Partial Mash Instructions

Methods, ingredients, advice and equipment specific to all-grain (mash), partial mash (mini mash) and "brew in a bag" (BIAB) brewing.

Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby Trough Lolly » Monday Mar 01, 2010 6:39 pm

Finnagann wrote:Thanks for puttin that down!

I'd love to start on a road to the dark side but there seems to be a few different ways of PMing and I'm a little confused :?

I've been reading Charlie Papazian's PM instructions (The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing 3rd ed) and he has a 4 stage mash process: 56 C for 30 min, 65-68 C for 45 min, 70C for 10 min and finally raise to 75C just before sparge.

Is this process dated? Unesessary?


G'day Finnagann,
As warra48 advised, it's not essential. You can easily make good beer at home with a single temperature infusion mash in the 60 degree range - lower end if you like dryer beers and upper end if you want the mash to make more dextrinous sugars that give you a fuller bodied beer.
If/when you get right into all grain brewing you need to know what each temperature step does to the mash. Charlie's mash schedule has a 56C rest at 30 minutes which is often called a protein rest since it's in the right zone for proteolytic enzymes. John Palmer's excellent resource called How to Brew has a very handy mash chart which I've taken the liberty of copying into this post:
Image

With most of the grains that you can purchase, they will be well modified so a single rest should be fine. The best piece of advice I can pass on is to master your mash temperature control process and you can then look at multiple step mashes and decoction mashing when you want to brew certain beers in the traditional way...

Cheers,
TL
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby rotten » Wednesday Jun 23, 2010 12:41 am

Hello TL.
Great thread, i understand a lot more now and it actually doesn't seem that hard. One (silly) question though. Early in the thread you mention we should get 4-5 litres of liquor in one pot after sparging, add half hop bill, then do a 4 ltr boil for example in another pot for extract, rest of hops etc. That gives us about 9 litres of wort. You then say to cool, splash into fermenter, wait until right temp and pitch yeast. Sounds right so far i hope. I'm assuming, which is always dangerous, that we top up fermenter to our final volume with water. Can you clarify this point for me please?
Thanks.

P.S. i do partial boils at the moment, it takes about a half hour to cool wort of 6 ltrs. If i did the same method to cool a partial mash, will this be too long?
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby Trough Lolly » Thursday Jun 24, 2010 10:25 pm

rotten wrote:Hello TL.
Great thread, i understand a lot more now and it actually doesn't seem that hard. One (silly) question though. Early in the thread you mention we should get 4-5 litres of liquor in one pot after sparging, add half hop bill, then do a 4 ltr boil for example in another pot for extract, rest of hops etc. That gives us about 9 litres of wort. You then say to cool, splash into fermenter, wait until right temp and pitch yeast. Sounds right so far i hope. I'm assuming, which is always dangerous, that we top up fermenter to our final volume with water. Can you clarify this point for me please?
Thanks.

P.S. i do partial boils at the moment, it takes about a half hour to cool wort of 6 ltrs. If i did the same method to cool a partial mash, will this be too long?
Cheers.


G'day rotten - there's no such thing as a silly question when it comes to brewing!! :wink:

You're quite right - after you've added the partial mash liquor and the boiled extract, you need to top up the fermenter to hit the desired starting or Original Gravity, pitch yeast when the wort's cool and seal. Depending on your boilpot size, you can carefully place the pot in the sink and fill the sink with cold water - stir the hot wort, carefully - you dont want to thrash hot wort otherwise you may oxidise the wort which makes it taste cardboardlike afterwards, so stir in one direction and using another spoon, stir the cold water in the sink in a counter or opposite direction to improve heat transfer from the wort to the sink water - drain sink and refill a few times and the boiled wort will cool down quite quickly.

When you top up the fermenter, you should use the same approach that you do for kit brews. Toss the instructions and use your hydrometer and thermometer. Fill with cold (preferably pre-boiled water if you're worried about water quality) water until you've reached the desired starting gravity _regardless of the volume_... There isn't much point in having 23 litres of beer if it's got a relatively weak OG (say, 1.030) compared to 19 or so litres of wort at the "right" gravity for your style of beer. This was an issue I didn't realise when I started out with kit beers. I followed instructions religously and made 23L of beer and pitched at 26C and wondered why my dextrose laden beers tasted like crap!

Cheers,
TL
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby Finnagann » Thursday Jun 24, 2010 11:26 pm

Trough Lolly wrote:
Finnagann wrote:Thanks for puttin that down!

I'd love to start on a road to the dark side but there seems to be a few different ways of PMing and I'm a little confused :?

I've been reading Charlie Papazian's PM instructions (The Complete Joy Of Homebrewing 3rd ed) and he has a 4 stage mash process: 56 C for 30 min, 65-68 C for 45 min, 70C for 10 min and finally raise to 75C just before sparge.

Is this process dated? Unesessary?


G'day Finnagann,
As warra48 advised, it's not essential. You can easily make good beer at home with a single temperature infusion mash in the 60 degree range - lower end if you like dryer beers and upper end if you want the mash to make more dextrinous sugars that give you a fuller bodied beer.
If/when you get right into all grain brewing you need to know what each temperature step does to the mash. Charlie's mash schedule has a 56C rest at 30 minutes which is often called a protein rest since it's in the right zone for proteolytic enzymes. John Palmer's excellent resource called How to Brew has a very handy mash chart which I've taken the liberty of copying into this post:
Image

With most of the grains that you can purchase, they will be well modified so a single rest should be fine. The best piece of advice I can pass on is to master your mash temperature control process and you can then look at multiple step mashes and decoction mashing when you want to brew certain beers in the traditional way...

Cheers,
TL



That was very helpful in moving to AG, TL. Thank you. There's so many new variables to worry about, a single infusion makes things much easier.

Have you seen a good article or chart that illustrates the relationship between mash temp and fermentability of wort? I have a general understanding (65C = very fermentable and somewhat thin bodied, 69C = not so much, etc) but a more detailed discussion would be interesting.
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby rotten » Thursday Jun 24, 2010 11:58 pm

Thanks TL.
I read some AG threads after i posted that question, mainly about mash tuns and setups and found some very useful info. Didn't know about keeping an eye on OG though, might even do that for my K&B brews from now on. Ordered some gear today to do a partial mash your way very soon, very interested in AG (the dark side) as well. One step at a time though.
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby big dave » Tuesday Jun 29, 2010 10:08 pm

Trough Lolly wrote: stir the hot wort, carefully - you dont want to thrash hot wort otherwise you may oxidise the wort which makes it taste cardboardlike afterwards


Howdy crew, another (silly-ish) question.... I have noticed a homebrew taste creeping into my brews, where they start out quite lovely when young, but more cardboardy as they age.

Being reasonably new to the whole game, I have just made the transition from K&B to extract. I had thought oxidising was a problem from splashing in the fermenter or when bottling.... so I bought a bottling extension. But right from the start, I have just been pouring my wort, hot or cooled, into the fermenter, trying to aerate it, further splashing with the water addition to ensure good mixing and aeration to get the yeast fired up when I pitch it.

Is there a better way? :oops:

Edit - possibly the wrong spot for the question, but this is where my query came from. I like the idea of trying a partial soonish, but I have just put down my tenth brew and I reckon there are some bits and pieces that need ironing out yet. The dark side beckons....
Currently drinking: BIAB DrS GA, BIAB Californian lager, doppelbock of sorts
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby Finnagann » Tuesday Jun 29, 2010 11:02 pm

big dave wrote:
Trough Lolly wrote: stir the hot wort, carefully - you dont want to thrash hot wort otherwise you may oxidise the wort which makes it taste cardboardlike afterwards


Howdy crew, another (silly-ish) question.... I have noticed a homebrew taste creeping into my brews, where they start out quite lovely when young, but more cardboardy as they age.

Being reasonably new to the whole game, I have just made the transition from K&B to extract. I had thought oxidising was a problem from splashing in the fermenter or when bottling.... so I bought a bottling extension. But right from the start, I have just been pouring my wort, hot or cooled, into the fermenter, trying to aerate it, further splashing with the water addition to ensure good mixing and aeration to get the yeast fired up when I pitch it.

Is there a better way? :oops:

Edit - possibly the wrong spot for the question, but this is where my query came from. I like the idea of trying a partial soonish, but I have just put down my tenth brew and I reckon there are some bits and pieces that need ironing out yet. The dark side beckons....


There seems to be some disagreement on whether or not oxygen and hot wort = a problem... I avoid it just to be safe but I DWHAHB.
Can you post some recipes and your processes, also anything that may have changed around the time of the homebrew flavour coming back.
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby SuperBroo » Wednesday Jun 30, 2010 10:57 am

I have just done an AG Kolsh, which is quite nice, but am noticing notice towards the end of the keg it is getting that homebrewy / cardboady taste. My brews have been real nice since going AG, and I did have one thing go wrong...

When I filed my keg, I forgot to purge with co2, and I also shook it like mad top force carbonate, without purging the oxygen from the top.

This is the main thing I can think that I may have done wrong.

The other thing that may have happened is I rushed it thru a bit, and I dont think the finigs mixed well enough. The beer is hazy, so that may also be contributing to the taste.

The beer is still nice, but does have that flavour in the background...

cheers,
Chris
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby big dave » Thursday Jul 01, 2010 4:14 pm

Finnagann wrote:
There seems to be some disagreement on whether or not oxygen and hot wort = a problem... I avoid it just to be safe but I DWHAHB.
Can you post some recipes and your processes, also anything that may have changed around the time of the homebrew flavour coming back.


Hey Finnagann

I will do, but will pop it into a new thread so as not to stray off topic here.
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby kiwifirst » Sunday Oct 31, 2010 2:01 pm

I am brewing a partial tomorrow, have 2.5kg of grain. My original plan was to boil up 16l of water and then add the grain, but I am wondering what effect that will have on the wort, what is the disadvantage of boiling with 16l compared to 2.6l per 1kg grain?

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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby emnpaul » Friday Apr 22, 2011 12:49 pm

Mate I'm only a newbie at partials, (got one under my belt) so don't take this as gospel but without going into ratios and such I think too much water around your grain is meant to dilute the enzyme in the malt too much, giving less than desired conversion rate.

Not sure what your set up is, but it may be worth remembering that it's 16 litres of water, plus sparging, you will have to boil and then cool to make your beer, which I would view as a drawback.

By boil do you mean boil then let cool to 74ish degrees? If you allow your mash to get too much over 70 degrees for very long I am led to believe you will kill (denature) the enzyme completely, which would be a bloody massive drawback.

BIABers and Mashers please correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheers and Happy Easter
Paul
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby bullfrog » Friday Apr 22, 2011 1:11 pm

Emnpaul, you can mash with as much water as you please. Most BIAB mashes are done with the entire brew's water content and no sparge is done. The only problem with a high water to grain ratio is calculating how much wort you'll need pre-boil so you don't overshoot it. Going the other way, you don't want to be mashing with a ratio less than about (from memory) 2.5L p/kg because you just won't have enough water to make contact with all you're grain sufficiently.
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Re: Partial Mash Instructions

Postby emnpaul » Friday Apr 22, 2011 6:16 pm

Oh, O.K.

Seems I've got some homework to do.

Thanks Bullfrog.
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