My First American Malt Liquor Attempt - Parti-gyle

[Bribie G]

I was quaffing one of Scruffy's 9% headbangers - I've always been a fan of really strong beers and often wanted to brew an American Malt Liquor - :icon_drunk: you

can't buy them commercially in Australia. However being a cheapy I was concerned about the lousy efficiency using BIAB in a 40L urn with such a big grain

bill. Last night Scruffy's beer got me thinking and suddenly it occurred to me that as I now have a two urn setup, a parti-gyle brew would be almost a

trivial extension of what I'm doing now. So here we go:

Gyle #1 Midnight Train American Malt Liquor aiming for about 9% ABV with a 15L length into a FWK cube I have.
Gyle #2 Valley Boy Cerveza - 20L of whatever is left (but refreshed with some extra fermentables as you will see)


Because there is a fair whack of adjuncts I'm also doing a new procedure - a proper cereal mash as suggested by Thirsty Boy and MHB. As opposed to just cooking up rice or maize to a mush before adding to the main mash.


Midnight Train Malt Liquor

Third boxcar, Midnight Train
Destination Bangor, Maine
Old worn out suit and shoes, don't pay no union dues......


cereal mash #1
500 BB Ale
1000 Rice

cereal mash #2
500 BB Ale
1000 Polenta

main mash

4000 BB Galaxy
330 Carapils
200 Melanoidin

90 mins 66 degrees

15 Northern Brewer U.S.A 60 mins
300 white sugar in boil

Pacman yeast

Bottle in 40 oz bottles (actually 1.25L bottles = 42.2 US oz) and drink out of a brown paper bag whilst panhandling passers by.
--------------------------------------


Valley Boy Cerveza

Hoist the bag for the Midnight Train, drain with light squeeze
Then swing the bag over to the other urn #2 and do a second mash for 90 mins while #1 is boiling up.
plus:

cereal mash #3
250 BB Galaxy
500 Rice

and:
750 BB Galaxy

20 Galena 60 mins

S-189

Keg.

Look, I'm not even going to fire up Beersmith for this, I'll trust to my hydro and see what I end up with and tweak next time - if there is a next time

haha. :icon_cheers:

 

[seemax]

I wish I had as much time as you do to dream up such ideas...

You are the adjunct master!!

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Don't a lot of malt liquors use a simple sugar adjunct to get that high gravity? Sorry I didn't actually read your stuff about parti-gyle yet, it just popped into my head that I think your gravity issue might be a non-issue if thats how they do it?

Just read some more of your post Nd flicked over to the cereal mash link you posted. Thats a good general guide on cereal mashing, but because you have been having haze issues with some of your adjunct brews... I wouldmconsider am more comprehensive version of a cereal mash. Basically a full step mash version with mash in at low protien rest or even lower to hit all the enzymes you have.

That'd be a fair bit harder... So probably not worth it unless the other version of the cereal mash doesn't do the trick for you. But worth keeping in the back of your mind perhaps.

Also, unless it's a pot size thing (or something else I didn't think of) I don't see the need for separate mashes 1 & 2. Why not combine them?

TB

 

[Bribie G]

Thanks for the ideas, TB. When I'm doing a kilo of polenta I find that the mongrel stuff swells up so much that it eventually three quarter fills my 10L stockpot, fortunately I have a second 8L pot so I'll do the polenta in the big one and the rice in the smaller one.
I could go onto an American forum and ask if they have any hints about malt liquors, but I imagine they would bring out the flaming torches and pitchforks

 

[bum]

I could go onto an American forum and ask if they have any hints about malt liquors, but I imagine they would bring out the flaming torches and pitchforks

I'm sure they would. Imagine if VB came double strength in goon bags - culturally, that is the beer you'd be asking them to help you with.

 

[Bribie G]

I may do a separate thread on this because I know a lot of people use rice or corn. However my mind has just been totally blown and is currently running out of my ears.

To do the two cereal mashes I decided to boil up the rice and the polenta first in a couple of stockpots to give the malt enzymes a bit of an easier job. Then I cooled them down to 74 degrees and doughed in the dry grain malt and stirred.
In the case of the polenta I had cooked it to a solid porridge, really stiff that I could hardly turn the spoon in. I had wondered "what's the point of adding dry grain malt to the adjunct mush, I just don't get it but I'll go through the motions".

Within about 10 stirs the polenta turned magically into a thin soup - this must be one of the most incredible moments in my brewing career. Literally transforming from a thick porridge to a thin soup in around five seconds. No added liquid, just the dry malt (Barrett Burston Ale). Obviously the cement just got dissolved so I can get to the aggregate, as MHB pointed out in another thread. Likewise the rice was a thick mush you could spoon onto a plate and it would hold its shape. Thin soup after ten stirs. Man these enzymes are dynamite, I had no idea how Industrial they are. I'll leave for 24 mins at 70 degrees, bring to the boil then add to the main mash. Gotta get a move on.



I'll never do just a straight mush boil again, if you use rice or polenta, try the cereal mash next time, it's awesome.

 

[seanohio]

having had my share of malt liqour in my college days, my advise to making an 'authentic' malt liqoud is to make it taste as disgusting as possible!

 

[Bribie G]

So here's the thick porridge which has been digested to a thin soup, now separating out into an almost sickly sweet liquid (probably rich in dextrins) and some fluffy trubby stuff. Amazing.
So that little bit (500g) of high diastatic malt has done the 'heavy lifting' for the main mash.



It also explains why the BIAB 'grain ball' is so light and small when doing adjunct brews, the stuff basically disappears in the mash. Nick from Tweed and others have pointed this out as well.

 

[Nick JD]

So here's the thick porridge which has been digested to a thin soup, now separating out into an almost sickly sweet liquid (probably rich in dextrins) and some fluffy trubby stuff. Amazing.
So that little bit (500g) of high diastatic malt has done the 'heavy lifting' for the main mash.

View attachment 39791

It also explains why the BIAB 'grain ball' is so light and small when doing adjunct brews, the stuff basically disappears in the mash. Nick from Tweed and others have pointed this out as well.

Great stuff! Why 74C?

Will this give you a high FG brew?

 

[Bribie G]

That's "strike" temperature in the stockpot. I did that to get a cereal mash around 70 degrees when I put the dry malt in. Remember we are keeping the cereal mash up in the Alpha Amylase territory, (67 to 72 degrees ) - we aren't interested in any Beta Amylase that the 500g of malt may have to offer. That will happen in the main mash tun. :icon_cheers:

 

[DUANNE]

top work bribie, i think youve just convinced me to have a go at this next time i do a rice lager.

 

[NickB]

+1, will definitely give this a go, maybe even tomorrow

Cheers

 

[Bribie G]

Well well well
The reason I was doing this as a parti - gyle was because I was convinced, because of the big grain bill and the 40L urn, that I would be unlikely to get more than 15-20L of wort out, and leaving a huge amount of sweet goodness in the big swollen grain mass to be dumped.
As it's turned out, and no doubt due to the spectacular success of the cereal mashes, the actual spent grain 'ball' in the BIAB bag wasn't much bigger if at all than my normal 5% lagers. As you can see from the shot of the urn, there's going to be a normal wort run off into the cube, so at the end of the day I don't think there's enough goodness left in the bag to persevere with a parti - gyle.



I'm even going to have to do a 90 min boil to get it down to cube size which is amazing, I'll report on OG later in the evening :icon_cheers: I'd be surprised to get 9% based on what's happened but I'll be more than happy with 7 to 8 percent ABV which is common for US Malt Liquors. I'll run it through BS.

BTW I was reading further and they say that rice is harder to gelatinize than polenta, so if you are trying this, then best to cook to a real gooey mass before cooling and adding the malt grain. They recommend 10 - 20 % of the brew's total malt bill into the cereal mash - I went 10% (edit: into each of the two mashes, rice and polenta) as aus malts are very diastatic, as they have exhibited today.

 

[MHB]

It's great when the parts all come together that - Ah moment when it all makes sense.

The part of me that likes big words would say epiphany - but let's go with "winners are grinners"

I still reckon that you're better starting with the malt and adjunct cold and hitting all the enzymes on the way to 80^oC, protease and glucanase probably didn't get much of a look in.

MHB

 

[Bribie G]

It's great when the parts all come together that - Ah moment when it all makes sense.

The part of me that likes big words would say epiphany - but let's go with "winners are grinners"

I still reckon that you're better starting with the malt and adjunct cold and hitting all the enzymes on the way to 80^oC, protease and glucanase probably didn't get much of a look in.

MHB

Thanks, MHB - I hear. I'll do that next time if I'm still alive after 18 x forties of rapper and homie juice :icon_drunk:

:blink:

 

[Fourstar]

Thanks, MHB - I hear. I'll do that next time if I'm still alive after 18 x forties of rapper and homie juice

I say no more! :lol:

 

[Bribie G]

I say no more! :lol:

haha

 

[Thirsty Boy]

Cool, it really is a surprise when a thick mash suddenly goes all soupy on you isn't it.

You were talking about brews with wheat flour the other day?? Next time you want to play with wheat flour, try a cereal mash at beta glucan rest temps and you get to see a similar thing... A pot of school kid clag turns into lovely runny liquid beforemyour very eyes.

Glad it worked Bribie

TB

 

[felten]

Make sure you get some mates over and play

 

[Bribie G]

Two forty ounce bottles? Hell I've just drunk the first one out of the batch in 20 minutes and I'm hammered like you wouldn't believe.


Shyte and it tastes bloody excellent as well.....................

Wooohooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo :icon_drunk: :icon_drunk: :icon_drunk: :icon_drunk: