Definition Of Partial?

[braufrau]

Fourstar's method sounds pretty neat.
I use to use a bucket in bucket mash tun. Cheap and peppy. Wrapped it up in a doona.

Fourstar also makes a good point that it takes as long to do AG as partials but there is a big jump in euqipment cost for AG.

And as for definition .. brew contains extract plus wort derived from a mash. Ratio doesn't matter. some of my partials had 500g of extract in them and 3.5kg of grain. Steeping grains to add to extract doesn't count as a partial since its short for "partial mash".

 

[MarkBastard]

When I did my partial I didn't put it in the oven (though that's a good idea, if my pot actually fits?).

I just wrapped the pot in a few towels on the kitchen bench. I lost just over 1 degree of temperature in an hour.

Everything else is spot on too. I'm still planning on writing a guide for this for people new to it, but I'll wait to my next batch and take photos etc I think.

 

[Phoney]

Everything else is spot on too. I'm still planning on writing a guide for this for people new to it, but I'll wait to my next batch and take photos etc I think.

That would be great if you could!!

Im gearing up to do my first partial in a few weeks time..

 

[manticle]

To avoid starting an annoying new thread -

Can someone tell me to what point the grains should be cracked and at what point has someone gone too far and why?

The reason I ask is because I've just started cracking and attempting to mash (partial only thus far). My set-up is primitive as I don't have a lot of cash to outlay at the moment.

Last night I cracked grains using a small coffee grinder. I can't afford a mill yet. My understanding is that the grains shouldn't be pulverised (any reason beyond that it's difficult to strain??) so the grinder bursts were short and sharp. Some powder and some whole grains inevitably occurred - whole grains were thumped with a mortar.

2 parts boiling to 1 part cold tap water , 2.5:1 water to grain ratio, 10L pot on the stove at the lowest setting (and watched like a hawk because a watched pot never boils) and after an hour, strained and sparged through a colander and mesh strainer into a 20 L pot for a 60 min boil.

Rough as guts but my thermometer maxes at 50 and I'd rather have a go at grain type beers than be stuck doing KK and expensive extracts till my windfall from Rudd comes in. They may not be optimum but there's a certain sense of DIY and lateral thinking that attracted me to homebrew in the first place. Don't tell anyone but my hop measurements are estimates according to handful until I can afford digital scales.

No bits in the mash and the OG was as predicted in beer recipator @ 70% efficiency (+/-1 point).

When you grind coffee finer, you get more flavour (basic extracted goodness from within). Why is it different for grains?

I apologise for the potentially irritating stupidity of the question/s.

 

[Sentry459]

Go donw to dimmies, spoils, spotlight and get yourself a few M of Voile cloth. line the inside of your pot with it, dump in grain, topup with 65 deg water (with a few inches below the top as you will boil the wort in this). whack a lid on and pop into a 150deg preheated oven and turn off the gas.

Very helpful post Fourstar and has given me a few new ideas. Just one Q though, we are preheating the oven to 150 deg F right?

 

[Fourstar]

No to deg C. as soon as its preheated and you are ready to put your pot in, turn it off. You will find the heat dissipates quickly from the oven so after an hour you when you pull it out, its still holding temp around 65 deg~/ mash temp.

Cheers! :icon_cheers:

 

[HoppingMad]

To avoid starting an annoying new thread -

Can someone tell me to what point the grains should be cracked and at what point has someone gone too far and why?

Check John Palmer's How to Brew (the book is best, but you can read a section on it online for written pointers). The book has pictures and shows you what an optimum crush should look like. Essentially you're trying to keep husks intact and not get too much flour which is pretty much what the pics in the book show. Flour can make your beer cloudy and too fine a crush can mean stuck sparges when you're brewing All Grain. Particularly with wheat you really want to avoid the flour aspect as that stuff can take you into stuck sparge city and set like concrete on the bottom of your mash tun.

When you grind coffee finer, you get more flavour (basic extracted goodness from within). Why is it different for grains?

It possibly isn't. You will probably get the same flavours, and someone else more experienced might be able to help on this one, but you want to avoid flour as much as you can for the reasons above. Keeping husks intact also gives you a great grain bed which assists with filtering and wort run-off. Coffee grinders tend to chop your husks up which affects this. I've read of some brewers here worrying about the affect of tannins from the husk once they're chopped too, and these tannins bringing out weird flavours, but not sure of that myself - I done some pretty fine crushes without that issue.

Hopper.

 

[manticle]

Thanks.

Clear and succinct with suggestions of information I can find out myself.

Useful and helpful.

Appreciated.