First Partial

[ayellayen]

I'm gonna have a crack at my first partial tomorrow (Sunday) so I figure I'll post here and if anyone sees any problems or has any advice hopefully you'll share with me.

I'm going to have a go at a fairly simple Pale ale, these are my ingredients:

2 * Malt Shovel Brewery Pale Ale all-malt extracts
2 * 500g bags of pale pilsner grain.
2 * 25g satchels of Willamette hops pellets.
a few books on homebrewing.
a six pack of coopers in the fridge.

Now, for the method. I'm not 100% on this so this where the problems, if any, will be. I'm going to boil some water ('bout four litres), then add the grains (well, grist, after cracking). Boil that until I get a bit of a gel substance going on. Cue beer.
Then I'll heat some water to 68C, add the gelatinized grain soloution and bring it back to 68C. Filter it, wash the grains with some of the mixture (very crude sparging). Then I'll put it in a thermos for a couple of hours. Cue another beer.
Then I'll just begin my usual kit boiling process, adding some water and my mixture to my kits, boiling it all up. Adding the hops at the 20 minute mark and then at the 50 minute mark. Straining it into my fermenter, bring the level up to about 30L with some water, adjust temperature. Cue third beer, take some hydrometer readings. Add propogated yeast.
Sit down. Finish off six pack.

Can anyone see any problems? If so feel free to correct me, I'm only twenty so I'm still a tad new to this. Thanks for your time gents.

 

[vlbaby]

Now, for the method. I'm not 100% on this so this where the problems, if any, will be. I'm going to boil some water ('bout four litres), then add the grains (well, grist, after cracking). Boil that until I get a bit of a gel substance going on. Cue beer.
Then I'll heat some water to 68C, add the gelatinized grain soloution and bring it back to 68C. Filter it, wash the grains with some of the mixture (very crude sparging). Then I'll put it in a thermos for a couple of hours. Cue another beer.

[post="80558"][/post]​

Hi alleyayen,
I've never done a partial before, but have done plenty of All Grain brews. I may be wrong but the first part of your method seems way off to me. I believe you should be heated your water to approx ~ 72 degc ( you've have to calculate the exact figure) than adding your grains, which should bring your temp to you required mashing temp, lets say 66 degC. Now that you've done that you'll have to maintain it there for at least an hour in order for the enzymes in the grain to convert the starches into sugars.
After this is all done you can sparge the sugars from the grain and boil the collecting with your hops.


This is a rough break down of this part of the process the way i believe it to be. Somebody correct me if I am off track or talking s@*t.


vlbaby.

 

[Jazzafish]

It may be a bit late, but I'd add some bittering hops to the recipe.
Probably 20gm Pride of Ringwood at the start of the boil.
Possibly add a bit of cracked Wheat grain/grist for a better head, add about 5 - 10% of your grain and malt amounts.
You didn't mention yeast but I would have cultured the yeast from a bottle of a coopers pale ale. Made it up to a 1 Litre starter to be pitchable on the brew day.

See http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter1-1.html

Basically if you follow the process in the link, replacing the can extract with the goodness from your mash, it will kick ass!

Make sure you mash first. As vlbaby mentioned, check the strike water. I'd also reduce the amount of water in the mash to about 2.5 to 3 Litres per Kilo. I'd also pre heat your mash tun with boiling water, then pour it out before adding strike wate and grain.

Also use the hour of the mash process to have a beer and clean and sanitise all you fermenter and anything touching the post boil wort.

For your hop additions, add the Bittering Hops (POR) when there is a rolling boil and make that the start of the 60min boil. Adding the Williamette hops as you had mentioned will be ok. While boiling, ready the Ice bath or cooling method.

I'd also only add water to give you a desired starting gravity before pitching the yeast, rather than making it up to a set Litre. Probably a good target would be a sg of 1052 to 1056.

Make sure you aerate the wort before pitching the yeast.

Enjoy it! Partials are a great way to brew! :beer:

 

[ayellayen]

Thanks for the help lads, aside from a small boilover problem all went well. Cheers.

 

[pint of lager]

Before you tackle your next partial mash, have a good read of other threads on partial mashing plus the howtobrew link. Your post shows that you are missing vital bits of information.

Cubbie did an excellent job about six months ago of putting all the partial mash links together that he could find plus summarizing them. Do a search on cubbie and mash, that should bring it up.

As the others have pointed out, boiling your cracked grain is a no no. This destroys the enzymes which convert the long chain flour starches into shorter chain sachaarides or malt brewing sugars. Do not confuse this with decoctions where only a part of the mash is boiled, leaving enough enzymes in the body of the mash to work on the mash.

Mashing is the process of steeping the cracked malted grain at 66 deg C. This is where the enzymes do their work.

Sparging is rinsing the sachaarides from the grains.

The resulting sweet wort is boiled with hops to give bitterness and flavour and also to sanitise the wort.