Creating Partial Mash grain bill

[TheSmithsEra]

Hi All,

This might be something thats real easy to know so forgive me. When creating a Partial mash recipe and researching styles, a lot of information will tell you. . .Pale malt should make up 40-80% of the bill and specialty malts 15-20% and so on.

My question is on a partial mash should those numbers be considered in overall percentages including malt extract or excluding the malt extract.

Current recipe for sweet stout

2# Maris otter
1# Biscuit
1# Black Barley
1# Crystal 80
.5# Pale Chocolate
1# Lactose

2 oz Kent Goldings @ 60
.5 oz Saaz @ 60

WLP 013

recipe critique welcomed!

 

[chickypad]

The malt extract would need to be considered in the calculation. For example, if the above recipe called for 70% pale malt you would want 70% of the fermentables to come from the MO plus pale extract.
The base recipe looks okay to me on first glance without seeing the specs or the total with extract. I should say, though, I prefer dryer stouts so no experience with the lactose or how it balances the rest of the recipe.

 

[Yooper]

In order to ensure conversion, a good rule of thumb in a partial mash is to use one pound of base malt for every pound of specialty grains. You could calculate out the diastastic power, but it's definitely easier to just use one pound of base malt for every pound of specialty grains.

In your example, you have 3.5# specialty grains so I'd use 3.5# base malt (give or take) if you are able to mash 7 pounds of grain.

It's hard to give a definite % of how much specialty grain is acceptable in general. There are some recipes that are 100% base malt, and others that are over 30% specialty grains.

 

[TheSmithsEra]

The malt extract would need to be considered in the calculation. For example, if the above recipe called for 70% pale malt you would want 70% of the fermentables to come from the MO plus pale extract.
The base recipe looks okay to me on first glance without seeing the specs or the total with extract. I should say, though, I prefer dryer stouts so no experience with the lactose or how it balances the rest of the recipe.

Thank you, so I guess when using recipe software the percentages stand overall and I can base my recipes that way. Oh this is a Milk stout which i love drinking

In order to ensure conversion, a good rule of thumb in a partial mash is to use one pound of base malt for every pound of specialty grains. You could calculate out the diastastic power, but it's definitely easier to just use one pound of base malt for every pound of specialty grains.

In your example, you have 3.5# specialty grains so I'd use 3.5# base malt (give or take) if you are able to mash 7 pounds of grain.

It's hard to give a definite % of how much specialty grain is acceptable in general. There are some recipes that are 100% base malt, and others that are over 30% specialty grains.

Thank you. Well, in order to get all the wort into my 5 gallon kettle i can mash about 5.5 lbs at 1.5qts per pound to have about 3 .5 gallons

with that said, since i'm a noob at recipe creation, would you recommend using more of 1 kind of specialty malt or smaller quantity of various malts?

hows this look

OG 1.061
FG 1.018

4# light DME
3# Maris otter
1# crystal 120
.5# biscuit
.5# black barley
.5 pale chocolate

I don't input the lactose into the recipe calculator

1#Lactose


-Thanks again for your replies

 

[Yooper]

Thank you, so I guess when using recipe software the percentages stand overall and I can base my recipes that way. Oh this is a Milk stout which i love drinking



Thank you. Well, in order to get all the wort into my 5 gallon kettle i can mash about 5.5 lbs at 1.5qts per pound to have about 3 .5 gallons

with that said, since i'm a noob at recipe creation, would you recommend using more of 1 kind of specialty malt or smaller quantity of various malts?

hows this look

OG 1.061
FG 1.018

4# light DME
3# Maris otter
1# crystal 120
.5# biscuit
.5# black barley
.5 pale chocolate

I don't input the lactose into the recipe calculator

1#Lactose


-Thanks again for your replies

That's quite a lot of crystal 120L. I'd definitely cut that a bit, unless you love it. I'm not a fan of biscuit malt in my stouts, as it's very "dry" to the finish. It's weird to have that much crystal 120L and biscuit in the same grainbill, especially if your goal is a sweet stout. I think that you'll get lots of "warm" flavors from the maris otter, so I"d leave out the biscuit malt and cut the 120L in half. I like crystal 60L or 80L in a stout much better than 120L.

Using much of what you have there, I'd change it just a bit to something like this:
3# maris otter
1 pound black malt
.5 pound pale chocolate (I do love the pale chocolate- great choice!)
.75 pound crystal 60L (or 80L)

 

[TheSmithsEra]

That's quite a lot of crystal 120L. I'd definitely cut that a bit, unless you love it. I'm not a fan of biscuit malt in my stouts, as it's very "dry" to the finish. It's weird to have that much crystal 120L and biscuit in the same grainbill, especially if your goal is a sweet stout. I think that you'll get lots of "warm" flavors from the maris otter, so I"d leave out the biscuit malt and cut the 120L in half. I like crystal 60L or 80L in a stout much better than 120L.

Using much of what you have there, I'd change it just a bit to something like this:
3# maris otter
1 pound black malt
.5 pound pale chocolate (I do love the pale chocolate- great choice!)
.75 pound crystal 60L (or 80L)

Thank you Yooper. I bought my ingredients last night and I went with 1# of crystal 150! plus the other ingredients! lol I didn't know biscuit was dry...

I guess this lesson will be learned the hard way lol. thanks for your help. my next stout I will brew off your recommendation as I didn't read this till after i bought the recipe:smack: