Pardon_My_Flocculance
Member
Hi all. This is my first time posting on this site, though I've enjoyed its content for over a year now. I've been brewing for a little over a year and have routinely come here to get all my questions quickly answered so thanks to everyone!
So, I tried something a little out of the box on a recent batch and I said to myself, "If this works, it'll have to be my first post." So there you have it. My idea came from the fact that my pipeline was pretty bare and I was wondering if I could figure out a way to make two totally different beers off of the same batch. Somewhere on this forum, someone suggested using steeping grains to create two different styles, so I starting thinking about what might work. Also to provide some background, I do all grain brewing with the usual setup...10 gal brew pot, standard igloo cooler mash tun, single infusion with batch sparge.
What really made this work was that my first beer is a very basic Centennial Blonde...thanks go to Biermuncher for that recipe btw. That recipe, while fantastic, is basic enough, that it works as the backbone to a porter as well. So, by using half of my wort for a slightly modified (and beefed up...b/c I'm not really going to brew a 4% beer....sorry just not me at this point) CB batch, and then the other half, with a little separate mini mash added down the line, I ended up with what I wanted. Here's specifically what I did:
Started with my basic grain list:
- 19 lb 2 row
- 1.25 lb Carapils
- 1 lb Vienna Malt
- 1 lb Crystal 10
- This was based on 72% efficiency
At a ratio of about 1.3 quarts/lb, this gets really close to the limit of my mash tun capacity, as you can see in my first picture.
Mashed the above and then did a standard 60 min boil with the following hop additions:
- .8 oz Centennial (9.5 AAU) @ 60
- .6 oz Centennial (9.5) @ 30
- .5 oz Cascade (7.1 AAU) @ 20
- .5 oz Cascade (7.1) @ 5
- Also dry hopped an oz of Cascade in the Centennial Blonde batch later on (my apologies for the creative license BM!)
Backing up, while I was mashing, I also did a separate minimash on my stovetop in our usual 2 gal stockpot. I did a gallon and a half of water and I steeped the following for a half hour:
- 1/2 lb Crystal 60
- 10 oz Choc Malt
- 1/4 lb Special B
- 2 oz Carafa I
- Upon completion of the steep, I added a lb of DME just to give it some body. Put it in an ice bath to cool it down. Showed a picture of my mini-mash below as well.
Back to my primary mash, I used as much water in my system as I could, so I could get a lot of sparging out of it to keep my efficiency up. I even put a little extra water in my mash tun as an additional sparge and let it sit while my boil kettle was going and boiling off the usual 1-1/2 gals of water during the hour. I added that last sparge water back in about 40 min in so that I finished up around 8-1/2 gal, the limit of my 10 gal system. Put it through my immersion chiller as usual.
When I had the batch close to my desired cooled temp, I split the volume evenly in two. Added about a gallon and quarter of very cold spring water to the CB batch, to aid in the cooling and land at my final volume. I had intentionally gone heavy on my grains, knowing that I'd be diluting it at this point.
For the Porter, I didn't dilute at all, as I had that 1.5 gal of cooled wort to add at that point, again, pre-chilled to aid in cooling. That landed me right where I wanted to be, at about 5-3/4 gal volume with a little higher gravity which is nice for a porter.
By the way, nothing fancy with the yeasts. I did Nottingham for the CB, per the recipe, and Safale 04 for the Porter. Honestly, I think I could have picked the same yeast for both of them, spent some time on a big starter and saved some money, but I went the easier route and just bought two separate ones.
At this point, I have two totally different recipes ready to ferment. I did decide to make my Porter a Bourbon Barrel Porter, so I've added a picture as well of my 3 oz of oak chips soaking in Maker's Mark. Based on tasting the samples of both, I think everything worked as planned. If the porter goes bad, it'll likely be due to me dealing with bourbon and oak chips for the first time, not due to this process!
Hope you all enjoy this post and that it sparks some ideas in your own brewing. I can tell you that all the above took my normal 5-6 hour process to about 8 hours, with me admittedly not being efficient at all. There was a lot of chasing the kids around and other nonsense that didn't help at all. I would say, that this process added 2 hours of time, which to me is a good deal to get two totally different beers that I'm super excited about. By the way, I don't have the porter on tap yet, but I just tasted the CB and it's perfect. Might even be better than the first time I did it. Happy brewing all!
So, I tried something a little out of the box on a recent batch and I said to myself, "If this works, it'll have to be my first post." So there you have it. My idea came from the fact that my pipeline was pretty bare and I was wondering if I could figure out a way to make two totally different beers off of the same batch. Somewhere on this forum, someone suggested using steeping grains to create two different styles, so I starting thinking about what might work. Also to provide some background, I do all grain brewing with the usual setup...10 gal brew pot, standard igloo cooler mash tun, single infusion with batch sparge.
What really made this work was that my first beer is a very basic Centennial Blonde...thanks go to Biermuncher for that recipe btw. That recipe, while fantastic, is basic enough, that it works as the backbone to a porter as well. So, by using half of my wort for a slightly modified (and beefed up...b/c I'm not really going to brew a 4% beer....sorry just not me at this point) CB batch, and then the other half, with a little separate mini mash added down the line, I ended up with what I wanted. Here's specifically what I did:
Started with my basic grain list:
- 19 lb 2 row
- 1.25 lb Carapils
- 1 lb Vienna Malt
- 1 lb Crystal 10
- This was based on 72% efficiency
At a ratio of about 1.3 quarts/lb, this gets really close to the limit of my mash tun capacity, as you can see in my first picture.
Mashed the above and then did a standard 60 min boil with the following hop additions:
- .8 oz Centennial (9.5 AAU) @ 60
- .6 oz Centennial (9.5) @ 30
- .5 oz Cascade (7.1 AAU) @ 20
- .5 oz Cascade (7.1) @ 5
- Also dry hopped an oz of Cascade in the Centennial Blonde batch later on (my apologies for the creative license BM!)
Backing up, while I was mashing, I also did a separate minimash on my stovetop in our usual 2 gal stockpot. I did a gallon and a half of water and I steeped the following for a half hour:
- 1/2 lb Crystal 60
- 10 oz Choc Malt
- 1/4 lb Special B
- 2 oz Carafa I
- Upon completion of the steep, I added a lb of DME just to give it some body. Put it in an ice bath to cool it down. Showed a picture of my mini-mash below as well.
Back to my primary mash, I used as much water in my system as I could, so I could get a lot of sparging out of it to keep my efficiency up. I even put a little extra water in my mash tun as an additional sparge and let it sit while my boil kettle was going and boiling off the usual 1-1/2 gals of water during the hour. I added that last sparge water back in about 40 min in so that I finished up around 8-1/2 gal, the limit of my 10 gal system. Put it through my immersion chiller as usual.
When I had the batch close to my desired cooled temp, I split the volume evenly in two. Added about a gallon and quarter of very cold spring water to the CB batch, to aid in the cooling and land at my final volume. I had intentionally gone heavy on my grains, knowing that I'd be diluting it at this point.
For the Porter, I didn't dilute at all, as I had that 1.5 gal of cooled wort to add at that point, again, pre-chilled to aid in cooling. That landed me right where I wanted to be, at about 5-3/4 gal volume with a little higher gravity which is nice for a porter.
By the way, nothing fancy with the yeasts. I did Nottingham for the CB, per the recipe, and Safale 04 for the Porter. Honestly, I think I could have picked the same yeast for both of them, spent some time on a big starter and saved some money, but I went the easier route and just bought two separate ones.
At this point, I have two totally different recipes ready to ferment. I did decide to make my Porter a Bourbon Barrel Porter, so I've added a picture as well of my 3 oz of oak chips soaking in Maker's Mark. Based on tasting the samples of both, I think everything worked as planned. If the porter goes bad, it'll likely be due to me dealing with bourbon and oak chips for the first time, not due to this process!
Hope you all enjoy this post and that it sparks some ideas in your own brewing. I can tell you that all the above took my normal 5-6 hour process to about 8 hours, with me admittedly not being efficient at all. There was a lot of chasing the kids around and other nonsense that didn't help at all. I would say, that this process added 2 hours of time, which to me is a good deal to get two totally different beers that I'm super excited about. By the way, I don't have the porter on tap yet, but I just tasted the CB and it's perfect. Might even be better than the first time I did it. Happy brewing all!
