Partigyle & Extract

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GoodTruble

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In order to get more production from my limited number of brew days, I've started using a partigyle system where I get two different batches/brews/beers from each brew day. By making the second beer/recipe mostly extract, I am able to do this with very little added time to my brew day (like 1 extra hour).

I usually make one main beer (mostly all grain), but increase the grain bill about 10%. I then plan the second extract beer/recipe to be compatible with the base grains of the first beer.

I take a gallon of strike water to steep grains for the second extract beer in a separate kettle, and then after mashing the main beer, I use 1-2 gallons of the wort (or sometimes just the sparge) to mix into the extract batch. I then just round out the extract brew with LME or DME as needed. Sometimes I heat the second kettle to boil, or sometimesI just add near boiling water from the main beer and do a hop tea on the side.

I've really enjoyed this process, and just wanted to pass along the suggestion in case anyone else is looking for a way to better maximize their limited brew day opportunities. It's fun to plan a brew day out with two complimentary beers, and then to get two different beers from each brew day (currently have an all-gain blonde and extract vanilla milk stout fermenting from last weekend).
 
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GoodTruble said:
In order to get more production from my limited number of brew days, I've started using a partigyle system where I get two different batches/brews/beers from each brew day. By making the second beer/recipe mostly extract, I am able to do this with very little added time to my brew day (like 1 extra hour).

I usually make one main beer (mostly all grain), but increase the grain bill about 10%. I then plan the second extract beer/recipe to be compatible with the base grains of the first beer.

I take a gallon of strike water to steep grains for the second extract beer in a separate kettle, and then after mashing the main beer, I use 1-2 gallons of the wort (or sometimes just the sparge) to mix into the extract batch. I then just round out the extract brew with LME or DME as needed. Sometimes I heat the second kettle to boil, or sometimesI just add near boiling water from the main beer and do a hop tea on the side.

I've really enjoyed this process, and just wanted to pass along the suggestion in case anyone else is looking for a way to better maximize their limited brew day opportunities. It's fun to plan a brew day out with two complimentary beers, and then to get two different beers from each brew day (currently have an all-gain blonde and extract vanilla milk stout fermenting from last weekend).
Click to expand...
Write that up in detail and submit it to Zymurgy. It sounds like something Dave Carpenter (editor) might be interested in. 750 words for Last Drop.
 
I usually think of 5-6 options that I want to brew anyway, and then look at recipes on this site to look for overlapping base malts/grain bills. I then tinker a bit to see how much overlap I can get (the closer, the easier), and enter them both into Brewer's Friend app to check for gravity, color, IBU, etc. (I just guesstimate the grain bill for each one - usually assigning 80-90% to tge all grain beer and the rest to the second extract beer). If Brewer's Friend says either comes up short on gravity, I just add DME until it looks right -So a lot of guess work on the edges, but starting with proven homebrew recipes tested and approved from this community.
 
I have taken a similar approach. I typically only have time to brew 2-3 times a year. So getting two beers out of one day's work is a bonus. I have had a lot of success with a Rye Barleywine as my first run followed by a rye pale ale for my second beer. Depending on how my mash efficiency is I usually need to add about 1 pound of dme to the second beer to hit target. I have found I can start the boil on the first beer while sparging for the second beer. I usually end up with the boils being about 20 minutes apart, so it makes for a bit of a crazy hour remembering which hops go in which boil at each time marker. But by doing a simultaneous boil I am able to get both beers done in 7 hours from start of pulling out equipment to everything cleaned, dried and put away. Very efficient way of brewing.
 
@BrewnWKopperKat - I actually saw that article earlier this month. Interesting suggestions. But unless you are just categorically opposed to using malt extract, DME and/or LME can also be used to very much speed up and differentiate those beers with less need for dilution. I guess different dry hopping could also be used to further differentiate the beers, but I rarely dry hop at the moment.
 
GoodTruble said:
DME and/or LME can also be used to very much speed up and differentiate those beers with less need for dilution
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Agreed.

FWIW, I'm of the opinion that fresh DME/LME is just another ingredient. I'm also curious about dilution. I've had successes (all grain, 40% dilution) and failures (DME, 100% dilution) - and the levels of dilution I saw in the article seems to "challenge the conventional wisdom".
 
So very much to my surprise, the Vanilla Milk Stout (mostly) extract turned out better than my all-grain (and really researched) Blonde. -Though the blonde may still be improving with age.

So far, the all-grain batches have a clear advantage in results, but the extract batches are a lot closer second than I expected.

Next up, I think I am doing a Munich Smash, and using some of that wort to make wheat extract batch (-or maybe a Vienna Smash, but probably not). I'm a tad concerned the munich maybe too dark for the wheat, but it will probably be diluted (and I'm just kind of feeling it). Will see. Probably won't brew until the end of March (and will probably change my mind before then).
 
Got an extra chance to brew this weekend. Did the Vienna Smash (Northern Brewer) and used two gallons of it to mix into a Hefeweizen (which will be a total wild card because it uses a lot of Bavarian Wheat DME which I have not used before). -Curious to see how it all turns out.
 
I came across a similar topic (link) that might spart / inspire some additional interest in this topic.

In another topic (link), there is mention of custom spreadsheet. I have my own custom spreadsheet (not yet updated for this type of 'partygyle' brewing), so I didn't see if the spreadsheet could still be downloaded.
 
Long time ago, when high quality search was available, it would account for hypens.

Discussion and link sharing (assuming the links don't 'decay' over time) will continue to move us forward.
 
Finally kegged/bottled the Vienna Smash and Hefeweizen last night.

The Vienna (all grain) turned out great. At 4.7% its the weakest beer I've brewed, but it has a great flavor.

The Hefeweizen (extract) is a bit too heavy, and a bit belgian-tasting. I think I should have fermented it a bit cooler, but it may still mellow with time. It's good, just not as good as it smelled. -But definitely worth the extra 30 minutes to make a second batch.

Still figuring out what my next partigyle brew day will be. Maybe wit & saison, maybe munich & dunkel. Maybe something else.
 
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Brewed a Munich Smash ale and used 1-2 gallons of it to make an extract Octoberfest lager. Will see how these turn out. The extract Octoberfest seems like a bit of a gamble, but the extract Hefeweizen eventually turned out pretty good.
 
Just another update - The munich smash was underwhelming (at least compared to the Vienna smash) and took some time to age. The Octoberfest turned out great. So another point on the board for the extract batches. [Sub-update: The munich improved a lot with age. I'm now calling it a tie].

I then brewed last weekend and tried to make three different batches for the first time. I made a smash pilsner, a lemon radler, and a whiskey barrel stout. The last two were just cheap kits I bought on sale last month at lebelpeelers (which had a crazy good sale), and then used wort from the smash pilsner to mix in to the extract beers. This was a deviation from the process I'v been doing, and I probably won't try it again. Too many recipes, ingredients and moving parts to track and didn't result in the "time efficiency" which motivated me to try this in the first place. I wound up with 3X6 gallon batches, but it took all day with the boiling & cleaning. Plus, the next morning, I could not remember adding the hops to the third beer (but I did). Overall, just too much work and not as fun as planning out two complimentary beers that I can brew with just a small amount of additional effort and time.

Those three are fermenting now. I'll update later with the results (the lemon radler has the tallest krausen I've ever seen). (Another update: I finally got around to checking the gravities, and the lemon radler was a shocking 1.10 OG. So that may explain the krausen burst, much bigger beer than I planned/intended).
 
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Just a quick update: Of the three beers, the whiskey barrel stout finished quickest (about 10 days), but I let it sit another 10 days while the Lemon Radler and Pilsner finished up so I could keg & bottle them all at once.

The whiskey barrel stout is good. All the flavors I was looking for, but a bit thin. I was close to adding another 3 lbs of extra dark DME and now wish I would have.

The lemon radler is crazy-lemon-flavored. I made this same kit before, and it wasn't nearly this lemon-ish. But this time I subbed in lemon drop hops. So maybe that was it. It was also one of the crazier fermentations I've seen. I was a bit worried it was infected because it just kept growing mounds of large bubble krausen. But it seemed fine in the end. A bit sweet but it had a pound of lactose.

The pilsner (the all-grain of the trio) had a really harsh hop-byte, green flavor. I was worried it may be my first official dumper. But after two days of chilling in the keg, it's already improved a lot.

Again, I probably won't try the triple brew again. Each one of these beers probably could have been better with a little less split attention. But it was interesting to try once.

Also, the munich smash discussed above improved a lot after 3-4 weeks. So much so that I finished that keg off the day before kegging these three (so the timing worked out well).
 
GoodTruble said:
The whiskey barrel stout is good. All the flavors I was looking for, but a bit thin. I was close to adding another 3 lbs of extra dark DME and now wish I would have.
Click to expand...

GoodTruble said:
The pilsner (the all-grain of the trio) had a really harsh hop-byte, green flavor. I was worried it may be my first official dumper. But after two days of chilling in the keg, it's already improved a lot.
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If you noticed an improvement in 2 days with the pilsner, try giving the whiskey barrel stout more time. It may gain in apparent body.
 
The whiskey barrel stout indeed improved with a bit more time. It got a bit smoother/creamer after the carbonation stabilized. And the smash pilsner kept getting better. It now tastes like a stella (a slightly old stella).

For partigyle extract brew this weekend I really wanted to get back to simpler/easier/faster. So I planned out two complimentary beers where I basically just added 2-4 gallons of the main beer to some extract for the second beer. Very smooth, easy brew day. About 3.5 hours for 6 gallons of Festbier (all grain) and 6 gallons of Saison (extract). No additional steeping or hop tea needed this time. Will see how they turn out and update.
 
GoodTruble said:
The whiskey barrel stout indeed improved with a bit more time. It got a bit smoother/creamer after the carbonation stabilized.
Click to expand...
Your stout is likely to improve more for some time. I have found that my stouts start getting really good at about 6 months in the bottle and keep improving from there but very slowly. I suspect that there are very fine particles suspended that eventually settle out.
 
I did not have time to brew in August, and in September, skipped the partigyle because I couldn't think of anything to pair off of the Christmas Gruit I was brewing.

But got back to it this weekend - I wanted to brew a Halloween wee heavy recipe i started working on last year. But decided it would be much easier to make the wee heavy the extract beer in the Partigyle setup. I was going to brew it along with an all grain smash maris otter, but then realized I only had half as much maris otter as I thought. So I decided to make a wee heavy and a light scottish ale, using the same hops and yeast. I think it will be fun to compare them later.

So I brewed pale ale using mostly maris otter (and some other stuff), then used that as a base for the wee heavy by adding dark DME (and some pale DME) and some overnight cold-stepped dark malts (using a method JayJay suggested in a different extract brewing thread). I then took a small amount of each, boiled them together for a decoction, and added that back into the pale ale to darken the color a bit.

I'm fermenting both beers with Omega Scottish, and very curious to see how it turns out.
 
Tancred the Brewer said:
I have had a lot of success with a Rye Barleywine as my first run followed by a rye pale ale for my second beer.
Click to expand...
Apologies in advance for hijacking the thread for my own personal question, but perhaps someone else may have an interest:
I have a large amount of rye malt to use up and was considering a Rye/Barleywine, can you provide any more info on the version you've had success with? Thanks!
 
Just a quick follow-up - The Halloween wee heavy turned out great. I was pretty skeptical of making that using so much DME, but I think that may be the recipe I use in future years rather than the all grain version (which involved a LOT of grain).

I haven't tapped the Scottish Strong Ale, but following some tips I got in another thread (from @Kickass @DBhomebrew and @hottpeper13), I added a bit of oak and brandy soaked cherries to it. The sample I pulled when I kegged it was wonderful. Can't wait to tap it as soon as something else runs out.

Lesson learned - even when using the same yeast, different adjuncts can still help make two good, very distinct beers usung this pseudo partigyle approach.

Next brew day, I think I am doing an all grain christmas wit and extract tripel. But I am also really wanting to make a pilsner. So I may skip the wit, or I may attempt another tripel brew day. Will see.
 
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Just continuing to beat this dead horse in case some homebrewer in 2029 is bored and wants to keep reading these journal entries.

Tapped the Scottish Strong Ale tonight, and it is excellent. I've made a lot of good beers using this brewing approach, but the Wee Heavy and Scottish Strong Ale may be the best combo yet. They were also one of the easier brew days, then used secondary additions to further differentiate them.

On the other end of the spectrum, I did another partigyle double brew day today, but it was anything but easy. I usually boil a large batch of Beer A, then mix some of that with extract and other ingredients to make Beer B. Today I decided to siphon off some of Beer A (pilsner) before the boil, to mix it with extract, then boil Beer B (Tripel) separately after the pilsner. Big mistake. On my kinda slow 110v brewzilla, this took ALL day to do two seprate boils. The whole efficiency of the partigyle approach was lost. I think both beers will turn out fine, but this approach loses a lot of its value/appeal when I forget that Beer B should just be a VERY easy extension of Beer A. I'm keeping that in mind for next time.
 
Just to finish off this thread for the year, my last double brew day was an all-grain wit that is used 2 gallons of to mix with a bunch of DME and overnight cold-soaked dark malts to make a chocolate coconut stout. I then split off 2 more gallons of the wit after primary fermentation to make a raspberry-brandy wit. That gave me three options for the Holiday 6-packs I like to give out. I kegged them all a week ago but haven't had the chance to taste any of them yet due to illness. Hoping to try them all this week.

Only real lesson learned was just to remember to keep beer/batch 2 simple, since that is kind of the point. Bascially, mix part of beer with other stuff, mostly extract. The point is to make another beer with as little added time as possible (more or less).
 
Finally got back to this today. I had a backlog of beer/kegs from all the holiday beers and then did a double batch of pecan brown ale in January (which I did wind up split batching by taking the leftover 5 gallons after kegging and mixing with 3 lbs of dark DME, lactose, and more pecans soaked on pecan flavored whiskey to make Pecan Pie stout. Both turned out good, but the pecan brown ale is amazing. I think it was the yeast that made a big difference - Omega British VIII. Great flavor. Will be be my go-to yeast for English ales going forward).

Anyway, today's pseudo-partigyle was a 8 gallon all-grain Kolsch that I then took 2 gallons to mix with pils DME, wheat LME, and amber LME to make a 6 gallon saison base but using the Omega Jovaru yeast.

Process-wise, the only new thing was that I tried to overnight mash the kolsch. I didn't trust the all-in-one recirculation pump to run all night without issue, so I just programmed the brewzilla to go 2 hours at 148F and then 156F for 4 hours. When i got up, I decided to run the recirculation pump while pushing to 165. To my surprise, the temp gauge dropped from 157 to 127 almost immediately after turning on the pump. Clearly the heat was not being evenly distributed. So I mashed around 156 for another hour and boiled an extra 30 minutes. Will see how it turns out, but I probably won't try overnight mashing again. Not enough benefit versus just setting the timer to preheat the strike water.

Recipe-wise, I usually separately hop the second beer and siphon of wort from the first before before adding its hops. But this time, I just separately did the bittering hop, but waited until the full boil and hop schedule was done to siphon off the all grain beer. Will see how it goes. But it is certainly easier than duel tracking two different hop schedules.

This was a bit of a "kitchen sink" saison where I built a recipe based off what I had around. So fun chance to try out Jovaru. But I very much expect the kolsch will turn out better. Though I've been surprised before. It's also a nice bonus when the extract batch overachieves, and you add an easy extract recipe to the playbook.
 
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Updating on two brew days...

Strawberry Blonde/ Extract Raspberry Saison

Kolsch / Extract Festbier

If anyone wants to know more recipe details, just message me.

Process-wise, I started setting the timer on my brewzilla to heat an initial 8 gallons of water to 210F before I wake up. I then mix 4 gallons of it in a separate side kettle with extract and any wort from overnight steeping. I then add 2-4 gallons of room temperature water into the remaining 4 gallons in the brewzilla, and that usually lands me pretty close to my desired strike temp to begin the all grain mash. I like the time saving of this approach because I have both brews well underway within 10-15 minutes. I can then add 1-3 gallons of all grain wort beer into the extract beer kettle after mash and boil, and have several options for hopping.
 
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