First partial - APA

[peekaboo_jones]

Gday,
I did my first partial mash yesterday, after reading some good posts here and also some advice from my local brew shop.

Tried to do similar to bribie G's http://www.aussiehomebrewer.com/index.php?/topic/72607-Pimping-a-Coopers-Kit-with-a-Partial-Mash

1kg pale malt grain and 250g caramalt in about 4L water, on the electric stovetop for about an hour between 65-75deg.
Temps were ok, had to keep checking and when it got to 70 I turned it off. Once I was too slow between checking and it peaked at 75.

Then I sparged directly onto grains bag unopened with hot water from tap. Put aside and continued to boil wort, it smelled awesome!
Also added 100g dextrose and 380g light dry malt to the boil as they were left over from previous batches. Plus some more water.

I chuckled in some hops for the last 7mins then placed the pot into the sink full of cold tap water, let it drop in temp and started to rehydrate Us-05 and went well but first time I'd done it.
Added Coopers kit can to the fermenter along with some hot water and cooled wort then topped up to 23 at about 20deg. Pitched the rehydrated yeast.
Checked it this morning and nothing happening!
Lucky I had another sachet of the same yeast so I sprinkled it directly onto it and now it's going nicely.

OG was 1038

Not sure if I'll rehydrate yeast again, it seems easier to just pitch dry yeast in fermenter a little bit warmer and let it drop.

 

[moodgett]

Hi mate. Cant do a big post just now, but will reply with my method of partial mashing tonight (got info from bribie and merged it with my equipment) it may translate to what youre looking at doing ( I stovetop brew with a partial boil also) cheers

 

[moodgett]

ok so here is the way I do it

I'll go by the last APA i made last friday
this is a partial mash bill I use for my APA's and even for my IPA, i just use more dry malt extract for it


2.00 kg

Light Dry Extract (15.8 EBC)

Dry Extract

13

54.1 %

1.40 kg

Pale Malt, Golden Promise

Grain

1

37.8 %

0.20 kg

Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (78.8 EBC)

Grain

2

5.4 %

0.10 kg

Cara-Pils/Dextrine (3.9 EBC)

Grain

3

2.7 %

so I heat up in my 12L pot about 4.5L Strike water to approx 70oC for a mash temp of 65. Once 70 degrees is reached i put in the grain bag and mash the grains in, stir and check temp is 65 (adjust up or down if need by adding hot or cold water) put the lid on and wrap well with thick towels.

I do this for 60-80 mins and check in 30 min intervals temp has remained (anal I know)

while this is happening i heat up another 5.5 odd Litres of water to 65-70 degrees in another pot

then once time is up for the mash i get grain bag out and put into water in second pot. then stir grains around a little and dunk the bag. then take bag out and let drip into boil pot with the help of a colander, then take bag away and discard grains.

I then pour sparge wort into the first pot and bring to a boil.


you can check the wort with refractometer, you should hit close to 1.040 or a couple of points over or under.

then i just do the boil and add hops as per recipe, in this case its hopped at 30, 10 and flameout

at flameout I also dissolve the dry malt extract.

then i pop the lid on and chill in the sink. replacing the water as it gets warm.

at this point I pour US-05 yeast into a jug with a litre of water to rehydrate.

once chilled to approx 25-30 degrees, I pour into my sanitized fermenter. fill with water minus the 1 Litre for yeast and give it a vigorous stir to aerate.
then pour in rehydrated yeast and take a refractometer test.

I used to just sprinkle the yeast on top of the wort. always worked fine, although rehydrating does reduce lag time.

don't be worried about yeast lag. It needs some time to get going and if you rush in too quick, you could easily overpitch, please anyone correct me if im wrong about this

anyways i know this was a drawn out post, there are plenty more out there very similar, just thought I'd share this with you in case you can take any bits out of it and use

cheers

moodgett

 

[peekaboo_jones]

Thanks moodgett, sounds fairly similar. I can certainly improve on the sparging and I probably didn't need to boil the dry extract at all.
Looking forward to tasting the results. I reckon next time I'll up the grain to ~2.5kg and not use dextrose/dry extract.
That should be a good comparison.

Also forgot to taste the grain wort before adding extract... Oh well I'm sure there will be next time

 

[moodgett]

No worries mate. The main thing is hop utilization efficiency when it comes to wort gravity. If you are using pre hopped kits, the bitterness is dont in the kit. Therefore its not really an issue. If you decide to move to unhopped extract like myself, then a good time to start looking at it. In my opinion. If you are doing a boil for 60 minutes anyway. You can always just use dme partial mash and hop it from start to finish, if you need a recipe myself or someone else im sure can set you up with one.

What you have made should be great

 

[yankinoz]

I do AG, partial mash and mostly mash. In all cases I use BIAB, and something of a partial boil is necessary since I have a 24L kettle and aim for 21--22 L final volume.

To mash I heat water to strike temperature, attach the bag to the kettle, check the temperature, add and stir the grain (milled for BIAB), place the kettle in a cardboard box lined with earthwool, close the box and cover with a blanket. In a 75 minute mash the temperature generally falls less than one degree. The brew kettle has a colander ring in the bottom.

After lifting the bag I squeeze it and then dunk sparge in water with a tiny addition of acidic salts or lactic at 70 degrees for 20 minutes. I drain the bag but do not squeeze. Mash efficiencies are generally about 90 percent, but I use spreadsheets to calculate brew salt additions to the mash water.

Example of volumes: in a recent batch I mashed 2.8 kg of grain in 11L of water and dunk sparged with 8L.

I add DME to get the wort to the intended abv.

 

[Fu ManBru]

Nice one Peek J! I'm new to partials myself with only two under the belt. My first effort at sparging wasn't that great and I think dunk sparging would be the go as outlined in the other posts and might I give this a go next time.

Haven't had a go at rehydrating yeast but it may have just been a time lag thing as Moodget suggested.

 

[peekaboo_jones]

Sounds very interesting yankinoz, that's one big kettle you have there!
I''ll have to invest some time in software, it should help me prepare a bit better.
When adding DME do you add it at final wort volume and does it mix ok at intented yeast pitching temp?
Good work Fu manbru!
how'd your first two partials turn out, taste much better than kits?
Have a go at rehydrating but ensure you have backup yeast just incase! The safale company website has good instructions so check it out

 

[Fu ManBru]

Really surprised how well my first partial turned out. Funny to see the wife's jaw drop after she took her first sip!

We've had a few warm days here in Hobart and I've been getting through my supply pretty quick. Bottled my second on the weekend so I'm counting the days....

 

[peekaboo_jones]

Geez that's good, I'm really looking forward to trying mine in about 4 weeks. I used some new hops called kohatu, they smell really nice out of the pack but at the moment most hops do for me!
I have a Coopers real ale batch ready to try this weekend which will be cool.
Good luck with yours, I'd be keen to hear your recipes too pm me if that's ok?

 

[Fu ManBru]

Check out the Recipe DB. You can filter by partial by clicking up the top right.

I did Jet's Fat Yak and got The Inglorious Basterd in the bottles now. Heap of recipe and ideas in there.

 

[peekaboo_jones]

Cool thanks man, I'll check it out.
So I bottled this batch today, smelled awesome and tasted pretty good straight out of the vessel. This week in Melbourne peaked mid 30's but I'm sure fermentation had finished, so I hope it will be ok

 

[yankinoz]

Sounds very interesting yankinoz, that's one big kettle you have there!
I''ll have to invest some time in software, it should help me prepare a bit better.
When adding DME do you add it at final wort volume and does it mix ok at intented yeast pitching temp?
Good work Fu manbru!
how'd your first two partials turn out, taste much better than kits?
Have a go at rehydrating but ensure you have backup yeast just incase! The safale company website has good instructions so check it out

You should add DME during the boil, but that can be done near the end. Because steam makes DME sticky, I premix with a little water and add the slurry.

The kettle's big because I do partial mashes, mostly mashes (only a little DME) and AG. A lot of AG brewers have monster kettles, so that they can do a full boil, have lots of space at the top, and still end up with more than 20L of wort; even with a 24L kettle I need to dilute mine with 3 -4 L of sanitised water at knockout in order to get up to 21 or more litres.

Experiment with what you've got.

 

[peekaboo_jones]

Hey guys,
Couldn't resist the urge in waiting till this weekend to try a bottle.
I'm sure you've all heard this before but bugger me - it's bloody good!
So much smoother than my first Coopers APA, great head retention and a really nice crisp yet nice mouth feel to it.
The hops I used were Kohatu and I can certainly tell there is a slight hint of citrus aroma and possibly a pine too. I'll use more next time for sure as it didn't make a big impact overall, maybe as it ages?.
I'm confident next time to up the grain quantity and might add some wheat grain or something else.
Just awesome!
Will post a picture tomorrow night of the beer in a glass
Thanks guys!

 

[moodgett]

Hehe. Let see how long this batch lasts hey