American Pale Ale partial mash

[donald_trub]

Hi guys,

I'd like to do the American Pale Ale out of Brewing with Style, but step it up to a partial mash as the availability of some of the extracts mentioned is hard to come by.

Original recipe:
Light LME 3.67kg
Munich LME 227g
Wheat LME 227g

Steeping grains - Victory 340g.

The 'All grain option' note says I can substitute the light LME for 5.1kg American 2-row, the Munich to be replaced with 340g Munich malt and the wheat extract with 227g wheat malt. Mash temp 67 degree.


I'd like to replace the Munich and the wheat with the all grain option and leave the light LME as the extract. So my recipe should become:

Light LME 3.67kg
Munich malt 340g
Wheat malt 227g
Victory malt 340g.


Will I be OK to mash those grains together? Will there be enough diastatic power in the wheat and munich to not need the 2-row/pale malt? I think it should be OK but just thought I'd ask...

Should I still mash at the same temperature of 67 degrees?

The same book suggests a mash ratio of 3:1. So I'm looking at just under a kilo of grain, so use just shy of 3 litres of water?

Thanks guys.

 

[donald_trub]

On second thought, I could probably handle mashing up to 1 extra kilogram or so. I could swap out some of the Light LME for pale ale malt...

Maybe 2.5kg of LME and 1.4 kg of pale ale malt?

This would bump the water up to 6.9 litres for 2.3kg of grain?

 

[donald_trub]

Also, could someone help me out with a substitute for the Victory malt? I can't find it in any of the shops.

 

[carniebrew]

Also, could someone help me out with a substitute for the Victory malt? I can't find it in any of the shops.

You could sub the Victory for something like Joe White Amber malt. I believe it needs mashing though, not steeping. I prefer your second recipe, the more LME you can replace with base grain the better I guess. Try and work your recipe so that however much wort you're boiling has around a 1.040 gravity, that'll help optimise your hop extraction. Then add the rest of your LME 5 minutes before the end of your boil.

How are you brewing, BIAB? And are you using any software to help calculate your water volumes, boil gravity etc?

 

[manticle]

If you are mashing base malt, Biscuit is a good sub for victory. Can't be steeped though and won't convert on its own.

 

[carniebrew]

I just realised you were talking about 3:1 ratios, so I'm guessing you're looking to mash in an esky or some such? If so yes, 3l of water for every 1kg of grain for your mash. Half that amount of water again for mash-out, then 1 litre per kg for fly sparging, if that's what you're planning?

 

[donald_trub]

I'll be using a small esky that has no tap on it. Last time I mashed in the esky I used a strainer to catch the grains when I tipped the wort out, dumped it back in and added more water for the batch sparge. Seemed to do the trick OK. I think I have some numbers written down to help hit the target temperature that I'll reuse.

I have Beersmith so ill try to do it up in that although I've never pumped in a partial mash, partial volume boil before.


Another question, why is the extract always chucked in at the end? Is it because it tends to 'burn'/caramelise and this avoids that?

 

[bum]

Higher gravity affects hop utilisation. It doesn't really matter when you throw it in as long as that is what you've based your calculations on. Putting it in earlier means more hops for the same IBU - but it may also mean more hop flavour so that might be what you're chasing.

Don't take that to mean that putting it in earlier guarantees a hoppier beer. I've over simplified it somewhat.

And your process seems close enough for a partial - no reason to be thinking about fly sparging at all. Some people...

 

[carniebrew]

<snip>
Another question, why is the extract always chucked in at the end? Is it because it tends to 'burn'/caramelise and this avoids that?

It doesn't always have to be chucked in at the end, it all depends on the volume you're boiling. If you were doing full-volume boils but using extract (pretty rare over here but still popular in the US), you could add all the extract at the start, as you'd still have that circa 1.040 gravity preferred during the boil.

The other reason for adding at the end is colour, when you have a large amount of extract in a reduced amount of boiling water, it tends to darken the wort considerably. More detail here:
http://beersmith.com/blog/2008/02/20/better-beer-with-late-malt-extract-additions/

 

[donald_trub]

So I brewed this today. Halfway through the brew day it became apparent that I was halfway through making the best partial mash ever made, so I cracked a few homebrews to celebrate.... I finishing up, had cooled my wort down to pitching temperature and then realised I'd forgotten to include the malt extract :-(

The wort was chilled in the big 20L pot, so I had to boil up the 2.5 kgs of extract in whatever saucepans I could find. The saucepans are biggish but nowhere near the 20L size. The biggest was probably 8 litres or so. I boiled up the extract in the two saucepans for 5-10 minutes or so - I couldn't contain the boilover very well and I was worried about burning the extract, so 10 minutes seemed like a good idea. Chucked it in with the cooled wort and continued cooling to pitching temp. Came out to be 1060. Hope I haven't screwed it up too badly but I think I rectified the situation pretty well...

 

[carniebrew]

No harm in boiling up the extract separately, you were going to add top-up water to the brew anyway. Really, you could have just added as much hot water as was necessary to dissolve the extract, it doesn't have to be boiled...that's really only done to ensure it's free from bacteria....kit brewers are always adding unboiled water and extract to beers without issue...

1060 sounds huge, did you give it a vigorous stir before taking a sample for the gravity check? If not you could have had some of the heavier wort sitting at the bottom of the fermenter, with the thinner solution floating on top. If that OG reading is correct, you'll be in for more of an IPA than APA...hope you added plenty of hops!

 

[donald_trub]

I haven't got access to my BeerSmith recipe right now but I'm pretty sure it was on target for what it said the gravity was going to be. It was on the upper level of the style definition (not that I care about sticking to it).

But you raise an interesting point... a lot of time when I take a gravity reading before chucking in yeast, I've often noticed a lot of sediment and thought it may have a pretty big impact on the reading. I guess it does

Mashing in an esky with no tap on it means I end up with a pretty cloudy mash anyway, also forgot to filter out a lot of the hop sediment when adding to the fermenter... oops! I reckon a fair bit of hop sediment would've been in the reading.