How to Partigyle Part 1 - A new series Two beers from one Mash.

Partigyle is an old techniqe that give
you multiple batches of beer from one
grist.   It maximizes production. 

Have you ever looked at a drained mash tun of high gravity wort, and thought to your self... "damn there is a lot of sugar and flavor left in there...."   You know it's in there, but most of the time you empty your mash tun into a bag and dutifully set it out for the trash pick up.   Well I am here to tell you... stop.   Don't throw away that high gravity grist.  Don't you dare.  There is so much sugar left in that high gravity grist, so much flavor left in that grist. Do what great brewers of yore did... partigyle your batch. The term Gyle is an old english term that brewers stole from malt vinnegar makers.   Hence the term you have a lot of guile (gyle). Guile is the French version, and when a wine went bad and became vinegar the French, in their normal sarcastic way, called it gyle...as in English Malt Vinegar. You see they had a similar word that meant witchcraft or sorcery... And they really like double entendre... So the term began to be known as trickery or deceit.  You can kinda see where they were coming from.  You open a bottle of wine after years... and it has turned to vinegar... that is deceitful...why not make fun of the English?   You wake up and realize it is Tuesday... why not make fun of the English....Enough history for today. In the production of malt vinnegar, gyling was the standard practice.  We have talked about partigyle before but, in a nut shell partigyling is getting more than one batch of beer out of one grist.  Partigyling was essential at one time to the production of porters.   And many craft breweries still make a 3 runnings gyle... Imperial Stout, Stout, and Brown (mild)  Three beers off of one grist.  Tell me that is not the ultimate in efficiency.  " Hey Bob What was your brew house efficiency today?  I don't know Ted around 130%..."   Of course I know that isn't really how you calculate... so take a breath... the point is there are great sugars left in the grains.  Why not use them?  Why not make more great beer?

photo credit lakelandbrewersguild.org

When ever we brew a high gravity batch of beer we like to partigyle the grist and get a second batch from the beer.  Even when we brew a medium high OG beer, we like to partigyle, and create yeast starter (more on this in another post).This Sunday will be  a great example.   We are brewing a 1.093 Stout as a no sparge batch of beer.   The pre boil gravity will be around 1.075.   When we brew a beer that big there is plenty of sugar still in there.  If we add 6.5 gallons of water to the grist and drain it.  We will have a 1.034 pre boil wort.   It will boil out to a 1.045-1.047 wort.  Perfect for a Brown Ale.  Yes, I know brown ales have fallen out of favor recently, but I for one still love the malty, slightly roasted flavor and aroma of a good brown ale.  In fact Brown ale is one of my favorite styles.  What is better than a quaffable crushable brown ale sitting by a fire pit on a crisp fall evening?

We will be documenting and shooting video of the process.  So make sure you check back.  And I will post the recipes over in the recipe area soon.   The key thing here is learning to plan a partigyle, and learning that a partigyle is not rocket science.   It is a tool you can incorporate to make more beer in less time. It does not double the length of your brew day if you have two heat sources capable of boiling wort.    And we do... In this case, it will only add about 30 minutes to our brew day.

We will also be teaching you some of the tricks we have learned along the way.  Tricks for adjusting color, flavor, and gravity.  Tricks for planning and timing.   It should be a lot of fun.

Here are some classic partigyle combinations.

Tripel and Blonde / Belgian Lager / Belgian Pale Ale
Belgian Blonde and Patersbier
Imperial Stout and Brown Ale  / Steam Beer / Black Lager
Stout and Mild / Amber Lager
Imperial IPA and Blonde Ale / Standard IPA / Premium Lager
Barleywine and Amber
English Barleywine and Irish Red
Wheat wine and any kind of sour / or wheaten saison
Normal Gravity IPA (1.060ish) and Yeast starter

This is an online partigyle calculator that we have found to be pretty accurate.
Make sure you use pre boil gravities. 

When you are planning a partigyle.   You need to get familiar with no sparge brewing.   You are not sparging.  Your sparge is your second gyle... your second runnings create a new batch of beer.  We have posted about it before.  And Don Osborn has a great video on it.   But when you partigyle I suggest that you do not do a mash out on the first gyle. You do not want to deactivate the enzymes.  You may need to add additional grains to the second gyle.   Of course you can always add DME or sugar to get to gravity.   But one of the tricks we will be showing you is how to adjust your color when you are doing a partigyle.   We will be showing you how to cap your mash with grain to get darker colors. Yes, you can make a wheat wine, followed by a amber harvest wheat.  We will be showing you how to plan your partigyle. We use a simple on line calculator.    But be warned.  You have to base things off of the wort gravity, not your final gravity. Above is an example for the up coming weekend.   Our Stout has a pre boil gravity of about 1.073.  1.092 post boil.   So by using the calculator, we know that the second runnings will have a gravity of about 1.0365... post boil of about 1.046.   Perfect.    We may have to cap the mash with additional grain to get the color we want.   And if we are a little low, we may have to add some base malt and let it sit for 30 minutes.   But believe me, that is not a problem on a two batch busy brew day.   Partigyle does take some planning regarding the water.   You will need to be heating 6.5 gallons of water to 150 F to 168 F while you are mashing.  And you probably can't use your existing burner to do it... so if you don't have two burners the ol' kitchen stove may be placed into action.  If you have two turkey fryers this won't be a problem at all.

The most effective partigyle procedure I have seen is kind of a hybrid technique.  We will display it for you on Sunday.  It is kind of a combination batch and fly sparge.  and it is really effective at rinsing out all of the sugars.   Basically you add enough water to slightly cover the grains and let them sit for 10 minutes.  Then you fly sparge to volume.   Believe me you will get the sugars out doing it this way.  By the way if you really know what you are doing with fly sparging,  You can just head straight into your gyle... well show you that in a couple of weeks.  And that is crazy fast way to partigyle.



So tune in early next week for an update on how to partigyle...