Partigyle Brewday - Hot Video Action... Brew Porn

So Sunday after Church, the team gathered at the brewery for a partigyle brew day.   And on this brew day we would be making two 5 gallon batches of beer, a clone of KBS and a brown ale inspired by Surly Bender.   The day could not have been more beautiful, mid 70s , white puffy clouds in the sky.   But like all brew days, things did not go as fast or as perfectly as you expect them to go.  But have no fear beer fans, we knew what to do... Now fair warning, this was a busy brew day and my mind is still recovering so... I cram a lot of information into this one...

Batch 1 The KBS Clone - Russian Imperial Stout

The first batch went almost exactly as planned.  The only little hick up was with our strike water.  We forgot to preheat the mash tun (freaking rookie mistake)  So our mash temperature was 138 to 140 F.  But when we do no sparge brewing we always hold back 15%-20% of the water to either cool the mash, or heat the mash, or to sparge rinse at the completion of the mash.   So we had 1.5 gallons of treated water hanging around. We brought the 1.5 gallons of water to a quick boil on the monster and added it to the mash tun.  The mash rose to 154 F where it stayed for the next hour.  (60 minutes is overkill on most mashes but there was a lot of roasted grain, and 2 lbs of flaked oats in this batch so we wanted to be safe)  So when you do a no sparge brew... my best suggestion is that you make your calculations based on 80% / 20% or 85% / 15%.  Now if you are a mash wizard and you never screw up anything at all... and you never forget anything at all... more power to you.   But we will be following this practice.   So if you are making a 5 gallon RIS and using 20.4 lbs of grain and 9.75 gallons of water... yes that much with absorption and waste...  It looks like this.

• 9.75 gallons = 39 quarts
• 39 quarts x 80% =  31.2 quarts (so call it 32 quarts)
• 32 quarts / 20.4  = 1.568 quarts per pound in your software
• You can hold back the other 1.75 gallons for a mash out or for a temperature adjustment.

But what would that look like for a lower gravity beer... like for instance a Champagne Lager? OK, Well let's look at that.  Champagne Lager 5 gallon batch has 7.5 lbs of grain, and uses 8.5 gallons of water.   It looks like this.

• 8.5 gallons = 34 quarts
• 34 quarts x 80 % = 27.2 (call it 28)
• 28 quarts / 7.5 = 3.73 quarts per pound in your software
• You can hold back the other 1.5 gallons for mash out or for temperature adjustments.

Now, we do not get, or plan on efficiency in the 80s for no sparge brewing.  We don't care.  The goal of brewing is not to maximize efficiency... it is to maximize flavor... and fun. And this is a way, way easier method for brewing.  Don't believe me?  OK well maybe you'll listen to The mad fermentationist. Now one thing you need to realize is that when you no sparge... the grain is buffering the mash like crazy... so it takes more acid to drop the pH to ideal.  If you use that much acid, your beer can taste kinda... acidic.  So  We shoot for 5.5 pH.   Haven't noticed any off flavors.

That is the easy way to do water calculations for no sparge brewing.  And we are big fans of no sparge brewing, or minimal sparge brewing.  Now having said all of this, it is important to remember that a degree or two either direction on a mash makes virtually no difference in the final flavor and mouth feel.  So don't sweat it if you are a degree or two off.   I know award winning home brewers who just mash everything at 150F...light lager...150 F...huge stout...150 F...bret or sour 150 F...

5.31 exactly what the
software predicted. A little
low for us.

So... yes I said it "the amount of mash water is not that important"  Yes, I said it, yes I stand by it.   The arcane and mystical alchemy of home brewing water calculations must be simplified because... well because it is all BS.   Yes thicker and thinner mashes can have an impact on your brew... but not really.  A thin mash just takes longer to convert.  But it still converts.  And it isn't really very perceivable on a home brew level.  So if exact water calculations are not that important...what is important?  What is important is the total amount of water used.  What is important is pH.  What is important is temperature of the mash.   What is important is fermentation temperature... and sanitation.  These are the factors that are important.  Once again, the grains have no idea that they are being mashed.  They have no idea what the water to grain ratio is, they start soaking in the right temperatures... the enzymes become active. When the enzymes are active... the conversions occur.

The mash fluctuated between
153 and 154 F for an hour

So if you haven't tried no sparge brewing yet...  give it a try, it gives you so much flexibility in terms of water and temperature.  So if you are one of those guys who believes your beer is better because you can absolutely nail what it says for water calculations on BeerSmith... good for you.   We can do that to... but what we have learned it that it does not have an impact on our final product.   Whenever we can we no sparge.   And whenever we brew a big beer, we tend to partigyle, more on that in a minute.

The grains mashed for an hour, pre boil gravity was 1.078...final gravity... 1.093... exactly what was predicted by the software... so Mr. Smartypants who thinks mash thickness is critical to efficiency... what do you think now?    We got 72.2% efficiency on a huge no sparge batch of beer.  

The boil went well, and we made all of our hop and chocolate and coffee additions.  The keggle was gross when we were done. Loads of chocolate, We chilled the wort with our Jaded hydra..Jake and I used one of our favorite trick for aeration... a sanitized mixing paddle on a drill.  This batch is fermenting in a 7.5 gallon plastic pale.  It needs the space.   The yeast was pitched, 2 packs of re hydrated US 05.   This batch received a blow off tube and the blow off bucket was set inside of another bucket, just in case it is epic.   Which I think it probably will be.  

Batch 2 the Surly Bender inspired Brown Ale

We have covered what partigyle is on a previous post (or 4) but basically when you make a huge beer, there are so many sugars left in the beer that you might as well use them and make another beer.  That is all we are doing here.  And as you can see it is really easy.   

Alright,  I kinda caught John off guard... so sue me.  But the point is still valid.   To make a partigyle. Just add water to your previously mashed grains and let them soak for a while.  Jake poured 6.5 gallons of water into the mash tun.  Now, the water was treated to remove the chlorine, but no other water treatments are necessary.  Do they help?  sure... I guess... but they are not necessary.  The grains have already absorbed water so... just add what you want to boil.. it will be very close.

1.045?  Ok...you see... uh... well that measurement came from the bottom of the mash tun.  And as I have told you before, unless you vorlauff or recirculate... your gravity readings can be wildly different at different levels in your mash tun.   Sugar is heavy... it sinks... do not argue the physics of this with me.  It is a simple fact.   But it was 1.032.   Which boiled up to 1.042  So that is still a really nice brown ale.  If we do this again without recirculating, we will certainly vourlauff  the entire batch before taking a gravity reading.  Vourlauff the entire batch?  yes... a couple of times... you are trying to rinse the sugars out anyway... and the dang grains only soaked for 10 -15 minutes so just do it.  It improves everything.  

The recipes will be posted this week in the recipe links on the right.   It was a really fun brew day. We tried some fantastic beers that the team assembled and did some planning for up coming batches.  

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...

Brewday HOT VIDEO ACTION - Festbier & partigyle patersbier - Single decoction & partial mash

There are a lot of pots on a
decoction brew day.

Sunday... we were up to our usual craziness again.  It was just me and Mark Anthony, and when we brew alone, we tend to do crazy, difficult, and complicated stuff.  Now, I am not necessarily advocating that for any of you.  Especially if you are new to brewing.    But, we like to push ourselves and we enjoy trying new techniques.    So we brewed 8 gallons of beer in about 5 hours.  Both beers were decocted...

We brewed a festbier.  A medium gravity lager that is served at October fest in Germany.  I have written about it before.   It is a fantastic German Lager.  We will be using the fast lager method described on brulosophy.   This beer needs to be step mashed or decocted to get the malty profile and mouth feel that you want in a festbier.   So that is exactly what we did.  But we were using grains from Cargill.  Europils, and Muesserdoerffer Vienna, so we didn't feel the need to do a tripple decoction.  We knew we would get the conversion we were looking for from a single decotion and from a good amylase rest.  We love these grains, and they convert like a mother.  The extraction is always good even in a single stage mash.

We started with a brief enzyme wash at 132 F, for 15 minutes.   That is more than enough time for the enzymes to wash into the wort.    At the end of the enzyme wash we pulled a 2/3 rds decoction and started the crazy process of decocting our mash.    The video below does a pretty good job showing you the decoction process.   Apologies in advance for bad lighting and for my rant 2/3rds of the way through.

Checking the strike temp for the
festbier.  The water is treated.

From there on the festbier was easy, two hop additions, nutrients, and Irish moss.    Neither of these beers are very hoppy, so we used the "no chill" method.   We generally prefer to chill our batches but today, time pressures of normal life meant we would just no chill.   I have never had a problem with "no chill" especially for batches that are not hoppy.    We hit our gravity and we let it chill.   Mark Anthony is taking the batch to Johns tonight to put it into the fermentation chamber for the fast lager method.

rapid boil on the cajun injector

So we had these grains, that had only been decocted once,  they are awesome grains and there was still some sugar in them, 1.013 to be precise.   That is pretty low.  But a patersbier is a low gravity Belgian beer.   If you are not familiar with patersbier, it is a low gravity beer made by the monks for daily consumption.   It is not a blonde ale, or a belgian single.  Although, recently there has been a push to call it a belgian single.   It is made with abbey yeast, not belgian ale yeast.    And most importantly it is delicious.    We knew a pound of pilsen DME and a boil would fix that.

There was a problem with our color... it looked like... ZIMA,  or for you youngsters... a mikes hard lemondade.  It was just too light in color.   Well we know how to fix that.... another decoction.   So I took the grains, put them in a pot and started a decotion.   30 minutes later we had a malty aroma and a wonderful color.   We added the grains in a bag to a bottling bucket and then we poured 4 gallons of treated water at 168 F onto the grains.    A bag and a bottling bucket might be the best way to do a partigyle.   It was so easy.   Think we'll post a video of this process next time.   The batch was brought to a boil on the stove and usual brewing practices took place.  We added Saaz hops at 60, 30, 15, and 0.  Irish Moss and yeast nutrient at 10 minutes.    The final gravity was 1.044, which is a little high for a patersbier.  But it will be delicious.

And for those of you who doubt that we can get a rigourous boil on the cajun injector, here is an older video of a 6.5 gallon wort boiling.

Local Home brew store Brewday: Desir Tripel and Flower Child Saison

Brew Lab in Overland Park, Ks. 

So Saturday the gang was all back together.  But there was a twist.  We were all together, but we were brewing at our Local Home Brew store.  I have been to many home brew stores across this great land. And I have to say, for brewing beer, BrewLab in Overland Park, Kansas is one of the very best.   BrewLab has anything you could need to brew anything you want to brew.   If you live anywhere near Kansas City, or if you are just passing through and want to try a beer, stop by the Brew Lab.

BrewLab Selection of Grains!  There are more under the
counter in 5 g Rubbermaid containers. 

Their selection of grains is with out match in this area, and they sell them down to the 1/10th of a lbs.   The hops are available prepackaged, or in bulk.  And again you can buy down to 1/10th of an ounce.   Pretty Dang Cool. But the coolest thing about BrewLab is that they have 2 fantastic electric HERMs 3 vessel systems.   Andrew, invited us to come brew with him.   So, we did. But we are Counterbrew and we wanted to stick with what we have said in previous posts. So, rather than using his fancy systems, we used our 100 quart mash tun for mashing, and used his stuff for heating water, and boiling.

27.7 lbs of grain.
fills a 5g bucket

Our goal today was to re brew our belgian tripel inspired Desir et la Nuit.   We all love this beer.   It is a Belgian Tripel made with orange peel, and honey.  The resulting beer is fantastic the strong malt profile of a tripel, with a remembrance of honey and orange.  Strong but graceful.   The manager of BrewLab Andrew had the water de-chlorinated, heating and ready when we got there.  But there was one challenge, the water in old Overland Park is very high pH.   The pH meter read 9.2... Holy Hard water Batman! So we had to use some acid, some gypsum, and some Epsom to get it where we wanted.  Our grain bill has 12 ounces of acidulated malt, so once we got to 6.2 pH, we trusted the grain bill to take it the rest of the way.   Our grain bill was 27.7 lbs of grain and 4 lbs of organic local honey.  That is a lot of grain.  And our predicted OG was 1.082. So we decided to partigyle the grains and make a Saison  with the second running.  The Saison was inspired by Boulevard's Spring Belle Saison.   (More on that later... floral hops, floral additions... should be amazing).

Jake and Ben, hanging out and talking during the mash.
The 100 qt cooler has a door on top for stirring and additions.

Once the water was adjusted, we set up to dough in.  Doughing in this much grain is a 2 person job. But once doughed in we hit our target rest temperature of 115 F.   This is a step mash.  We began with a beta glucan rest. The wort turned milky over the next 15 minutes.  Our next rest was achieved by adding boiling water to take the mash to 132 F.   Where we again rested for 20 minutes while our next infusion heated to a boil.   So far so good, everything was going smoothly...

One of 2 eHERMs systems at BrewLab KC

And here is where we goofed up.  We were impatient on the next addition.  It was probably only at about 200 F when we added it.  The laws of thermo dynamics are not something to be trifled with.  So rather than rising to 146 F as we had hoped, we rose to 139 to 142 F.  Well Damn! Still firmly in Beta Amylase Saccharification range, but seriously?  There is really no curing this screw up.  We could have pulled a decoction and brought it to temperature, but this was supposed to be a tripel, we didn't really want that color to change. So we just went forward.   Our next addition (final addition) brought the mash to 148 F.  Where we rested for 30 minutes.   To get closer to mash out, and to get the deep golden color we wanted, we pulled a 4 gallon thin mash (no grain) decoction, boiled it and brought the temperature back up to 158 F.

the tripel boiling in
a 20 gallon kettle

We collected 13 gallons of wort (mout) as we had predicted.  The boil on their system is fast and awesome.    We knew that after kettle loss and boil off we would package around 11 gallons of wort.  We did meet one challenge in the boil,  our preferred hop for this brew is Styrian Golding.  Unfortunately, Styrian Golding is 1.4% Alpha Acid this year.  To get our bittering IBUs we would have had to add 7.8 ounces of hops for 60 minutes, and 4 ounces for flavor.   And that would have made a grassy, grassy beer.  So we switched the bittering hops to Willamette.  At 10 minutes we added 4lbs of local organic honey.  We pitched T58 and BE265 (abbaye) into well aerated wort.    This should be amazing beer, if it is anywhere close to our last batch of this, well be in for a treat.

The Saison boiling in a 20 gallon
kettle.  Looks so small.

Here's a quandry,  what do you do with 27.7 lbs of grain on a infusion mash/ no sparge brew day?   I mean, they are just sitting there.  They still have loads of sugar in them.   Here's an idea,  Partigyle.   If you are unfamiliar with partigyling a batch of beer, it just means this.   After you have collected your wort,  you add more water to the mash tun and collect a second batch of wort.   We knew that in a beer that was generating 1.062 wort for our first batch, if we just added 7 gallons of 168 F water to the mash tun, we would collect a 1.031 wort 15 minutes later.   You see there is till a lot of sugar in the grains.  And as long as your pH is in line and your temperatures are not too high, you can still collect this wort and make a beer out of it.   It was a common practice among English brewers of old.  We'll be exploring this more in a future post.   But on this day, we used the second runnings to make a Flower Child Saison. A saison hopped with Noble Hops, and flavored with Heather, Chamomile, Corriander, and Black Pepper.   I'm almost as excited about that batch as I am for the tripel.   If you're in Kansas City in about a month stop by the BrewLab and give it a try.  BrewLab can not sell you a beer, but they can let you try a sample.  They usually have some pretty cool stuff on tap.  Ever tried a Cascadian IPA and a  Pliny the Younger Clone, on the same day?

Overall it was a fun brew day.  But our next batch is going to be a simple straight forward single infusion mash.   No complications, no decoctions, no step mash, just simple straight forward beer.  I think we all need a break from complication for a while.   I think were leaning toward an americanized ESB  that John Designed, or maybe a Centennial Blonde.   But for you brew geeks, don't worry, Mark and I will be doing another crazy small batch soon, and probably some wine.

Some days... you're not on your game

So Sunday afternoon brew session.  Shouldn't have thrown us off our game.  But it did some how.  But take heart sports fans... this is not a story of defeat,  but of triumph in the face of mediocrity.  Heck, even the great George Brett struck out some times.  But today, today was not our day to fail, just our day to stumble rounding third but still make it home safe.  (like the baseball analogy? I'm still geeked up about the Royals winning the World Series).

The brew day started  at 4 in the afternoon.  And we were admittedly rushed.  The guys were returning from watching their alma mater advance in the D2 soccer playoffs.  I, as you all know by now, am just kinda an idiot.   So unlike other days, we weren't prepared in advance.  Which I think is a key thing to note.   Our hobby takes some preparation.  But still we mashed in just fine, and used our usual methodology of tasting our mash and testing for conversion.  I think the mash was done in about 43 minutes.  We stop mashing when an iodine test confirms the mash is complete, and when we taste that nutty melanoidal flavor.  

Today, just to teach about it we focused on brewing water calculations and sparging.  Not water chemistry, that may come later.  But honestly the water at John's house rules for hoppy beers, and the water at my house rules for malty beers so... we're very lucky.    We added sparging to the mix this week.  And we learned that the total volume of water is roughly the same.  I think it is fair to say everyone prefers no sparge BIAB.   

The boil was uneventful.    The Sierra Nevada Pale ale clone was first up, and it will be spot on.  We overshot our freaking OG again.  But this time only by 2 points.   I've made that recipe many times, and it is always damn good.    We sampled our Zombie Dust side by side with the real thing... and as you might expect... our tasted better to me.   This happens a lot with super hoppy beers.  

The troubles came when we partigyled off of the main batch.  We added grains to our original grains and mashed in a beer cooler with no valve.   And that is where the fun began.  We ended up using an autosyphon to transfer out, because those things are hard to pour out of, just ask John if you don't believe me.    But after that the remainder of the brew day was just fine.   The second batch was supposed to be a red imperial ale... It ended up kinda orange.   We could adjust color at bottling, but I think we'll just let it go.  It is a partigyle batch after all.    We hit our OG of 1.090 and we pitched onto the US05 yeast cake from the Zombie Dust.  There should be more than enough yeast to handle this beer.   Plus John and MA aerated the bejeezers out of it.   

Finally, Next week the anticipation ends.  Jake will join our crew.   Hopefully, unless he has another trip to somewhere, someplace more fun than brewing... but come on, what is more fun than brewing?