Need some help RE Partial Mash BIAB

[ircbrewing]

I am currently doing all grain BIAB full volume 5 gallon batches. They are great and I am going to keep doing them, but my circumstances have changed a bit. The circumstance is 9 months old, weighs 23 pounds and takes up a bunch of time. I think you all know what I am getting at.

Anyways, brewing outside is becoming more difficult. The weekends are supposed to be a break for my wife and me sitting outside with a kettle and what not is landing me in hot wort. I need to take my operating back inside if I want to have any chance of comfortably enjoying my hobby without feeling bad for not compromising somewhere with my son and said hobby.

I thought about just doing my all grain once a month and doing extract the rest of the time to keep my supply going. But perhaps I don't need to go all extract since there is this thing I just read about called partial mash brewing.

I have been looking for recipes on the search function, but not finding exactly what i am looking for. With fall here, I'd like to try a simply brown ale to get my feet wet with this method. Here is what I am thinking:

Grains:

1. 8 oz - Caramel/Crystal 40
2. 8 oz - Caramel/Crystal 60
3. 8 oz - Chocolate malt
4. 8 oz. - Vienna Malt

Malt:

1. 7 lbs Pale Liquid Extract

Hops:

1. .5 oz. - Cascade at 60 and .5 oz at 20 min

Yeast:

1. Safale - US-04

I would do 2.5 gallons of strike water (assuming 1.25 gallons per pound of grain). Mash at 152 for an hour. Heat up another 2 gallons to 170 and do a dunk sparge for 10 mins. Add that to the 5 gallon pot to about 4 gallons of volume to leave room for liquid extract and leave some room for hot break. Bring to boil. Add liquid extract and first hop addition, then second. Cool it down. Add to fermenter top off with distilled water and add yeast.

Does that sound right? All of that could easily be done in my kitchen and 2 pounds of grain is a helluva lot easier to deal with than 15 pounds of wet grain. Also, cooling my wort in a 15 gallon kettle is difficult, so only cooling a 3-4 gallon volume in a 5 gallon pot would be much much easier.

 

[pshankstar]

Congrats on the little one! I'm not a big fan of brown ales but what you have laid out seems to be ok.

I too use the BIAB method. What I have done to limit my time away from the family is mash in at night (in my garage) after the baby/child is in bed. Pull the bag after the mash is done to let it drain and then place the lid on the kettle and keep it wrapped up. Get up early in the morning to start the boil and have some coffee. Hopefully be done before the baby and wife are awake, or almost done (i.e. the clean up phase) and you have the rest of the day to be dad and good husband.

Now, I do not know how early your son goes to bed and how early he wakes up but this may or may not work for you. Just a thought I figured I would throw out there for I have done this many times given a similar situation. Cheers!

 

[ircbrewing]

Man I wish that worked! My kid will wake up anywhere from 5:30 to 7:00 and Saturdays and Sundays are my wife's mornings to rest up, so no matter what once he is awake his is mine until about 9:00. So, I need to have a method to brew where I can be inside and watch him and cut as much time out as possible. Plus football season has started and in the South college football reigns supreme. I love my Falcons too, but noon/1:00 games (for NFL) I need to be inside.

Im going to try this and hope it's a nice compromise!

 

[RM-MN]

I am currently doing all grain BIAB full volume 5 gallon batches. They are great and I am going to keep doing them, but my circumstances have changed a bit. The circumstance is 9 months old, weighs 23 pounds and takes up a bunch of time. I think you all know what I am getting at.

Anyways, brewing outside is becoming more difficult. The weekends are supposed to be a break for my wife and me sitting outside with a kettle and what not is landing me in hot wort. I need to take my operating back inside if I want to have any chance of comfortably enjoying my hobby without feeling bad for not compromising somewhere with my son and said hobby.

I thought about just doing my all grain once a month and doing extract the rest of the time to keep my supply going. But perhaps I don't need to go all extract since there is this thing I just read about called partial mash brewing.

I have been looking for recipes on the search function, but not finding exactly what i am looking for. With fall here, I'd like to try a simply brown ale to get my feet wet with this method. Here is what I am thinking:

Grains:

1. 8 oz - Caramel/Crystal 40
2. 8 oz - Caramel/Crystal 60
3. 8 oz - Chocolate malt
4. 8 oz. - Vienna Malt

Malt:

1. 7 lbs Pale Liquid Extract

Hops:

1. .5 oz. - Cascade at 60 and .5 oz at 20 min

Yeast:

1. Safale - US-04

I would do 2.5 gallons of strike water (assuming 1.25 gallons per pound of grain). Mash at 152 for an hour. Heat up another 2 gallons to 170 and do a dunk sparge for 10 mins. Add that to the 5 gallon pot to about 4 gallons of volume to leave room for liquid extract and leave some room for hot break. Bring to boil. Add liquid extract and first hop addition, then second. Cool it down. Add to fermenter top off with distilled water and add yeast.

Does that sound right? All of that could easily be done in my kitchen and 2 pounds of grain is a helluva lot easier to deal with than 15 pounds of wet grain. Also, cooling my wort in a 15 gallon kettle is difficult, so only cooling a 3-4 gallon volume in a 5 gallon pot would be much much easier.

Do you know why you are mashing for an hour? Can you explain why your dunk sparge is at 170 degrees and takes ten minutes?

With BIAB you have the ability to mill the grain very fine. With that finely milled grain the mash doesn't need to take an hour because conversion is done quickly and most of the mash time is to extract flavor, not for conversion.

I dough in, give the mash 30 minutes and pull the bag of grain, then turn the heat on. While the wort it heating toward boil I sparge to the volume I need with cool water and add that to the pot. Since my sparge vessel is small I do the sparge twice, gaining just a little more efficiency.

While the books call for an hour long boil, most of the bittering happens in the first 30 minutes. Estimates are that 90% of the bittering will be done by then so I just either add a little more bittering hops or maybe just accept the lesser bitterness and I'm done with the boil in 30 minutes.

If your recipe calls for a late hop addition, you may have to do some cooling to keep the late hops from isomerizing too much but isomerization is nearly done when the temperature reaches 170 so from then on you can just let the wort cool on its own. It might take all day or even more to get to pitching temps but if it does, so what. Keep the kid and wife happy.

 

[ericbw]

This is not partial mash. It's extract with steeping. You can steep those grains at 150 for 20 minutes and then sparge.

Sometimes I put them in the water in a bag) and heat it, then remove the grains when the temp gets to 150-160. Dunk and squeeze.

Smaller batches save a little time.

HOWEVER, it's just beer. You're trying to squeeze in football and brewing. Your kid will be grown too soon. Take time to enjoy it [emoji3]

 

[ircbrewing]

I always mashed for an hour at least doing full volume BIAB but only because thats how ive learned it and studied it. The thinking is that it ensures full conversion. I have also done a 90 minute mash and gotten more efficiency. However 90 minute mash is too much time.

I thought this was partial mash because I am using at least half the fermentables with a converted base and nonfermentable grain bill. Whereas in extract brewing you do steep, but you only use a half pound to maybe a pound of nonfermentable grains for color flavor to the largely extract based malt.

In what I laid out above I am taking principles of all grain and extract but halfway of each thus partial mash. No?

 

[ericbw]

Sorry, I guess you do have Vienna in there. The others might not convert much. But yes, it's a mash. My bad!

 

[sfish]

So how about moving inside using 2 pots start mashing only the Vienna for 30 min. instead of a hour (use a little more if not full conversion) and in a seperate pot steep the special grains start your boil the add the wort from the mash later. AND do a shorter boil 45 mi. adjust your hops.

I have boiled 3 to 4 gallons then added ice to make 5 gallons.

 

[RM-MN]

I always mashed for an hour at least doing full volume BIAB but only because thats how ive learned it and studied it. The thinking is that it ensures full conversion. I have also done a 90 minute mash and gotten more efficiency. However 90 minute mash is too much time.

I thought this was partial mash because I am using at least half the fermentables with a converted base and nonfermentable grain bill. Whereas in extract brewing you do steep, but you only use a half pound to maybe a pound of nonfermentable grains for color flavor to the largely extract based malt.

In what I laid out above I am taking principles of all grain and extract but halfway of each thus partial mash. No?

As you noted here, an hour long mash is sometimes not enough. It all depends on how well the grain was milled. Conversion of the starch to sugar starts when the starch is gelatinized so the enzymes can work on it the conversion proceeds very quickly. If the grain particles are large it may take a long time for the water to reach the starches in the center to gelatinize, sometimes more than 90 minutes. Making the particles much smaller, the conversion can be done in less than 5 minutes.

Most LHBS will have the mill set to ensure that the customers don't get a stuck mash or sparge. Customers that continually get stuck mashes or sparges soon become non-customers but the coarser milling then requires a longer mash and probably not full conversion, reducing the efficiency. That isn't a problem for the LHBS, they will gladly sell you more grain to make up for the lower efficiency. It will be up to you to accept the longer mash/lower efficiency or get your own mill so you can control the milling.