Help me! an all grain brewer doing 1st partial mash

[dags]

G'day all,

In my brewing resume I went straight from kit and a kilo brewing to all grain, skipping the partial mash step. After a split from my Mrs and moving house I am now lacking a brew shed to set up the all grain gear but still needing to brew. I'm about to do my first partial mash and am after tips to ensure that its worth doing. I'll be doing an Amber of about 1050 OG and am ok on the recipe side of things. More interested in any tips or tricks in doing the partial mash i.e. do you put all the extract in the boil? do I need to do a full 60 minute boil.

Help me as the kegs are running low, I feel dirty brewing kits and as I'm paying rent with beer I need to keep the suply up.

Cheers DK

[Bugeater]

It's been ages since I've done a partial mash, but it is not a whole lot different from the all grain. Your mash is just much smaller. You still need to do the 60 minute boil. You can increase your hop utilization (i.e. you can use a little less hops) if you add the extract shortly before the end of the boil. This will also prevent darkening of the wort if you are doing a light colored beer. Other than that, every thing is the same. Good luck!

Wayne

[dags]

Cheers Wayne,

I was hoping I could be a lazy bastard and cut the boil short. I was thinking of doing a lower gravity boil to up the hop utilisation, and at the same time only doing a 30 minute boil but I guess that will screw with the bittering/flavour ballance.

[thatguy314]

Well I think partial mash is a little easier in a couple ways.

1) you don't need to be quite as worried about mash temp as the amount of extract you're getting is about 20%, it's not going to affect final gravity by more than a couple points. Anywhere 149-154 would be fine.

2) lautering / sparging is easier. when I partial mashed I just put a grain bag over a solid metal collander / plastic (or just use the collander strait if you have a mesh one). Pour the mash in and let it drain off. then rinse it with warm water using a pitcher or a measuring cup.

3) you don't have to be so precise about the water to grist ratio. I'd keep it higher (1.5-2 quarts) just because water has a high specific heat, and it'll help it to maintain temperature.

When you mini mash, the easiest way is to do it in a ~2 gallon pot and wrap it in a blanket. A lot easier to clean than washing out your cooler afterwards.

Anyways, hope this helps and wasn't too disjointed. Good luck!

[MrBisco]

This is a really useful, illustrated post (albeit on another network) detailing the same partial mash system I use:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/easy-pa ... ics-75231/

Though I do a partial boil (as my stove can barely get 11L up to a boil). Seeing as how I'm boiling a smaller volume, I add most of my extract at the end of the boil, aiming to have my boil gravity very similar to my final gravity to assure accurate hop utilization.