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Partial Mash - Attempt #1

An update 9-Mar-04 This beer rocks!. I am going to try to scale this recipe up next time round (see #3).

For a full list of attempts that I have recorded here see PartialMash.

Today I just brewed my first partial mash and although I won't know for a while how drinkable it is, I am optimistic. Ok so I didn't adjust for using dry malt extract instead of liquid but she'll be right. That does bring me to an important (and obvious) point - you do need to settle on a recipe. Don't choke on the millions of recipes out there. If you have brewed a kit you liked, find a recipe with a similar style so you can compare notes. I happened to choose the Wild River Pale Ale because I am quite fond of an American Pale Ale and have brewed a couple of the ESBeer fresh wort kits in this style.

There's no reason why you couldn't attempt something like this (or something even more ambitious) for your first brew ever, but if you have already brewed a few kits then you should at least have a handle on most of the process (assuming your kit brewing involves some boiling and adding hops).

Difference in Process

Anyway the main differences between my partial mash brew and my previous can opener specials are:

1. Choosing a recipe and chasing a few more ingredients. A bit like baking a cake from a recipe book vs a packet mix.
2. Extracting wort from some malted grain.
3. Boiling, handling and chilling larger volumes of hot water.

I based my method on the 2nd partial mash method at San Francisco Brewcraft. You should read that to fill in any holes below - it is only one page.

Equipment

This stuff is in addition to what you are probably already using for kit brews. Don't sweat on the exact spec, this is just what I could pick up cheaply:

1. A 19 litre pot - I used this for the boil. ($20 at Big W). Actually, I was already using this for hopping my kit brews.

2. A 15 litre pot, my mash tun (< $20 at Big W). Also doubles as a pot for heating the sparge water. A 10 litre or smaller pot probably would have been fine - water doesn't have the tendency to boil over like wort does.

3. A thermometer that can measure the temperature of hot liquids. Your LHBS should have something, I happened to use a floating candy thermometer from http://www.thegeneraltrader.com.au. Something to keep the mash warm, either insulate it by wrapping it up in something, my pot happened to fit beautfully in the oven.

4. Something to strain the wort from the grain. I picked up an 8 litre colander from the general trader for under $20.
5. Something to cool the wort ("wort chiller").

I also downloaded QBrew to enter my recipe and make a few calcs for me. If you have a copy of How To Brew by John Palmer you can do the same thing with a simple spreadsheet. Otherwise just duplicate a recipe you think you like exactly. Here's the recipe I used for this one:

Batch size: 23 litres
Style: American Pale Ale ¹

Joining the Dots

I am going to try the Playboy™ approach - let the pictures tell the story.

Bags of malted grains from the local brew store. Dave at Greensborough Homebrew Supplies milled it for me. There was a bit of translating between the grain specified in the recipe and what he had on the shelf.

I didn't have towel handy but I can easily set my oven to the mash temperature. Even if I didn't preheat, the oven is well insulated and the mash temperature will hold pretty well.

While the enzymes do all the heavy lifting, you can just sit on your arse for 45 minutes or so. How hard can that be? Here we have the grains mixed up with 5 litres of hot water.

We want to leave the grains behind so toss everything into a strainer ... Notice how the strainer sits nicely on top of the pot - that makes life easy.

badabing badaboom, the stuff you want drops into the pot below.

More hot water to extract wort stuck in the grain (another 5 litres). The two aliens on the window sill are intergalactic spies trying to steal Earth's most precious secrets. I didn't notice them until I developed the film. There have since been other sitings, see AlienBrewer.

My first homemade wort. Its a partial mash because I only created 9 litres of wort here out of a total recipe volume of 23 litres. The 9 litres comes from: 5 L in the mash, 5 L sparge, less 1 litre that soaked into the grain and didn't want to come out. The inset shows the liquid gold. The alchemists had it all wrong - they tried to convert lead into gold while the smart money was on turning boring old grain into gold.

Add some more water, malt extract and hops according to the recipe's schedule. The reason why I added water to the boil (another 4 litres) is that the more concentrated the boil is, the less efficiently you extract the goods from hops. This is a partial boil because I am not boiling the final wort volume (13 litres here), I will be adding cold water to the wort in the fermenter. I probably could have boiled just the 9 litres from the previous step but the more concentrated your wort is, the harder it is to extract the goodies you want from the hops.

13 litres of boiling water will take forever to cool down just sitting on the stovetop. You want it to cool quickly for several reasons, the main one being that you get to drink your beer sooner ³. I made this chiller out of 9mm copper tube ($50 from Refrigeration Parts Victoria). If you want to see how others made them check out ChillerGallery.