Parti gyle hopping advice needed please!

[An Ankoù]

Cool, In the interest of keeping it cheap I’ll probably be inclined to add some treacle or muscavado sugar. How much would you suggest for a 25l batch?

I'd wait and see what OG your second runnings come out at. I was thinking more about reinforcing the primary batch. Be very careful with treacle and don't be too heavy handed with the muscovado, either. If you're hoping for a particular starting gravity then why not run off, say, 10 litres, measure the gravity and then continue until you get what you want instead of adjusting a full (I think you said 19 litre) batch.

 

[Monkhouse]

I'd wait and see what OG your second runnings come out at. I was thinking more about reinforcing the primary batch. Be very careful with treacle and don't be too heavy handed with the muscovado, either. If you're hoping for a particular starting gravity then why not run off, say, 10 litres, measure the gravity and then continue until you get what you want instead of adjusting a full (I think you said 19 litre) batch.

I’ll be sparging enough to collect around 30litres (pre-boil) to hopefully collect 25litres in the fv.
How would I estimate the OG of the final wort before the boil?
I was thinking a 500g pack of muscavado- I’ve heard good things about it especially in darker beers apparently it gives a lovely rummy flavour to the final beer?

 

[Monkhouse]

So I’m thinking of adding this lot to the gyle part of this monster brew- 2kg pale ale malt, 500g dark muscovado sugar and maybe 250g lactose? I had, like Ankou mentioned just thought of seeing what I ended up with but I though I would use the 2kg malt anyway and if it makes the wort a tad too high on the OG I can always add more water at the end of the boil.
As I’ve no idea what sort of OG I’ll be expecting and I’m worried about getting a beer below 5% (yeah I like strong beer) I figure I will add the extra 2kg malt to the sparge and leave it for 30 min before draining off second runnings.
What do people think of the lactose and muscovado additions in the boil?
I know I want to do the muscovado but the lactose- will this add anything special?
I just thought I would use it up as I had some left from another milk stout I made.

 

[Monkhouse]

Can anyone recommend what style I should be expecting to target in Brewfather for this Parti gyle? I’ve chosen American stout atm but wondering if I should target foreign extra stout instead? Either way there is a huge difference in required ibu so any pointers on the style to target would be great. Cheers

 

[Monkhouse]

I guess I’ll just wing it then

 

[Jim Brewster]

Maybe an American Stout based on the hops and yeast choice?

I think it all depends on the gravity of the wort that you get from the sparge. It's difficult to estimate without prior experience but you might be able to get a rough figure from the estimated efficiency of the primary batch. So if primary batch efficiency is 60% you might expect say 20% of the sugars in the second batch.

You could start off with a target recipe of for example 35IBU based on a target pre boil gravity of 1050. on brew day take a hydrometer reading pre boil and then scale the hop weights if it's over or under. So say if it ends up as 1055 pre boil, use 10% more hops, that way the balance stays roughly the same. My figures are just for example purposes. If it's lower you could add the required sugars or spraymalt to get it back up, a simple calculation using the PPG values should work.

 

[RoomWithABrew]

If it helps I made an imperial stout. OG 1.107 target was 1.120
Shocking conversion efficiency 78%,
mash efficiency 52% and BHE 54% for 23 litres.

Then 2nd running 25 litres at 1.040 for a dry stout.
15.15 kg of malt.

Had a few issues with stuck mash and sparge caused by milling the rye to perfect size to block the bottom plate of malt pipe.

 

[Monkhouse]

Thanks for everyone’s advice on this. The day went perfectly! Started at 9 and I was home with a full fermenter at 5:30! It was really weird though as we both took pre boil gravity readings and they were both sat at 1.070 so we thought that the stronger brew (first runnings) had got really bad efficiency. Then the after the boil the readings were completely different. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves but essentially we got one disgracefully strong batch of rocket fuel and another batch of very strong stout from the sloppy seconds!
Oh and went for ibu of 50 for the gyle considering the strength of the wort. Added 250g lactose and didn’t bother with the muscovado in the end, didn’t need to boost it lol

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Stratification of the wort is a real issue especially when it gets stronger / thicker and getting a true OG sample is harder without a lot of random stirring before taking the sample and then a good restir before the hydrometer or refractometer sample.
Glad it went well.

 

[Monkhouse]

Ok fellas I need your advice again! This beer started its life at 1.074, it seems to have finished a week into fermentation at around 1.035. This gives me a stout of around 5% which is perfectly acceptable but.. I was aiming for around the 7% mark.
What would you suggest I do at this stage to bump it along a couple more %abv?
I’ve got muscovado sugar I could use but I’m unsure of how to add this to the fv. I’ve got a spare pack of notty I could add but tbh I don’t want to waste it on a whim!
I pitched 2 packs of S-05 and it’s been fermenting steady at 19.5c.

 

[lancon]

Rousing (I think the term is) the wort, give it a good stir is often recommended.

 

[Jim Brewster]

Is it possible that's underpitched?
Don't know what the volume is but brewers friend is suggesting 3 packs for 23L with that gravity.

 

[Monkhouse]

Is it possible that's underpitched?
Don't know what the volume is but brewers friend is suggesting 3 packs for 23L with that gravity.

I wouldn’t have thought so, I’ve done a single pack of s-05 in a wort of that gravity before and it’s gone down to 1.012.

 

[Monkhouse]

**Quick Update**
So I bottled this gyle the other day and I may have gone overboard with the bittering hops (summit). I was anticipating a stronger abv beer so went for an ibu of 50 and the finished beer is slightly overly bitter- it’s not unpleasant but something I’m hoping will mellow with time and carbonation.
I went with a die hard theme for this stout, the pictures will explain this haha. The whole beer description write up is supposed to sound ridiculously stupid btw!