Too partial?

Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum

Help Support Australia & New Zealand Homebrewing Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

verysupple

Supremely mediocre brewer
Joined
23/9/12
Messages
1,057
Reaction score
268
Hi all,

I've done a couple of partial mashes now and I think I'm learning my system and getting the hang of it. My equipment allows me to mash 3 kg of grain and I end up with about 14 L of wort and then make up to 20 - 22 L with about 1 kg of extract (depending on style). I calculated that for an average beer of about 1.050 OG, ~ 63 % of my OG is coming from the mash and the remaining 37 % from the extract. I try to match the extract to the base malt, but sometimes it's hard. e.g. I have to make do with American extract when I'm making English beers because that's the only extract my LHBS stocks.

My question is, how much does that amount of extract affect the flavour? If I would get significant improvement I'd be happy to just do smaller AG batches, but if the difference would be small then the extra volume is always nice.
 
May as well be doing full AG mate.
NickJD's "20L stovetop" thread will put you on the right path.
 
This is a tough question to answer using facts, but there will be plenty of opinion based stuff. The only way to really tell if using extract to make up 1/3rd or so of your grain bill will "significantly" alter the flavour of your beer would be to do it. As in brew two beers with the exact same post-mash process...same boil time, hop additions, yeast and fermentation temperature/method (and priming method for that matter).

My opinion, not having done the above, is that in your everyday pale ale type of beer, the malt would make little difference, compared to the flavours imparted via hopping, yeast and fermentation temps. Especially when you're talking about 37%. I'm sure there are many beer styles where that would apply to a much lesser degree.

I'd love to hear from someone who's done a comparison. Or even from yourself one day if you decide to try a smaller batch of your favourite brew with only your mash & no extract.

Or if anyone in Melbourne's inner North is wanting to do a back to back brew experiment (a DSGA maybe?), I'll volunteer to do the full extract version.
 
carniebrew said:
This is a tough question to answer using facts, but there will be plenty of opinion based stuff. The only way to really tell if using extract to make up 1/3rd or so of your grain bill will "significantly" alter the flavour of your beer would be to do it. As in brew two beers with the exact same post-mash process...same boil time, hop additions, yeast and fermentation temperature/method (and priming method for that matter).

My opinion, not having done the above, is that in your everyday pale ale type of beer, the malt would make little difference, compared to the flavours imparted via hopping, yeast and fermentation temps. Especially when you're talking about 37%. I'm sure there are many beer styles where that would apply to a much lesser degree.

I'd love to hear from someone who's done a comparison. Or even from yourself one day if you decide to try a smaller batch of your favourite brew with only your mash & no extract.

Or if anyone in Melbourne's inner North is wanting to do a back to back brew experiment (a DSGA maybe?), I'll volunteer to do the full extract version.
Good point about the malt not making much difference in some styles. Everyone says that you need English malt to make an authentic English bitter so I might use that as my experiment - one partial with Maris Otter and Briess (US) extract, one AG with Maris Otter.
 
Mash twice, and you have your full AG wort pre-boil.
Not that hard??
 
warra48 said:
Mash twice, and you have your full AG wort pre-boil.
Not that hard??
No, not hard to mash, but I can only boil 15 L because I live in an apartment and brew on my weak stove.
 
OK, so here are my proposed recipes for the best bitter comparison (adapted from Jamil's Brewing Classic Styles). I've kept the percentages (percentage contribution to OG) of specialty and crystal grains the same in both recipes. The amount of bittering hops might seem high but the weights have been calculated taking into account the lower utilisation due to the small boil volumes. I also calculated the size of the yeast starters required to give the same cell density for the two volumes.


ALL GRAIN

2.6 kg Simpsons Ale (Maris Otter) (87%)
0.15 kg Dingemans Aromatic (5%)
0.15 kg Simpsons Pale Crystal (5%)
0.1 kg Briess Special Roast (3%)
30 g East Kent Goldings, 5.6% AA, 60 min (23.77 IBU)
10 g East Kent Goldings, 5.6% AA, 20 min (4.81 IBU)
10 g East Kent Goldings, 5.6% AA, 5 min (1.57 IBU)
Wyeast1968 London ESB Ale (0.5 L starter, 9.13 million cells / mL)

Single infusion, 60 min, 65 C
Batch sparge

Efficiency: 70 %
Boil time: 60 min
Final Vol.: 15 L
OG: 1.045
FG: 1.014
ABV: 4.5 (Bottled)
IBU: 30
EBC: 15



PARTIAL MASH (LATE EXTRACT)

2.425 kg Simpsons Ale (Maris Otter) (55%)
0.225 kg Dingemans Aromatic (5%)
0.225 kg Simpsons Pale Crystal (5%)
0.125 kg Briess Special Roast (3%)
0.8 kg Briess Golden Light DME (32%)
50 g East Kent Goldings, 5.6% AA, 60 min (25.16 IBU)
15 g East Kent Goldings, 5.6% AA, 20 min (4.58 IBU)
15 g East Kent Goldings, 5.6% AA, 5 min (1.50 IBU)
Wyeast1968 London ESB Ale (1.2 L starter, 9.10 million cells / mL)


Single infusion, 60 min, 65 C
Batch sparge

Efficiency: 70 %
Boil time: 60 min
Final Vol.: 22 L
OG: 1.045
FG: 1.013
ABV: 4.6 (Bottled)
IBU: 31
EBC: 15


EDIT: forgot to paste mash details
 
verysupple said:
No, not hard to mash, but I can only boil 15 L because I live in an apartment and brew on my weak stove.
Fair enough.
Two boils?

Not wanting to sound smart, just thinking, that's all.
Whatever works for you.
I've tasted quite a number of partials over the last year from a fellow AHB member, and many of them have been excellent, as good as most of my AG brews.
 
Yeah, I thought about 2 boils, but my brew days are long enough as they are. I like to keep my methods consistent to help me improve my brewing, so if I'm doing something with lots of pils malt I don't want to have to do 2 x 90 min boils and 2 x chills. That'd add like 2 hrs to the brew day.
 
Just watch the hop adjustment...there's a conversation about this over in the K&E forum, in the thread on Ian's spreadsheet about hop utilisation in partial boils. We've basically agreed that with any boil volumes over about 10 litres it may not be worth adjusting your hops up, as we find it tends to over hop. If you've done partial boils before and adjusted up, and liked the results, obviously keep doing it. Personally I found it turned an extract DSGA into more of an Amarillo IPA when I first tried the "hop concentration factor". Now with 10 or 12 litre boils I use the same hops as suggested in a full boil.

Also something you might try sometime, replace the 60 min addition of EKG with Warrior hops....you can use a lot less to get that 25 IBU (around 16 grams Warrior vs 50 grams EKG), I've had a lot of success with this in beers with further late hopping such as your recipe above...in fact because you're saving 50 grams of EKG you can use more either later in the boil or dry hopped for that aroma/flavour you're after. EKG is an aroma hop after all.
 
carniebrew said:
Just watch the hop adjustment...there's a conversation about this over in the K&E forum, in the thread on Ian's spreadsheet about hop utilisation in partial boils. We've basically agreed that with any boil volumes over about 10 litres it may not be worth adjusting your hops up, as we find it tends to over hop. If you've done partial boils before and adjusted up, and liked the results, obviously keep doing it. Personally I found it turned an extract DSGA into more of an Amarillo IPA when I first tried the "hop concentration factor". Now with 10 or 12 litre boils I use the same hops as suggested in a full boil.

Also something you might try sometime, replace the 60 min addition of EKG with Warrior hops....you can use a lot less to get that 25 IBU (around 16 grams Warrior vs 50 grams EKG), I've had a lot of success with this in beers with further late hopping such as your recipe above...in fact because you're saving 50 grams of EKG you can use more either later in the boil or dry hopped for that aroma/flavour you're after. EKG is an aroma hop after all.
Good point about the amount of hops. I'm using EKG because I've got plenty and may as well use them before they get too old. But, yeah, you could sub Warrior for the bittering addition.

I use Ian's spreadsheet but I've modified it so it now handles mashes, has graphic indicators for OG, FG, IBU, EBC showing recipe and style guidelines, etc. etc. I average the two values (HCF on and off) for IBU and display upper, lower and average estimates on the graph and have been happy with the results using the average.

FWIW, I downloaded the trial of BeerSmith 2.1 recently and it gives almost exactly the same values as I'm getting with my version of the spreadsheet for all my recipes (for gravities anyway, I didn't bother checking IBUs and colour). I'm just going to stick with what I'm familiar with for now.
 
Why not just make 14L AG batches? That is exactly what I do. Though I use a 45L kettle and a spiral burner instead of a stove.
 
Hokay,

I put down the partial version last Sat. It hit FG on tuesday (damn that was fast) so I let it condidtion till yesterday (Sat) and now I'm cold crashing it for a week. Will update after I've done the all-grain.
 
Back in the 1950s my old man was a home brewer, using liquid malt extract, some manky old hops - possibly Fuggles or something, and gawd knows what yeast. I used to get a sip of the beer and can still taste it now (funny how you can remember exactly what something tasted like from years ago). In the uk we also used to get jars of stuff called Virol which was liquid malt extract fortified with bone marrow and vitamins and our Granny would faithfully dose us with teaspoons of the stuff whenever we visited. :unsure:

In my KnK and partial days, try as I might I found that whenever I used LME in any brew, no matter how fresh the tin, sophisticated the hopping or how fine the yeast handling using the best liquid yeasts, that first mouthful always took me back to being 9 years old again. The TWANG.

I still do the odd partial as a keg filler and find that the best extract to use is the blandest possible can - usually Coopers or Morgans Canadian, and I don't seem to get the twang. Using a fair amount of grains in the partial - such as 3k - there's a chance for the grain to shine through, and using appropriate yeast and hops you should make a good fist of UK styles even using a Coopers kit. Especially if you boost it with some tasty crystals.
 
Back
Top