Successful first Partial Mash reported!

[dedken]

Hi all,

Yesterday I successfully completed my first ever solo grain brewing exercise and I have to say I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself. Pictures are here viewtopic.php?f=24&t=33348&start=0. The dark side has won me over and there's now no turning back! I decided to start with partial mash brews because I know I will be receiving from my uncle, a mash tun later in the summer, so it is a cheap way of learning to mash and sparge. Thanks to all those on this forum who have offered me advice over the last few months whilst I have been mining for information - it's all been useful particularly ChrisX1's mini-mash pages which I used as the base fro my brew. Also thanks to Stig for lending me her coil chiller and very large pan.

I think the only mistake I made was not sparging carefully enough my 3rd runnings leading to a gravity of 1.002 which I had to then ditch, losing me about 2.5 litres and 5 points.

Anyway, the recipe was based on GW's Summer Lightning recipe.

"Summer Slighting" method
Doughed in 2.0kg crushed pale malt in 6l strike water @ 72C.
Mashed on the stovetop between 65-69C with the aid of an alarmed digital thermo. Every time the temp dropped 1 degree or so I would give a 15 second blast of heat. I placed 3 upside-down creme brulee bowls on the bottom of the pan to prevent the grains from touching the bottom.

Sparged with approx 15l @80C. 3 runnings - took a lot longer than I thought it would!

Then the boil. Boiled for only 1hr 10mins due to time constraints. Also because of this I dispensed with the post-boil hops and added them at 5 mins instead.
1.8kg Pale LME
240g Medium DME
Northern brewer 39g @ 1hr 10
Goldings 15g @ 15m
Irish moss @ 10m
Goldings 9g @ 5m

Chilled with borrowed coil chiller down from 97C to 30C in 15-20mins.

Used lauter tun as hopback (has anyone else done this? I thought I was pretty clever to have thought of it ) Topped up to 23 litres with campden treated water.

OG 1.044
Yeast - Coopers dried (7g) which has gone off like a rocket. I had S04 but I didn't use it - can't remember my reasoning.
There you go, or as they say in Papua New Guinea. Em nau.

[dedken]

Update...

Achieved FG in 36 hours @ 21C. That Coopers yeast works damn quick!

[Kev75]

Well done Dedken and welcome to the darkside!
Its always nice to read someone full of enthusiasm for this very fine art - be warned give a man a couple of pints and he'll whittle away an hour or two, teach him to brew and he'll whittle away a lifetime!

[soupdragon]

Thanks to all those on this forum who have offered me advice over the last few months whilst I have been mining for information - it's all been useful particularly ChrisX1's mini-mash pages which I used as the base fro my brew.

Hi dedken
Can you steer me to where you found ChrisX1's mini-mash pages? I'm hoping to take the next step up from extract soon and this sounds like a good start. I've hunted high and low but I can only find dead links
Cheers Tom

[Fallen]

Chris' mini-mash method

http://web.archive.org/web/200707041319 ... /page1.htm

[Jolum]

Nice one Dedken. Hope you have many more

[soupdragon]

Chris' mini-mash method

http://web.archive.org/web/200707041319 ... /page1.htm

Just the job

Thank you most kindly Fallen

Cheers Tom

[Fallen]

Not a problem

I tried the method described by Chris-X1 in the link above i.e. pot in the oven and two bucket lauter tun; but it didn't really work for me.

Instead, I bought a small drinks cooler (http://www.outdoormegastore.co.uk/acata ... .html?3639) and made a small copper manifold for the bottom of it. This acts in the same way as the pot and lauter tun but is, IMHO, easier to use. It holds the heat really well and you can use the same tinfoil method to sparge the grains.

[soupdragon]

That was the sort of thing I was looking at before I heard of ChrisX1's method. Was looking at the one's in Asda or Wilki's for £7 but as I'm hoping to keep the cost down and can get the buckets from work ( they are food grade thankfully ) I thought I'd give them a go 1st. My only concern is with the diameter of the buckets being small, I'm wondering if the tap would leak or not due to the curvature?
I've still got one more brew to do with my existing method before I try a partial mash so there's no panic as yet
What didn't you like about the bucket in bucket method then?
Cheers Tom

[Fallen]

The main things were
- Couldn't control the temperature of the mash very well (oven too variable)
- Big space between the buckets (probably caused by using too big a tap) meant p!ssing about trying to get a floating grain bed. It also meant tipping it up, swilling it round and all sorts of shenanigans to get as much wort out as possible.

Dead volume in the drinks cooler was 50ml without tipping it up and you don't need to worry about temperature fluctuations in the oven. Let's be honest, none of these things are a big deal but I just found the drinks cooler much easier to use.

[soupdragon]

Fair comment
Just a thought........... Until I get my gear sorted, just how much of a crime is it to allow the cr*p from the mash through to the boil? I know it's std practice to allow the grain bed to filter stuff but just how much of an impact would it make if I simply used my stock pot to mash then tip it through a sieve to collect 1st runnings, then put the grain back into the pot and rinse them through with more hot water to extract the rest of the sugars?
Please don't shoot me for even thinking about doing this
Cheers Tom

[soupdragon]

Should add that I'll have a 900 micron mesh sitting in the sieve. Would that just clog up completely?
Cheers Tom

[dedken]

Fair comment
Just a thought........... Until I get my gear sorted, just how much of a crime is it to allow the cr*p from the mash through to the boil? I know it's std practice to allow the grain bed to filter stuff but just how much of an impact would it make if I simply used my stock pot to mash then tip it through a sieve to collect 1st runnings, then put the grain back into the pot and rinse them through with more hot water to extract the rest of the sugars?
Please don't shoot me for even thinking about doing this
Cheers Tom

Now I'm no expert but, as far as I can tell you don't want any grains in there as once you've finished sparging there are no fermentable sugars left to convert - all that's left are tannins and other undesirables - I'm sure I've read somewhere (couldn't tell you where though) that allowing too much cR*p, as you put it, into the boil can lead to phenolic flavours... Don't quote me on that though as I've been drinking TC.

[soupdragon]

I suppose the only way is to try it and find out. I'll only be mashing about 1.5kg of grains so at this early stage in my career I can't justify the extra outlay for a lauter tun, even if it's just two buckets and a tap Only have a 15 ltr stock pot too so have to do partial boils to maintain hop extraction and add the ballance of my extract in the f/v. It all seems to work so far and even though I'm just tipping the boiled wort through my sieve ( always get some debris in the f/v ) the beers taste good I was just wondering if I could take my method to partial mash using the same basic technique with the addition of a finer ( 900 micron ) sieve sitting in my normal one to help filter out the spent grain husks?
I think the words "suck" and "see" come to mind
If it shows promise then I'll get myself a cooler box and try to do a better job of it
Cheers Tom

[dedken]

You could get yourself a mashing bag made from much finer mesh (mine cost me about £3 and I can easily mash 2.5kg in it). I'd really recommend getting two buckets and a tap to make yourself a lauter tun - it'll only set you back just over a tenner! It will allow you to learn how to batch sparge giving you some invaluable experience which you can take into AG/PM brewing when you get there. Best of luck