Partigyle Brewday

[Zephyr259]

TL;DR - I made a batch of Maibock and Best Bitter from a partigyle where I blended the worts pre-boil, conversion efficiency sucked probably because I didn't stir the mash but I got what seems to be two good beers anyway.

I finally got up the nerve to do a partigyle after years of considering trying it out. Decided this was a good brew to try it with as I was brewing a Maibock which wanted an OG of 1.070 ish which is were the grainfather starts to have efficiency problems in my experience. After a bunch of reading and maths I decided to blend the worts pre-boil rather than the more traditional post-boil, this was mainly so I could hop the beers differently as keeping the Maibock with noble hops would have forced me to do the same with the small beer and I already have a styrian goldings lager at the moment.

Grain bill was 2.5 kg each Pilsner and Vienna, 1 kg Dark Munich and 500g Caramalt, base malts were from Bestmalz and the crystal was Simpsons. I was aiming for equal run-offs so 22.7 L for the mash and 17.5 L for the batch sparge, mash was 65c then 75c mash out and the batch sparge was held at 75c and circulated for 15 mins once the grain had been thoroughly remixed. That was amusing as the grain had set in the malt pipe and so floated when it was lowered back into the fresh water, it slowly sank back down as the grains got wet and took a fair bit of stirring to break up the lumps. The first wort was held in my stainless FV while the 2nd runnings were being handled.

This is where the first issue came about, I've been using a mash and lauter simulator someone linked a while back and I usually get a conversion efficiency of 95-98%, this time the numbers imply I was down at 86% so instead of two worts of 17.5L at 1.074 and 1.024 I had the correct volumes but my gravities were 1.062 and 1.022. Think I should have stirred the mash at least once as I took 2 gravity samples from the wort on top of the mash and the wort coming out the recirc pipe and they were 1.068 and 1.073 respectively, so there was a large part of the mash which was much lower gravity than it should have been. Modelling the figures shows that my lauter was 90% efficient so pretty sure it was a conversion issue due to 6.5 kg of grain not being mixed well enough.

From here everything went fine. I altered my blend so that my Maibock was still about the gravity I wanted and the bitter shifted from a 5.4% ESB to a 4.5% Best Bitter which is actually what I'd have brewed if the maths had allowed it. 15L of pre-boil wort was blended 75% strong and 25% weak for the Maibock then boiled for an hour, all hops were Hallertauer Mittlefruh at 3% AA, I like Foxbat's hopping schedule so 6g at 15 min, 8.5g at 10 min and 12g at 5 min (0.5, 0.7, 1 g/L and I based it on my post boil volume this time rather than batch volume), 48.5 g was added at 60 min for a total of 31 IBU and a nice round 75g of hops used. This was then chilled to 10c and Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager was pitched, started bubbling slowly after about 18 hrs.

The remaining worts made 19.5 L for the bitter, it got the same late hop schedule but with a 50/50 split of 7.3% AA Challenger and 7.1% AA First Gold so 4g each at 15 min, 6g each at 10 min and 9g each at 5 mins, 11g each at 60 min gave 30 IBU and 25g of each hop used. This was chilled to 20c and Omega's Vermont strain was pitched. A few hour later I remembered that I was meant to add extra gypsum and table salt to this batch so I sanitised a cup, stirred up the additions in a bit of boiling water and chucked it into FV. The yeast was very happy and was starting by the evening and the airlock was very active the next day, oddly it seemed to be a bit quieter this morning so hopefully nothing's gone wrong.

It was a long brew day, mashed in at 7am and was clean and tidy by 3pm but that's only a couple of hours extra I think and I have 10L of 1.069 Maibock and 15L of 1.045 bitter to show for it so I'm happy. I'll definitely do another partigyle, might be the next brew as my wife has requested a cherry imperial stout so I either keep it simple and just accept the poor efficiency or I see what small beer I can also make. If I'm feeling totally crazy I may do the double mash that's in the Scotch Ale book where you do 2 mashes so you can get enough first running at a high enough gravity to make a huge beer and a small beer. I'd also like to blend post boil to see what that is like and if I can work out how to boil in both my GF and sparge heater at the same time that would speed things up a lot, problem is working out how to cool the stuff in the sparge heater as I only have the GF chiller and it needs a pump and how to handle hops which would probably block the heater's tap.

Hope this was interesting to some folks.

 

[cushyno]

Good write up. I've pondered over a particular a few times. It needs a lot of planning out but two batches in 7 hours is a pretty good return for the fun and experience.

 

[Mikul]

Thanks for the interesting post. The closest I ever get to this where I collect too much wort from a single mash to fit in my boiler so I end up doing a mini brew with the remainder of the runnings. The second brew is often done in a stock pot on the cooker which boils much faster than my electric boiler and then fermented in a 5 litre demi john. I then bottle rather than barrel.

So I normally end up with 20 litres of a New England IPA heavily dry hopped and a few bottles of a more traditional bitter from the same wort. I always ferment with different yeasts as well, it is amazing the differences between the beers considering they have the same origins.

 

[Zephyr259]

Thanks for the interesting post. The closest I ever get to this where I collect too much wort from a single mash to fit in my boiler so I end up doing a mini brew with the remainder of the runnings. The second brew is often done in a stock pot on the cooker which boils much faster than my electric boiler and then fermented in a 5 litre demi john. I then bottle rather than barrel.

So I normally end up with 20 litres of a New England IPA heavily dry hopped and a few bottles of a more traditional bitter from the same wort. I always ferment with different yeasts as well, it is amazing the differences between the beers considering they have the same origins.

I did 3 brews at the start of the year where I brewed a 23L batch and split the wort into 8L and 15L batches, each got a different yeast. Main reason for this is that I like belgian beers but my wife doesn't and the other that get some of my beer aren't overly fussed with them so getting 8L of a belgian beer is good along side the 15L batch. Made a bitter and a saison, that wasn't my best brew, saison yeast clashed with the hops a bit and the hops didn't come though in the other beer very well, not sure why not. A pale ale with NZ hops works great with Wyeast 3522 Ardennes and the final one was a belgian pale ale recipe which also made an amber lager.

As you say, the yeast makes a huge difference. I tried to do a comparison between Wyeast 2308 Munich Lager and Wyeast 1728 Scottish Ale but unfortunately the Ardennes had resisted cleaning so I got 8L of a belgian blond, it's also very tasty now that the yeast character has settled out as it just tasted like a bad ferment for a while. Unfortunately, my 1880s bitter (6.8% and 53 IBU) doesn't suit the belgian character, it might come good once the bitterness mellows some more.

 

[Zephyr259]

Day 16 and the bitter is down to 1.011/12, was expecting 1.008 from The DIPA yeast but hey ho my bitters normally finish around here.

The maibock is also high, it's 1.019/20, was 1.021 on monday so it's still fermenting slowly as would be expected of a strong lager. It got 6 days at 10c then ramped 1c per day to 16c, bumped it to 18c today to help it finish out.

The bitter is nice and reasonably mild tasting, the maibock is quite sweet but nice enough for this stage.

I'm wondering if the blend of Vienna and Dark Munich malts has given me a less fermentable wort or maybe it's linked to my poor conversion efficiency which would make sense. The mash was also thinner than the default grainfather calc which can lead to less fermentable wort as well. They're both into the 70s for apparent attenuation so they're doing fine, just got less out of them that expected as I've had to set both yeasts "average attenuation" into the mid-high 60s to match my FGs.

 

[Zephyr259]

Both beers got bottled this week and they'd both attenuated a bit more since last check. Bitter finished at 1.010 for 4.6% quite mild but fruity, could be the hops or the yeast, looking forward to trying a beer made with the Omega DIPA yeast as I've not used a new strain in quite a while. Maibock finished at 1.017 for 6.9%, as with my recent pilsner it's got a rich hop character which seems to come from using a larger quantity of low abv hops to bitter.

Bottles are now in the fridge at 20c to carb up, will test in a couple of weeks then the bitter should be good after my next hitch, maibock should improve over the winter as it's stored in the cool beer cupboard.

 

[Zephyr259]

My resolve broke today and I wanted to see how my beers were doing. Split a bottle of bitter with dinner and it was very surprising, fully carbed and fizzier than I was expecting. Bit of a haze which seemed to clear so could be a chill haze since this beer wasn't cold crashed and was served from the fridge, nice fluffy head to go with it. Very fruity, dunno what is the yeast and what is the hops but it's really sweet and fruity, could be a great beer and this is the second runnings. Impressed with the Vermont strain if this is what it does with English hops.

Got a maibock for later, at a hair under 7% it's still a bit young but I'm curious and want to check carbonation so I can store in the cold.

Edit, just poured the bock and oh dear... The bottle which was crystal clear in the fermentation fridge at 20c looks like a NEIPA after 6 hours in the fridge, that serves me right for not cold crashing I guess? It's also still more or less flat, but then the Munich Lager yeast does seem to take it's sweet time carbonating, the previous 2 batches with it did carb fine in the end though. Guess I'll ignore it for a month and see how it's coming along.

 

[Zephyr259]

Thought I'd come back for another update. The beers got left for another 4 weeks to condition while I was offshore. The maibock was nicely carbonated and had an interesting fruity character which is similar to my previous one, turns out it wasn't the kveik yeast giving that character but must be the malt or hops. Was still a bit young so it's been sitting in the cool cupboard since and should be getting ready to drink in the new year.

The bitter is a funny one, I had a couple bottles back in November and it's way over carbed, I checked the gravity of the bottled beer and it had attenuated another 2 points in addition to the priming sugar, so it's been kept in isolation in my fermentation fridge at 9c and in plastic boxes since I was heading offshore and didn't have a way to periodically vent them. Seems they were stable fortunately. Just have to decant the bottles into a big jug to deal with the massive foaming then pour into glasses, fortunately the beer was bottled really clear so there's almost no sediment to be roused by the high carb and it still pours clear enough. Once the carb's knocked down it's a tasty beer, not as sweet as first taste but fruity and refreshing. I'd brew this again on it's own and I don't think you could tell it's a second runnings beer, but then it was around 30% first runnings which will have helped.

 

[jof]

If you are careful, you can crack the tops on the overcarbonated bottles, just enough to releive the pressure.
I've done it before on a batch I brewed when weather was cooler & then I had a bottle explode in the shed when we had a hot spell in the spring.
Its been mentioned here within the last couple of months

 

[Zephyr259]

If you are careful, you can crack the tops on the overcarbonated bottles, just enough to releive the pressure.
I've done it before on a batch I brewed when weather was cooler & then I had a bottle explode in the shed when we had a hot spell in the spring.
Its been mentioned here within the last couple of months

Thanks, but I believe you need to do that several times as the headless is tiny compared to the discovered gas? Might have been a good idea once I was home again but had other things going on.