I'd say your best bet might be:

2.5 lbs. Wheat DME
1.5 lbs. Vienna
1.5 lbs. Rye Malt
1 lb. Pale Wheat
.5 lbs. Honey Malt
.5 lbs. Wheat Flakes

If you can get flaked rye, though I've never used it, you get more rye flavor from it. So you could do .5 of both rye malt and flaked rye and put some vienna back in.

I like this idea. Would it be better to do 5 lbs of grain with my current setup or should I go ahead and do the full 9 lbs of grain in the original recipe.

For the mash step, should I start off with 2 gallons of water at 170F to mash the grains in the bucket. Or should I start with less water? If so, how much?

For the lautering/sparing part, I planned on bringing other 2 gallons of water to be at 170F and use a coffee mug to pour over the mash.

Is this right?

 

[JohnMc]

What mash efficiency do you get?
I'll guess ~80%, so your beer will be ~1.050, which means about 250 "gravity points"
(50 points x 5 gallons)

DME runs about 45 pts/lb/gal

3 lbs x 45 pts = 135, so you still need 115

2.5 lbs vienna* x .8 x 37 =74
1 lb rye x .8 x 30 = 24
.5 lbs honey x .8 x 30 = 12
.5 lb flaked wheat (gotta have some) x .8 x 34 = 6.8
These sum to 116.8, close enough.

Sum up the 135 and the 116.8 gives 251.8, divided by 5 gives 50.36 or a 1.0504 wort.

The .8 is for 80%, the numbers after that are the degrees of extract/lb for a grain. These may vary depending on your source.
YMMV
* the DME is all pale or lager malt for wheat DME, IIRC, so you'll need to keep the Vienna up or lose its character.

Your original recipe had the wheat at about 33% of the grain bill, this now has 65% of 54% of the extract being wheat, which is ~35%. That doesn't count the flaked wheat. You could back off on the extract, drop the flaked wheat, or just relax, etc.

Basically, you play with the numbers like this until they give you what you want. The various brewsheets help a lot.

 

[BeerWomb]

Alright. I read somewhere that the Bottling Bucket is able to handle total of 12 pounds of grains. The original recipe only called for 9 lbs. I just wanted to err on the safe side instead of pushing the limits.

I am leaning more and more on the original recipe but I really like storunner's idea about blending flaked rye, rye malt, and vienna malt. If go with this, I ll be only working with around 6-7 which is ideal.

I really haven't found out my mash efficiency. How would I find this in the most effective way?

 

[JohnMc]

Beerwomb, the only way is to find your mash efficiency is to mash and then check.

I learned by doing simple pale ale recipes with some DME to bail me out if I got less than planned. The nice thing about simple recipes is that there are simple DME substitutions to get you back where you want to be if your efficiency is lower than you'd hoped.

Of course, if your efficiency is higher than planned, revel in the extra gravity

With a complex grain bill, if your efficiency is way low, DME's relative simplicity can throw off the flavor. It'll still be good beer, just not the grain complexity you'd hoped for.

 

[storunner13]

+1 to saving a brews gravity with some DME, especially if it's a partial to begin with.

As for the partial mash process, Deathbrewer's popular "Stovetop Method" is a great way to go if you have 2 big pots. You'll probably want to go with 1.25 quarts per gallon, and mash low (around 150˚...here's a calculator), only because then it'll be easier to dry out your brew with the extract you're putting in. If you don't have 2 pots, then just pouring 1-2 gallons of 170˚ water over the bag will work too. I've done that in the past with great results.

The "Green Bay Rackers" link also has a "can I mash it" calculator to figure out how much room your mash will take up. Here's Deathbrewer's All-Grain tutorial too, if you haven't seen it.