Sunday marks my 3 year anniversary of brewing. I started my brewing “career” on Super Bowl Sunday 3 years ago. Seems like 10 years and when I look at my set up, equipment and supplies, it seems like longer.
Anyway, I want to do a special brew day and I have been considering Denny’s Old Stoner for a while. I brewed a 5 gallon batch of NB’s barleywine (extract) in my early days and basically gave it two years to get good and decided to dump it as it was taking up keg space. It was fine, just not something I would drink a lot of and I did bottle about 2 gallons off the keg.
I am thinking of a 3 gallon batch of Old Stoner with a Parti-gyle to end up with a smaller second beer. I am struggling with the calculations. I have Denny’s original recipe for a 5 gallon batch and have plugged that into BeerSmith, but that seems to assume a full batch sparge method and his numbers are very close to mine. However, where I struggle is with the use of first runnings only for the Old Stoner and the “supplemented” batch sparge for the second beer. BeerSmith does not seem to have the ability to address a first run only calculation?
I would be happy with a 3 gallon batch of each if someone could help me with the calculations.
Also, any thoughts on style for the second runnings, including what additional grains to add and appropriate hop schedule? I was thinking of a Pale Ale or IPA with my remaining home grown hops.
I did Denny’s Old Stoner recipe and did a parti-gyle by making a 4 gallon batch of a Mosaic Pale Ale. I did not add any additional grain to the mash for the parti-gyle. Since calculating the gravity of a parti-gyle batch is difficult, I extrapolated that my pre-boil gravity would be around 1.040 and was able to use my refractometer to get a reading and adjust the recipe accordingly.
I can only make a comment on your closing question about adding grains to the mash for a second running, and my comment is that I’m not familiar with that technique at all. I wouldn’t doubt it if someone rushed to correct me on this one, as I’ve never done a parti-gyle mash, but I’ve never heard of anyone adding more grains to the mash after the first runnings have already been taken, if I’m understanding what you’re saying correctly. I would think that would just make for an unbalanced beer, since a good chunk of the fermentable sugar would have been drained out of the original grain, and the added grain would still have it’s full load of sugar to add. I can only see this working if the added grain was base malt and there was not much in the way of specialty malt in the mash, otherwise any specialty malt that was added for the second runnings might potentially contribute much more flavor than the base malt, thus making for an unbalanced beer. I don’t know, maybe I’m wrong on this one. I’m just listening to my instincts, and that’s what I’m hearing.
Post your recipe, your typical efficiency, and the desired OG of the second beer and I’ll show you how to do the calcs including how much grain to add to the mashtun after taking the first runnings for the BW.
Shadetree, I took his standard recipe for 5 gallons and scaled it to get this. I was told to use 55% efficiency for a beer this big. Also, Barley Wine would be no spare as stated and Second beer would be a Pale ale or something. I would like to be in the 1.055-1.065 range.
Hoping to mash in pretty soon, so I may have to wing this
Recipe: MPW - Old Stoner BW TYPE: All Grain
Style: Specialty Beer
—RECIPE SPECIFICATIONS
SRM: 19.6 SRM
IBU: 143.6 IBUs Tinseth
OG: 1.102 SG
FG: 1.023 SG
BU:GU: 1.414 Calories: 151.6 kcal/12oz Est ABV: 10.4 %
EE%: 55.00 % Batch: 3.20 gal Boil: 5.92 gal BT: 80 Mins
Total Grain Weight: 16 lbs 4.9 oz Total Hops: 5.00 oz oz.
—MASH/STEEP PROCESS------MASH PH:5.20 ------
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
12 lbs 0.5 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) Rahr (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 73.8 %
2 lbs 11.3 oz Munich Malt (9.0 SRM) Grain 2 16.6 %
1 lbs 1.5 oz Caramunich II (Weyermann) (63.0 SRM) Grain 3 6.7 %
7.5 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4 2.9 %
Name Description Step Temperat Step Time
Mash Step Add 39.53 qt of water at 160.6 F 152.0 F 60 min
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
1.40 oz Columbus (Tomahawk) [12.90 %] - First Wo Hop 5 29.8 IBUs
—BOIL PROCESS-----------------------------
Est Pre_Boil Gravity: 1.058 SG Est OG: 1.102 SG
Amt Name Type # %/IBU
1.83 oz Chinook [13.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 111.6 IBUs
0.30 Items Whirlfloc Tablet (Boil 15.0 mins) Fining 7 -
0.56 oz Centennial [10.00 %] - Boil 2.0 min Hop 8 2.2 IBUs
Sorry, didn’t get a chance to visit the forum to just now, but here’s what I would have done for this parti-gyle.
Using a total of 14 lbs of grain, mashing with 5.8 gallons, would yield four gallons of 1.080 wort, boiled down to three @ 1.100 for the BW. (this is a no-sparge, so the efficiency is simply the ratio of kettle volume to mash volume, 4/5.8 = 69%, assuming full conversion and no dead space in the mash tun).
You then have 1.8 gallons of wort @ 1.080 left in the grain. If you were to sparge with three gallons of water and drain to the kettle, you’d end up around 1.017, [80 / (1.8 + 3)]. For a small beer at 1.060 with four gallon boil yielding three gallons, you would need to spike the mash with 4.5 lbs of grain (assuming a 75% efficiency) and for equal runnings you would mash with 2 + 4.5/8 = ~2.5 gallons and then sparge with two gallons. For an IPA, seems like the leftover BW wort will add plenty of malt character, so I would just use 2-row for the spike.
So here is how it worked out. I did the recipe as posted. Basically 16.5 lbs of grain and mashed in with 8.25 gallons of water. This yielded me about 6 gallons of first running pre-boil wort at about 1.056. I did about a two hour boil as I was working toward a volume/OG balance. I took several Refractometer readings along the way and when I thought I was there, I stopped the boil. Not sure if the sample was not cool enough or what because it was over 25 Plato, but later I only ended up with 1.095 and about 3.75 gallons instead of 3.25.
For the second beer I decided on a Falconers Flight pale ale as I have had a lb of FF and have never used it. I capped the mash with 2 lbs of Pale Ale malt, 8 oz of Munich II and 4 oz of Aromatic, just trying to get some body in the beer. I ended up with about 5.75 gallons of 1.040 wort with the single sparge after letting it mash for about 45 minutes. I ended up having to boil that for about 90 minutes to get to 1.055 OG, which I am hoping the added boil time will also help with “thinness” However, my volume was about .4 gallons less than I expected. I will say that I kept a more vigorous boil than normal.
In all it went off without a hitch. Certainly a lot to juggle when doing two at a time, but no major screw ups.
Next time I would increase the grain a little for the first batch and decrease the water a bit.
For the second batch, I would probably cap with 3-4 lbs of base grain so I could get the boil down to 60 minutes.
I actually did the same recipe and finished with a brown ale off the second runnings. I added some crystal 60 and two row for the second runnings and ended up with a 1.055 brown ale. Both brews turned out excellent and I’m still enjoying the bw. I aged the bw in a 6.5 gal rye whiskey barrel for 3 weeks and decided not to dry hop, it is actually picking up some sweet funkiness that pairs well. Experiment, get creative, both of these beers demand patience so brew it and drink them when you think they taste right. They will evolve for sure, which is what I’ve enjoyed so far.
