After taking the summer off from brewing due to an impending move, I will need to fill some fermenters quickly once I finish unpacking, get a job, etc. I figured a great way to do this would be trying a parti-gyle for the first time. Here's what I had planned for the main mash 12# TF Golden Promise 2# Weyermann Dark Wheat .5# honey malt .5# golden naked oats The first runnings will be 3.5gallons Strong Spiced Dark Saison with 1# D90 syrup added to it to get color and boost the gravity. Willamette to bitter to ~20 IBUs, spiced with vanilla, cinnamon, and ginger, and aged on rum soaked oak cubes. Ferment with Belle Saison. Second and third runnings will be ~5.5 session IPA with the mash capped with another .5# of GNO. I haven't decided on a hop schedule yet, but it will probably be ridiculous to use up a bunch of stuff so I can refill the freezer with this year's harvest. Ferment with US-05. I'm assuming 90% mash efficiency overall, and will be utilizing fairly long boils on both to hope to get the most out of it. My calculations are showing OGs of 1.080 and 1.045 respectively. My question to those who have done this sort of thing before is how far off are my expectations? What would you do differently? Any feedback is appreciated.
I think you're a little optimistic assuming 90% total efficiency, and really optimistic with your 1.045 gravity for the second runnings. When I do partigyles, I mash at 1.5L/lb which gets me 60% efficiency for the big beer. I then sparge at 1.25L/lb to get the last 20% from the mash for the small beer. Obviously your system will be different, but you're assuming ~40% efficiency for the second runnings of 15 lbs of grain capped with half an additional pound of grain.
I get what you're saying, but what you're describing doesn't jive with what my procedure was going to be. My plan was to mash in at a ratio of 1.5L/lb, run that off for the first beer, then batch sparge at 1L/lb twice, and combine those runnings for the second beer. 120min boils on both. I should have included this in my OP. However, is this still overly optimistic? How far am I off? Would you recommend a larger "cap" for the second beer, an extract addition, or something else entirely to get something in the gravity range I am looking for?
Well, what efficiency do you get from your initial mash at 1.5L/lb? Start from there and work out what percentage of sugars is still in there to be rinsed by your sparge. If you are limited to 20% efficiency from your second runnings, you're looking at 5 gallons of 1.025 beer from 15 + 1/2 lbs of grain. My advice would be to have extract on hand to correct any gravity issues you encounter, and to take copious notes so that you know what to expect next time. You can also add some of your first runnings to your second runnings to bring your gravity up, but fuck all that - way too much effort.
Not entirely sure, I usually don't check until everything is in the pot. I'm usually at around 70-80% for a single 5.5gal beer, depending on gravity and grist composition, so I assumed that I would get better efficiency by sparging enough to get 9gal into fermenters. Would you say that I should assume 80% overall (~40% for each beer)?
I guess it depends on what you think a strong dark saison should be: http://www.astrocaver.com/java/Parti-Gyle.html Measure up, but I think you'll need more grain. I find that when I do 50/50 splits it's about 50% more grain than the original batch. Your batch volume is going to be what, 9.0 gallons? I think you're short even for 9 gal of IPA.
I should clarify. Parti-gyle is a great process for making several beers quickly. The thing of it is that you don't get something for nothing. You still need 2 batches worth of grain to go into your tun to mash at the beginning. Caculating the grain bills for each of the recipes will be a good start to let you know how much grain you need to get this job done. The first runnings will be strongest and are usually kept for the stronger beer.
Thank you for this tool. Looks like I'll need 3 more pounds or so of base malt to achieve what I'm after.
I was actually looking for this one but couldn't find it at while I was at work. Either way you'll probably get it figured out. http://morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.2/mosher.html
I typically get 82% extract efficiency. I count around 53% for the first 5 gallon batch and 29% for the second one. I work my recipes for a total of 10 gallons at whatever gravity this tells me to shoot for if I want X for my bigger beer OG (50/50 split). If you want 1.080 for your starting gravity on the big beer you will get about 1.040 on the small beer if you mash for 1.054 for the total batch size of 9 gallons on a 1/3 2/3 split. Remember though that you are adding D2 so that 1.080 OG is going to jump up with that addition, and if you want 1.080 after the D2 you are going to have an even lower OG on the second beer.
I do partigyles just about everytime I brew (20-25 batches/year). The OG spread is very hard to predict. It depends on way too many process variables. But I do get a consistent 85% +/-5% efficiency. What I typically do is separate the runs into 2 or 3 five buckets and then blend to achieve the OG's I want. For instance in your bill you have 15# of malt, which has about 555 SG points in it. So 85% of that is 472. And that is what I keep track of. First bucket of 5 gal might be 1.056 or 278 pts. Second bucket might have 139 points or SG of 1.028. Last bucket may have 55 pts or SG of 1.011. I'll then do the math and blend in the kettles to the desired starting gravity I need. This does add some time to the day, but it will guarantee that you hit the OG you want. I typically put the first two 5 gal portions in the kettles and start to heat them while the third is sparging, and then blend from there. That will reduce your time to boil. Don't forget to adjust for any kettle sugar additions.
I did a partigyle 2 weekends ago and it went like this #'s wise: 1st runnings batch: 42% mash extraction efficiency 2nd runnings batch: 29% mash extraction efficiency (would have been higher, see note below) 39# grain mashed @ 1.3q per # 8.25g of 1st runnings collected with a preboil OG of 1.074 13.75g of 2nd runnings collected with a preboil OG of 1.031 NOTE: I actually collected an additional 1.5g of 2nd runnings but put them aside for future starters. So I got more sugars than just 29% out of my second runnings. But 29% were in the 13.75g of 2nd runnings I put into a boil kettle. The extra sugars were in the 3 growlers of starter wort (1.5g) I filled. The last 0.5g of 2nd runnings I collected was still at 1.020 SG. I bet I have around 8% in the growlers so in reality I probably got about 37% mash extraction efficiency on my 2nd runninigs. That would make sense (42% + 37%) considering I usually get 79% extraction on non partigyle brew days. 1st runnings boiled for 90 minutes down to volume of 6.5g with 0.25g of water added @ 5 minutes left in boil (1/2# roasted barley cold water extracted into that 0.25g of water) resulting in 6.75g post boil @ 1.116 OG 2nd runnings boiled for 75 minutes down to volume of 12g with 1# dme added @ 10 minutes left in the boil and 0.25g of water added @ 5 minutes left in boil (1/2# roasted barley cold water extracted into that 0.25g of water) resulting in 12.25g post boil @ 1.046 OG
koopa, do you have two different kettles? You're boil off rates seem to be very different. That's a ton of grain too, what do you mash in? Sorry, I don't mean to hijack the thread, but it is related to partigyle.
Both kettles used for boiling this batch were 15g Blichmann Boilermakers. The boil off rate btw the two kettles was a bit different, but not much. 1.75g boiled off of the 1st runnings in 90 minutes = 0.29g every 15 minutes 1.5g boiled off of the 2nd runnings in 75 minutes = 0.35g every 15 minutes I think the difference in boil off rate was either due to the fact that the kettle used to boil the 2nd runnings was "1st in line" meaning it's closest to the propane regulator. I might be wrong, but I believe it gets more pressure due to that position. I brew on a single tier brew stand that has one gas line going down the length of the stand. It t's off to each burner on the way. I think the 1st burner / 1st t off of the main gas line gets better pressure than the 2nd and 3rd If not that, then perhaps I just had the flame turned up slightly higher on the 2nd runnings boil kettle than the 1st runnings boil kettle. As for mashing this batch, I used a 20 gallon Blichmann Boilermaker kettle with a Blichmann false bottom in it.
