Partial Mash Advice - Honey Nut Brown

Hello everyone,

I consider myself a novice brewer, even though I have a few extract brews under my belt (many of which, at least my friends and I, seemed to enjoy).

I am at a point where I want to start thinking about making the jump to partial mash, and the style of beer that I have in mind for this is a honey nut brown.

First off: an equipment question, if I may. I was planning on gradually acquiring the materials I need to transition from extract to partial to ultimately all grain, and was wondering if I could buy a lauter tun / cooler that would be appropriate for both techniques? Does the smaller grain amount in a partial mash necessitate a smaller cooler to keep the thermodynamics of the process optimal, or for some other unforeseen reason?

Anywho, I sort of compiled this recipe below based on my research from what others have done, but I'm certain it needs some tweaking before I actually do it. I want my beer to have a subtle, if not distinct honey taste (which I understand is hard to do with honey itself), a robust nuttiness, and, well, a definite 'brown' character - hence the honey nut brown moniker.

Please critique mercilessly the following:

Grains:
4 lbs 2-row
0.25 lb Honey malt
0.25 lb Biscuit malt
0.5 lb Caramel Malt
0.5 lb Munich Malt
0.125 lb Chocolate Malt

Additional Fermentables:
3lbs Amber dry malt extract (DME)
1lb Local honey

Hops:
1.00 oz Perle Hops (60 min boil)
0.50 oz Williamette Hops (5 min boil)

Yeast:
1 package British Ale Yeast (Safale S-04)

Clarification:
1.00 tsp Irish Moss

Procedure:

1) Add 2.1 gallons of strike water at 166 F to grain, mash at 154 F for 60 min.
2) Sparge with 3 gallons of water at 172C
3) Fill up brewpot with first wort + sparge wort and bring to a boil.
4) Add the DME, Perle hops, and the Irish moss. Boil for 60 min.
5) With 5 minutes left in the boil, add the Williamette.
6) Cool to pitching temperature, pitch rehydrated yeast.
7) After 2 days of fermentation (fermentation begins, and then noticeably slows down), add honey (diluted to help with viscosity, heated up to ~170 F in water for 10 minutes to pasteurize)
8) Ferment until done (no point in secondary I'm assuming)
9) Bottle with 2/3 cup 'tightly packed' brown sugar.
10)

Yeah, so that was my plan. I'd appreciate any input/advice for this partial mash first timer . Unfortunately I might not get around to brewing this until next month due to a busy work season.

Look forward to reading all your comments!

How much DME?

Oops sorry, fixed now. 3lbs DME and 1lb local honey.

How does it look overall?

Sorry to bump, but does anyone have any advice to set me in the right direction with this recipe here?

Well,to hold mash temps when I took the leap of faith into PM,I couldn't hold mash temp on the stove to save my life. the beer still turned out good. Usually having insomnia & sleep apnia,I started thinking about my current brewing problems. It dawned on me that I have a thick,thinsulate lined winter hunting coat with this poofy stuff surrounding the thinsulate liner. Air can be a great insulator,& a great idea was born. Necessity really is the mother of invention. I heat my mash water on the stove,with a cake cooling rack in the bottom of the BK/MT & the 5G paint strainer bag in it. When the temp comes up to 150f,I pour in the crushed grains (5lbs grain to 2G of water) & stir to break up dough balls & evenly wet the grains. When the mixture comes up to 152-154F,I put a lid on it & wrap it up in the winter hunting coat mentioned. In your case,5.5lbs of grain in 2.25 gallons of water.
Now,I have the coat opened up on the island across from the stove with two pot holders aranged on the inside back of the coat. Flip the hood over the lidded kettle,wrap the sides around that & tie the sleeves once around all. Leave it with the stove timer set at 1 hour. Heat 1.5 gallons of sparge water to 165-168F. Place unwrapped kettle back on stove with lid off. I put my SS collander on top of it,placing the wet grain bag in it to drain.
When it drains pretty good,slowly pour the sparge water over the grains. Allow to drain well. Remove collander with grain bag to a large bowl & set aside. You should have about 3.75G of wort in the kettle. This will account for some boil off,so don't worry.But don't boil too agressively,just a nice evenly rolling boil. But no more. You don't want to boil off too much.
Bring to a boil,keeping an eye out with a spoon or paddle & a spray bottle of water for the foamy hot break, Stir & spray with the water for the couple minutes it'll take to go down. You can use the resulting grain wort for all hop additions,since it's about half the fermentables in the recipe. Add the extract & honey at the end. & stir till completely dissolved. Hope this helps some...

I would strongly recommend you check out BIAB method here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-partial-mash-brewing-pics-75231/

All the equipment you would probably need would be a big grain bag for $6. I'd hate to buy a small mash tun and all the other AG stuff people use then do 5 partial mash brews before deciding that I want to go all-grain, which would require replacement of all that new gear. Partial mash is a gateway mash. This year I finally switched over to exclusively using BIAB, its super easy and I'm now all-grain without having to buy anything more than my grain bag.

You're 100% right about that. The only thing I had to buy to brew PM BIAB was the 5G paint strainer bag. I still use all the rest of the equipment I have been for AE,etc for PB/PM BIAB now. That'll last me quite a while,& PM brews save me 10-15 bucks per batch as well.
The best part is the variety of flavors I can now combine for even better beers.,& different beers you can't make with AE.

I actually like the extra hour I have to spend making the beer when I mash. Homebrewing is cathartic for me.

Yup. Set the timer & come back on here for half an hour,then get the sparge water going.

So equipment aside, is the recipe okay?

Any obvious flaws?

looks good to me, what will your SG be? The grain bill looks about right to me

BlackGoat said:

looks good to me, what will your SG be? The grain bill looks about right to me

Click to expand...

Hmm how do I figure that out? Do I run it through this 'Beersmith' I keep hearing so much about?

try this, its free: http://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/calculator/

great resource, it'll help you really fine tune what you want - especially in terms of color/IBUs/ABV. Beersmith is undoubtedly better, just got to fork out the $20 for it.

Ahh, really cool tool! It would have me believe that my OG would be 1.059, with a final gravity of 1.016.

The main thing I'm concerned about is that the estimated color is a little off for the style. If I up the chocolate malts to 0.5 lb this will help the color though. I wonder how much that would impact the final taste and feasability of doing a partial mash with a total of 6.5lb of grain.

1.059 sounds about right to me. Don't worry so much about the color and who knows if that calculator is even that great of predicting color. I'd just make what you feel like. Of course if it were telling you that you were making something looking like a stout or like coors you might care more. As far as feasibility, you can mash as much as you have capacity for. At the tail end of my partial mash brews I was doing about 6lbs of grains and only adding in a pound or two of DME. Poke around with that website, it has some other great calculators, including the ability to perfectly calculate priming sugar, yeast starters, and my favorite a bottling calculator so you can figure out exactly how many bottles you need - really helpful when you're using a bunch of different sizes. I sound like an infomercial

Ahh that bottling calculator will help out immensely, since yeah I have bottles of all different sizes too.

So in the mashing the size of the vessel is important I take it from what others have said in this thread... I really just wanted to buy myself an all grain batch sized cooler and use it for partial mash in the meantime, but I guess I could do brew in a bag but ugh it sounds like a real pain to keep the temperature steady.

Then go ahead and get the AG stuff, doubt you'd regret it! Most people are trying to find a cheap work around for everything. As far as BIAB, i lose a couple degrees over a one hour mash but i don't care. World keeps spinning, good beer keeps flowing. That method isn't probably ideal for those that sweat the fine details.