Techniques for high gravity beers

[Chris-18]

Hey everyone,

I am looking for some advice regarding really high gravity brews (over 1.100 OG).
With the equipment I have now, the efficiency is around 70%, since I brew on quite small scales (all I have room for), and it is very hard to reach an OG of over 1.100 for the imperial stouts I want to make, without adding sugar.
Now I would like to brew without adding sugar, since it seems like you lose a lot of body and flavor in the beer by getting sugar, in stead of getting all the fermentables from the grain.

I have spoken to a few breweries about some techniques, and most of them have recommended either a double mash or boiling the wort longer, in order to get a higher OG.
Some have also suggested to mash for 30 mins, then not do a mash out and do a 2 hour sparge.

So my questions are:
What do you guys recommend of the two (double mash or longer boil)?

When doing a longer boil, do you still follow a normal hop addition? Meaning that if you boil for 3 hours, you still only add hops in the last 60 mins (for example)?

The reason for all this, is I want to find the best technique to get a very high OG and still get the same volume of wort out of it (around 10 liters at at time), but also get as full a body as possible in the beers.
If I just boil the wort for a long time now, I might end up with only 5-6 liters of beer at 1.100 OG.

Hope it makes sense

 

[Sillybilly]

You could supplement with malt extract to boost gravity

 

[porterpounder]

Double mash will allow slightly better flavor control than an extended boil, but will add a bit more time to the brewday than a 30-60 min longer boil unless you are a quick sparger. Dark candi syrup rather than straight sugar can give you some extra flavor and retain some body, so that's also an option.

 

[Cavpilot2000]

Another option is to do two mashes with a 2-stage batch sparge on each.
Take the first runnings from each mash batch for the high gravity beer and then pull the second runnings from each mash to make a second batch of beer (also called a "small beer").

So in essence it's a two batch brew day, where you are only drawing off the heavier, denser runnings from both batches for the high gravity beer, and using the second runnings for a normal-to-low gravity beer.

I haven't tried this technique yet, but this is the solution I have settled upon for a nice brew day in the spring to try my hand at a Samiclaus inspired brew.

 

[augiedoggy]

Another option is to do two mashes with a 2-stage batch sparge on each.
Take the first runnings from each mash batch for the high gravity beer and then pull the second runnings from each mash to make a second batch of beer (also called a "small beer").

So in essence it's a two batch brew day, where you are only drawing off the heavier, denser runnings from both batches for the high gravity beer, and using the second runnings for a normal-to-low gravity beer.

I haven't tried this technique yet, but this is the solution I have settled upon for a nice brew day in the spring to try my hand at a Samiclaus inspired brew.

This is called a partiguill mash (I'm sure I butchered the spelling) common in Scotland..

 

[Cavpilot2000]

This is called a partiguill mash (I'm sure I butchered the spelling) common in Scotland..

Good to know!

 

[Auger]

This is called a partiguill mash (I'm sure I butchered the spelling) common in Scotland..

Good to know!

Parti-gyle*

I used this technique to do a big wee heavy along with a scottish 80/- beer. To additionally boost the wee heavy, I pulled the first 2 quarts or so of first runnings and boiled them down practically to syrup, then added them to the boil. I actually ended up having to blend the first and second runnings a bit to get to where I wanted to be, which was 3gal of 1.120 and 4.5gal of 1.070 wort.

 

[mrdauber64]

I prefer to do a 90 min. mash at a low temperature combined with double batch sparge to collect around 10 gallons of wort, then do a 2.5 or 3 hour boil. I follow the same hop schedule with the first addition once I reach 7 gallons of wort left(normal 60 min boil volume).

Doing it this way I normally get around 70% efficiency, although I just did an English Barleywine using BIAB in a cooler this way and got 78% on a 1.100 beer, I suspect because I was able to crush finer and squeeze the bag.

 

[Kent88]

parti-gyle.

Here is a link you might find useful about that. Here is another. You might also find this thread interesting. There is also a brewingTV youtube video about brewing big beers via parti-gyle.

Treat your yeast right. Pitch the correct amount and aerate well. Aerate again at high krausen if you can, but not after that. Don't try to compensate for a poor pitch by aeration. If you are going to get the bulk of your fermentable sugars from mashing grains and supplement with some extract, you can wait to add that extract until the last 20 to 40 minutes of the boil. If you're using candi sugar or a simple sugar (which is sounds like you don't want to, I know) consider adding that at krausen. Extending the boiling time of hops will increase its bitterness extraction. Extending the boiling time of the wort can lead to kettle caramelization, which style nerds might tell you is inappropriate for some styles. Sometimes kettle caramelization can cause flavors similar to diactyl.

I would increase the length of the mash to at least 40 minutes. I guess in theory if you skip a mash out that the enzymes might keep working as you sparge, but that will work best if the wort remains at mash temperatures.

Ferment at the warmer end of the yeasts' recommended comfort zone, especially after krausen has finished.

 

[olotti]

I wonder is there any benefit to collecting more wort and boiling down longer?

 

[RM-MN]

Hey everyone,

I am looking for some advice regarding really high gravity brews (over 1.100 OG).
With the equipment I have now, the efficiency is around 70%, since I brew on quite small scales (all I have room for), and it is very hard to reach an OG of over 1.100 for the imperial stouts I want to make, without adding sugar.
Now I would like to brew without adding sugar, since it seems like you lose a lot of body and flavor in the beer by getting sugar, in stead of getting all the fermentables from the grain.

I have spoken to a few breweries about some techniques, and most of them have recommended either a double mash or boiling the wort longer, in order to get a higher OG.
Some have also suggested to mash for 30 mins, then not do a mash out and do a 2 hour sparge.

So my questions are:
What do you guys recommend of the two (double mash or longer boil)?

When doing a longer boil, do you still follow a normal hop addition? Meaning that if you boil for 3 hours, you still only add hops in the last 60 mins (for example)?

The reason for all this, is I want to find the best technique to get a very high OG and still get the same volume of wort out of it (around 10 liters at at time), but also get as full a body as possible in the beers.
If I just boil the wort for a long time now, I might end up with only 5-6 liters of beer at 1.100 OG.

Hope it makes sense

What kind of equipment do you now have that limits you to 70% efficiency? Change the equipment and technique to get 85% and you'll be well on your way.

The major cause of low efficiency is the crush of the grain. Using a conventional mash tun limits how fine you can crush and still be able to drain the wort. To compensate people sparge to rinse off more of the sugars but even that has limits.

How can you mill the grain finer to raise the efficiency and still be able to drain the tun? First off, the mash tun has a way to drain and you couple that with the grain husks to form a filter. If you mill finer, the filter clogs. What if you used something different to make the filter, something like a fine mesh nylon or polyester bag? Now you can mill the grain very fine which gets you better efficiency because you get complete conversion and because you don't have to leave so much wort behind and the bag creates such a large filter area that it doesn't clog. Besides that, you don't have to wait for all the wort to drain out, you can squeeze the bag to get more of it out and quicker too. With that and a full volume mash I got 80% efficiency because I also captured all the wort, leaving non behind in a mash tun that wouldn't fully drain and squeezed out the wort that the grain had absorbed. Now add in a sparge step for another 5 to 10% gain and .......suddenly your high gravity beer becomes easy, well, easier. The grain always retains some wort so using more grains for high gravity gets you more retained wort but still less than a conventional tun.