Partical Mash...I think i'm ready but a few questions

[PBRmeASAP]

OK, I've been messing around with extract and extract with steeping grains kits for almost a year, and having a blast, but I really want to step up and have more variety/choices/fun. I've read Deathbrewer's step by step about 5 times and think I'm ready.
First question, recipies? Can I just hit the top tab and look for something, make my list and hit my local HB store? Is there a difference between AG and PM recipies?
Second question, the sparge water in the second pot, tea bag it, let it sit for 15, remove the bag and combine it with the mash? that's it?
Third question, I I've read it correctly he started off with 2 gallons mash water, and 2 gallons sparge water, when do you add the additional 1 or so gallons to make up 5? I have a 5 gallon brew pot and will need to find another pot, but will i need a 6+ gallon?
I'm sure i'll have a few more questions, hope to start this by the weekend...

 

[Donner]

I'll weigh in on a few of these things.

First, recipes can be had a number of different ways. There are several recipes on this site that have PM versions available. If you find a recipe you want to brew, use the 'search this thread' to search for a PM recipe version. Most of the more popular recipes will have them. If you can't find a PM version, you can usually do the conversion yourself, but some grains have different requirements. The easiest thing is to look for the base malt, usually 2-rows of some form, and convert part of that to extract (if from an all-grain recipe).

For example, i took a bitters recipe that asked for 7lbs of 2-row and .35 of crystal 120 malt and converted it to a PM as 4.5 lbs 2-row, .35 lbs crystal and 1.5 lbs of DME.

Make sense?

I've glanced at deathbrewer's PM tutorial and it is pretty straight forward. The basic idea of the the tea bag section is that it replaces the traditional idea of the sparge. All you are trying to do is remove as much residual sugar from the grains as you can. People who use a MLT will drain the wort out and run water through to remove the sugar, here you are just switching vessels and instead of running water through the grains you are dunking the grains to remove the sugar.

As to the final question, 2 gallons of mash and 2 of sparge work for this method. If you were to use a MLT then most people start with a more fixed ratio of water to grain. I generally use 1.25 qts of water per lb of grain. For my system this puts me in the 5.5 qts of mash water and then i sparge with around .5 gallons per lb. This generally gets me to my target of 3 gallons for my partial boil. Since you are just dunking the grains then your 2 gallons would work fine. It's more like an additional steeping of the grains than a true sparge i think.

This weekend i moved up to a full boil and wasn't sure when to add the rest of my water since i still finished my mash with around 3 gallons of wort. All i ended up doing was taking my 3 gallons and topping up to 6+ gallons and boiled that down to 5 gallons.

Most people will say a full boil produces better beer, but if you can only handle a partial boil then that is what you should do (unless you need an excuse to get that bigger pot). Your hops utilization will change with a partial boil, but otherwise it's very easy to do, especially if you are used to doing it with extract batches.

I'm sure if i'm wrong about any of this, someone will come along and correct me.

 

[ifishsum]

Donner's explained it pretty well and Deathbrewer's tutorial is great. I use a 2 gallon round cooler as a mash tun (with a grain bag) and sparge in the brewpot. I usually convert AG recipes to partial mash, and it's pretty easy once you get the hang of it. First you need to know how much grain you can mash effectively and start your conversion.

The formula I use is 1 lb of base malt = .75 lb light LME or .6 lbs light DME. With my setup I can mash up to about 5 lbs of grain and boil up to 3 gallons of wort. When I look at a recipe I'll usually use all of the specialty malts (and adjuncts if listed), add up the weight and then add enough base malt to equal 4.5-5 lbs. Whatever amount of base malt I'm missing gets converted to extract. For example, if the AG recipe calls for:

10 lbs 2-row
.5 lbs Crystal 40L
.5 lbs Caramunich
1 lb flaked wheat

I'll use:

3 lbs 2-row
.5 lbs Crystal 40L
.5 lbs Caramunich
1 lb flaked wheat

That's 5 lbs. The remaining 7 lbs of 2-row will be replaced with 5.25 lbs of light LME (7 X .75).

Then I calculate water volume. I can boil 3 gallons, and I like to mash around a ratio of 1.3 quarts per pound of grain. So my 5 lbs of grain would require 6.5 quarts of water for the mash. If I subtract that from my 12 quart (3 gallon) capacity, that leaves 5.5 quarts for the sparge (I'll use 6 because the grain will soak up some of the water). I'll perform the mash and the sparge, then combine them and start my boil. I'll sometimes add a cup or so of extract at the start of the boil, but I wait to add most of the extract until the last 10 minutes or so. This helps me get better utilization from my hops, and also helps keep the color from darkening too much.

I hope this helps some, and good luck on your brew.

 

[brown_dog_us]

If you find a AG recipe you like, but don't know how to convert it, just post it here and someone will help you.

 

[OLB]

Or if you want to take the easy way, you can by a PM kit from the online vendors. I have bought a couple from Midwest because they have some with 4-5 lbs of grain. I have not tried the AHS kits yet because the ones I looked at had less grain, but they are highly recommended.

 

[Donner]

If you figure out how much grain your system can handle, you can always contact one of the online stores and see if they can adjust a recipe kit to match your system. Worst case they say no.