A few mates are coming round tomorrow and we will be doing 2or3 batch sparge brews, once we are finished could we throw all the grains in the cooler and make another mystery beer, they are all British ales so have similar grain…good idea or madness? Thanks John
You’re basically talking about partygyle brewing, and yeah, especially if your batches were high gravity beers it might be worth giving it a try and see how it works out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained…
Yes, this could make for a wonderful experimental brew! Partigyle indeed. Go for it. It might even be great.
If you batch sparge as normal, the wort left in the grain after the sparge will be the same gravity as the second runnings, so you won’t have much sugar to work with. For example, assume the gravity is 1.020 and you have 40 lbs of grain combined in one MT (which would hold about five gallons of wort) and you add seven gallons of water, you would end up with (5 x 20)/(5+7) = 1.007 going into the kettle and if you boiled it down to five gallons, you’d end up at 1.010.
I have done it before but had to collect something like 15-20 gallons and boiled it down to 5-6 gallons. It made a very nice beer.
I should mention that I am hooked up to house natural gas so I didn’t have to worry about the added cost of a long boil using LP.
