Two beers from one boil - BIAB

[garethliam]

Looking at optimizing my brew day by splitting one BIAB boil into two beer styles. Has anyone tried this and had success or stories to tell, which styles did you create? I am looking to split the wort post-boil, not the pre-boil sort as I can only do one boil at a time.
My plan would be to BIAB a 5G American Pale Ale, split this after the boil and turn half of it into a American Brown Ale by adding some steeped grains. I’ve split batches with different fermenter additions before ( fruit, hops, wood chips, whiskey, sugars ) but not with different steeped grains.

BIAB APA grain bill:
90% 2 Row
5% crystal 40
5% Carapils

Boil 60 mins
Centennial/cascade hop additions at 60 and 15 to around 35IBU

Split into two fermenters
(1) APA - dry hop with cascade
(2) during the boil, steep some Brown malt, special malt, crystal 120 - boil for 15 mins and add to the second fermenter.

 

[55x11]

Looking at optimizing my brew day by splitting one BIAB boil into two beer styles. Has anyone tried this and had success or stories to tell, which styles did you create? I am looking to split the wort post-boil, not the pre-boil sort as I can only do one boil at a time.
My plan would be to BIAB a 5G American Pale Ale, split this after the boil and turn half of it into a American Brown Ale by adding some steeped grains. I’ve split batches with different fermenter additions before ( fruit, hops, wood chips, whiskey, sugars ) but not with different steeped grains.

BIAB APA grain bill:
90% 2 Row
5% crystal 40
5% Carapils

Boil 60 mins
Centennial/cascade hop additions at 60 and 15 to around 35IBU

Split into two fermenters
(1) APA - dry hop with cascade
(2) during the boil, steep some Brown malt, special malt, crystal 120 - boil for 15 mins and add to the second fermenter.

I have done this quite a bit lately - usually it's a bit easier if the styles overlap in ABV and IBU (even though you can also dilute stronger beer worts prior to fermentation).

Your plan will work but you will be a bit on the low side in terms of IBU for a typical American Pale Ale, and a bit high perhaps in IBU for American Brown Ale.

I do this usually by brewing 10 or 15G batch and splitting batches into various size sub-batches.

Keep in mind, that with some care you can add steeping grain "cold tea" at any point, even past-fermentation. It takes a little more care to avoid oxidation or contamination but is done routinely by many competitive brewers and they win awards with this technique (see Gordon Strong).

Guinness does this with all of their Extra Stouts - they brew what is essentially a white stout, without any roasted barley, and then add a separately fermented roasted barley beer or basically extract barley tea, to blend in right amount to get color and flavor.

I have done it by brewing a base (white stout) for Foreign Extra Stout, which is about 7.8% and then diluting it to give me 3.9% Irish Stout, and I would add roasted cold-brewed tea until I liked the color/flavor.

I have done Hefeweizen, Dunkelweizen and American Wheat from the same batch. Just add some dark/roasted grains to remaining mash of Hefeweizen. And American Wheat is just using a different, more neutral yeast like Chico strain, to ferment it.

You can make English Brown Ale with a lot of oats to boost mouthfeel, and then add roasted barley tea to convert it to Oatmeal Stout. And then add lactose to make it into a Sweet Stout.

You can make IPA, Red IPA, Brown IPA, Belgian IPA and Black IPA from the same batch. You could also make Double IPA, IPA and Session IPA or Pale Ale with some dilution or parti-gyle methods.

You could do a pilsner and saison from the same base, just use different yeasts and different fermentation profiles. You could do Belgian Dubbel and Belgian Trippel from the same malt base, with the only difference is a few dark specialty grains and color of candi syrup. Trippel and Golden Strong are basically the same beer, but you can use different yeasts or temperatures to boost esters vs. phenols.

 

[garethliam]

I have done this quite a bit lately - usually it's a bit easier if the styles overlap in ABV and IBU (even though you can also dilute stronger beer worts prior to fermentation).

Your plan will work but you will be a bit on the low side in terms of IBU for a typical American Pale Ale, and a bit high perhaps in IBU for American Brown Ale.

I do this usually by brewing 10 or 15G batch and splitting batches into various size sub-batches.

Keep in mind, that with some care you can add steeping grain "cold tea" at any point, even past-fermentation. It takes a little more care to avoid oxidation or contamination but is done routinely by many competitive brewers and they win awards with this technique (see Gordon Strong).

Guinness does this with all of their Extra Stouts - they brew what is essentially a white stout, without any roasted barley, and then add a separately fermented roasted barley beer or basically extract barley tea, to blend in right amount to get color and flavor.

I have done it by brewing a base (white stout) for Foreign Extra Stout, which is about 7.8% and then diluting it to give me 3.9% Irish Stout, and I would add roasted cold-brewed tea until I liked the color/flavor.

I have done Hefeweizen, Dunkelweizen and American Wheat from the same batch. Just add some dark/roasted grains to remaining mash of Hefeweizen. And American Wheat is just using a different, more neutral yeast like Chico strain, to ferment it.

You can make English Brown Ale with a lot of oats to boost mouthfeel, and then add roasted barley tea to convert it to Oatmeal Stout. And then add lactose to make it into a Sweet Stout.

You can make IPA, Red IPA, Brown IPA, Belgian IPA and Black IPA from the same batch. You could also make Double IPA, IPA and Session IPA or Pale Ale with some dilution or parti-gyle methods.

You could do a pilsner and saison from the same base, just use different yeasts and different fermentation profiles. You could do Belgian Dubbel and Belgian Trippel from the same malt base, with the only difference is a few dark specialty grains and color of candi syrup. Trippel and Golden Strong are basically the same beer, but you can use different yeasts or temperatures to boost esters vs. phenols.

Great feedback, exactly what I was looking for! I will explore the white stout / Irish Stout combo, I have a WS recipe that is on my to do list!

 

[55x11]

Great feedback, exactly what I was looking for! I will explore the white stout / Irish Stout combo, I have a WS recipe that is on my to do list!

For Irish Extra Foreign Stout / Irish Stout I used this recipe:
Ingredients (for 10 Gallons!)
------------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
25 lbs Pale Malt, Maris Otter (3.0 SRM) Grain 1 79.4 %
4 lbs 8.0 oz Barley, Flaked (Briess) (1.7 SRM) Grain 2 14.3 %
2 lbs Roasted Barley (Muntons) (525.0 SRM) Grain 3 6.3 %
2.00 oz Warrior [15.40 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 4 44.9 IBUs
0.75 oz Azacca [15.70 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 5 17.2 IBUs
0.70 oz Magnum [12.30 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 12.6 IBUs

Est Original Gravity: 1.078 SG
Est Final Gravity: 1.019 SG
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 7.3 %
Bitterness: 74.7 IBUs
Est Color: 36.0 SRM

Mash all but 2-3 lbs of Maris Otter, along with Flaked Barley at 152F. Leave Roasted Barley aside. Proceed with hops etc. as usual. This is your "strong" White Stout. It will be 1.078 or so OG, and 75 or so IBU, which is a bit on the high side, overall it's pretty close to Guinness Extra Foreign Stout which comes at 7.5%.

If you dilute the wort with distilled water (6 parts wort, 4 parts water), you will get ABV down to about 4.5% and IBU down to about 45, which is pretty close to what Guinness is. You could also dilute less and get Foreign Stout which I think is about 5.5%.

Separately mash 2 lbs of Roasted Barley with 2-3 lb of Maris Otter. You can ferment it separately and blend the two beers. Or you could bypass the second mash and just make cold-brew from Roasted Barley.

You can dilute at the very end as well, after fermentation is done - just make sure you get oxygen out of water. Boil first and then rapidly chill (or chill in the keg under CO2 and transfer keg to keg).

So you can get White Stout at 7.5%, Extra Foreign Stout at 7.5%, regular Guinness clone at 4.2-4.5% and even something in between if you want. All the numbers for ABV and IBU scale together.

 

[Cool_Hand_Luke]

Hard to follow 55x11’s detailed responses (all great ideas by the way), I’ve also been doing this recently. I really like taking styles with semi-similar grain bills and just using different yeasts. Just recently I did a Scotch Ale and a Dark Belgian Strong from the same wort. The Dark Belgian Strong grains weren’t exactly to style but it came out really good. Really good way to get a feel for how different yeasts change the outcome of the beer as well.

If you’ve thought about doing sour beers it’s also a good opportunity to experiment there as well. Many styles I think can translate pretty well into sour beers. Browns->oud Bruin or Flanders red; Low hop pale-> lambic style ale; I recently did a sour oatmeal stout that came out really good. I didn’t know what to expect but now I’m trying other British style ales out with half getting soured.

Both of these options don’t change brew day at all other than two types of yeast.