3-Parti-Gyle

Mashing
1

So, I have a compound question. I’ll be getting into BiAB (from extract to this!) and I’m trying to figure out if I’m crazy to do a 3-part Parti-Gyle.

What I want to do is this:
Mash 3 gallons. Drain off 1 gallon of Big Ale. Fill pot again gently and then drain off entire wort of 3 gallons. Keep 1 Gallon for a middle beer. (Hold other two gallon for later.) Top entire mash off with sparge water to soak/mash again with supplementary grains. Drain this and add to other two gallons for a 5 gallon sessional. This will give me 1 Gallon Big Beer. 1 Gallon Middle Beer. 5 gallons of Little Beer. The following is how I think this will be attempted.

Here are my numbers and assumptions:
Let’s say I’ve got 3 gallons mashing. The recipe OG on my app is 1.090. This number, of course, reflects the total OG if I drained off the wort, sparged, and added both volumes together. In a normal parti-gyle batch, I can figure out what the Big Ale OG will be by taking the original recipe OG x 1.5. (This means my Big Ale will have a gravity of 1.135). I can calculate the Small Beer by dividing the top OG by 3. The Small Beer OG is 1.045.

What this means is this:
What would be a Big Beer if I drained off the entire wort initially has a OG Potential of 2/3s of the entire recipe OG.
This means the potential OG of the Big Ale is .090. By draining 1 gallon off, I am leaving behind .060 behind (as well as the additional .045 still suspended in the mash that can be sparged later.)

If I sparge soak this remaining .060 Potential, and perhaps 50% of suspended OG hidden in the mash comes out, I would have 3 Gallons around .082 Gravity. This is still a high Gravity beer at 7.4%. I would drain off a single Gallon for the middle beer.

This would leave a Potential Final OG for the small batch of .054 to go into a full 3 gallons added for 5 gallons. (.0109.) This is a very low gravity. So I would remash a supplementary amount of Grain to get above 4% ABV.

Does this sound even remotely doable?
By pulling off only a little as a time, I can defray the OG loss in the Parti-gyle and get three beers out of it.
This also allows me to try my hand at parti-gyle, and also get not two but three batches (albeit different sizes) out of a single batch.
If this works in a BiAB on stove top, we’d move this out to a full all grain system outside in the spring.

-Andrew

2

It sure seems very ambitious, I would think looking at " your potential" your stove will need to have all the burners going to accommodate that much grist…. I am rather confused as to why, but thats yer question to ask yerself. How about yer yeast? Whats that going to look like? Hops? Not steering you away, seems like maybe step back time and get to a point you can brew some good brews. I am not a good critique of big brews, but barley wines, that takes an acquired taste, well, try some. As far as mashing new with old spent grains, you won’t like the flavor you’ll get, yer sugar will be exhausted from the first and second runnings and the small brew will look nice in a ceramic mug, and then the flavor will make you shudder…. too much of the proteins, tannin’, husk accentuations… again, you should try ifn you must, making great brews is about balance. Sneezles61 :blah:

3

I think this is a totally kickbutt idea!!! Your math seems to check out as well. Fantastic idea. Why didn’t I ever think of this!?

sneezles has a point, too – very ambitious for one of your first all-grain batches! But that’s also probably okay as it seems you’ve done your homework.

Some things to think about:

Is this your first all-grain ever? The biggest thing with all of this is to MAKE SURE YOU CRUSH THE GRAINS HARD ENOUGH. If you don’t own your own mill and/or have never done this before, I would seriously advise you to crush your grains twice if not three times to ensure you can get three decent beers out of this. Otherwise, if you don’t crush adequately, then all your gravities will be way lower than expected. It’s almost a guarantee. But with an awesome crush, and since you’re brewing in a bag anyway, you can crush like mad and get what you want.

What, may I ask, does your software assume for brewhouse efficiency? It should go no higher than 75%, and 70% might be even more accurate for an early batch until you get your feet wet and learn how to tweak your process. Happens to the best of us. Over the years I got up to 90% efficiency, but it took a long time. The average efficiency on my first several batches was about 72-73%, and I was crushing pretty hard. Keep it in mind especially if/when you see your gravity readings are not what you wanted.

Something else to figure out: Boiloff rates. On a 5-gallon batch, you probably boil off 1 gallon over the course of an hour. On a 1-gallon batch, YOU WILL STILL BOIL OFF 1 GALLON PER HOUR!! So, if you start with 1 gallon, you’ll end up with nothing but a sticky nasty syrup. So, for a 1-gallon batch, you actually need to add a gallon of distilled water to start with 2 gallons before the boil to get back down to what you’d wanted!! Similar story for other size batches. You’ll probably always boil off a gallon assuming you boil hard for an hour, so you need to add some extra distilled water. For 5 gallons, if you start with 5 or 5.5 gallons and end up with 4 or 4.5 gallons, you might not be quite as upset as you would starting with 1 or 2 gallons and ending up with like nothing! You definitely need to think carefully about volumes and boiloff and take it into consideration, especially for a monumental project like you have proposed.

That’s about it! Think about these things, and you should be well on your way to making 3 very good partigyle beers!! Best of luck to you. (Seriously… why didn’t I ever think of this??? :slight_smile: )

:cheers:

4

Those are all great questions.

Why am I getting so ambitious? We wont be in a position to build an outside al grain system financially until at least Spring, so this is a way to get some practice and learning in with the cost of material for the bag, and our 5 gal kettle. It came from my reading about Parti-gyle, that they sometimes got 3 different brews out of the mash, and that I could theoretically get at least five gallons out of a smaller pot (by splitting it up.)

That being said, I’ve taken a bit of consideration into boil off. And I expect after draining off different levels I can top with a bit of water to allow boil off and I’ll lose a bit of Gravity when I do that, but at such high Gravity a little loss wont hurt me feelings.

Hops and yeast, I’ll have a big starter started which I’l give some to each batch. And hops will be done separately in each batch of boil as well.

Sneezle, in the end I’d run the math again yourself. I have to run a test batch of the triple-gyle base ale before I do the full triple-gyle. So it’ll probably december before I am finally able to attempt this. But once I do I will report back here!

-Andrew

5

Here is the recipe I’m working on for this:
The goal is to create a beer (for the Big and Middle beers) that feels like looking out over an english farm while smoking pipe tobacco. The little sessional will have a few different additives to make it a bit more peasant and rounded. So Fuggles hops will be used for the tobacco earthy aroma, and an English Ale yeast.

Primary recipe:
9 lbs Maris Otter
1.5 lbs Victory
3oz Special B.

Big batch and middle batch will also have some licorice root added.

the small batch will have 1/2 lbs of corn flakes, rye malt, (rice hills of course), Torrified wheat, and oat malt added, and more Maris Otter to get it up to a gravity above 4.

I am looking into added some smoked wood to the big and medium batches for more tobacco feel.
-Andrew

6

That’s a very inspired plan. I like it. One concern: 1.5 lb Victory malt just seems like kind of a lot to me. Possibly bring that down to just 1 lb? I’m not really sure, I never used that much. Might turn out great. But it does strike me as being “quite a bit”.

And… tobacco, eh? The only beer I ever made that tasted like tobacco was made with Coopers ale yeast. Might want to give that some consideration, as its origins are English anyway. Or it might be worth trying in a smaller batch in advance to see if you like it.

Whatever you make it sounds wonderful. I think you’ll really be surprised by the results, and most likely in a good way.

:cheers:

7

The beer I had that inspired it was Labrinthe Black Ale. That and The Hobbit. I want a beer that represents the shire and all the smells found there. So the goal is not to have a cigar smell but fresh tobacco notes, like walking into a tobaccanist, if that makes sense.

8

Your gonna need to put some of the finest weed in the shire into your recipe. :cheers:

9

Old Tovey was it?

10

Best pipeweed in the Southfarthing!

So, I know that smoked barley is barley…smoked. And I know you can add oak to get a barrel taste and feel to the beer. Has anyone tried smoking the wood they’ll be adding over the wood they smoke with? Smoked wood?

I know adding straight tobacco or even tobacco smoke is a big no-no, so I’m thinking of alternatives.